Greetings,
The new pricing structure of charging a flat fee of $20 for sales under $1,000/month is killing off some of my clients. This is fine for clients who make up to about that amount. But I have a lot of small vendors who only make under $500/month who now cannot use SnipCart. After developing a solution for them, I now need to take a new look at everything.
When did this new pricing start?
It started at the beginning of this year, January 2024.
I’m in the same boat. I haven’t found an alternative that’s comparable to the original pricing structure.
Many all-in-one cart solutions are about $25+ / month, unless you want to go with a framework like Squarespace. Squarespace is $25/month and offers a lot more integrations, downside is the maintenance from a dev perspective. And people don’t usually want to pay a dev if they go with Squarespace, other than the initial setup cost.
It makes it very tough for custom web engineers to make a living.
I have the same issue
Hey Again,
It took me by surprise, and was rather embarrassing. One of my clients wrote to me and asked why SnipCart was billing them $20. I wrote back and corrected them, saying it was $10. But then I came here and found they were correct!
I thought I had seen in SnipCart’s documentation that they always give 60 days notice before a rate increase. I can’t seem to find the wording now, but I recall reading it and sharing it. I did not get any notice of the increase.
Hi,
I just looked in my mail program. On 06.12.23 I received a notification that Snipcart is increasing the price next year.
Hello,
I just looked back through my emails, and I do not see such a message. Strange.
An extra $10 a month (to only $20 total) is really causing them to need a different solution? Seems to be a pretty small expense to have a shopping cart system. If they’re only ever expecting to pull in $500 a month or less, they should be selling on eBay or something as they don’t have much of a business anyway… Not trying to be an ass here, that’s just the reality!
billywight,
Yeah, you’re kind of being an ass! Let me enlighten you about a few things…
You’re looking at this as if the business has no other expenses. If that were true, then $20 might not be a big deal.
It’s not a question of whether this is a “small expense” or not. Apparently you don’t know this, but most small businesses operate on tight margins. It’s not that this particular $20 breaks the bank. It’s more that they examine ALL their monthly expenses and look where they can operate more efficiently. Another $20 in that context is a lot.
Next, I have successfully moved many clients from PayPal over to a Stripe/SnipCart scenario. Part of that argument is cost/feature benefits. But now, doubling the basic monthly charge, SnipCart has made that effort much harder.
Next, some businesses are cyclical or seasonal. A couple of my clients have seasons where they make most of their money, and they have months with almost no money coming from online sales. Doubling the basic monthly charge in those “down months” makes it less feasible for them to carry this service.
Finally, for many businesses their online sales are only a portion of their income. I have several clients who make most of their money via POS activities. I successfully convinced them to build an online sales element. Doubling the basic charges makes is much harder for me to convince them to go down this road.
I hope this helps you understand the world of small business!
I’ve run two small businesses for the last 17 years; I’m aware of expenses and margins. Snipcart has those too, hence the price increase. If your clients can’t afford an extra $10 monthly to keep a shopping cart running, they’re don’t own a business, they own a hobby. Sorry this is hurting your business, but that’s the simple reality. Tell your clients to have one less Starbucks a month and they’ll be even. Or just try for better clients.
Hey billywight,
Why are you marching into this discussion just to hurl insults?
You were right with what you said before – you are an ass.
Hey Billy and Matthew,
I know both sides. I didn’t like the latter where I had to turn over every penny.
You can show your customers lots of ways to increase sales. One of the best is to create meaningful content around the products you want to sell. Become an expert in your field and take your customers by the hand.
Anyone can learn how to create content!
Simply building a fancy site is no longer enough. More needs to happen…
Christian342,
I help my clients build the best selling apps possible. I don’t think this is about content. It’s about the nature of certain businesses.
What insults have I hurled around? I’m just telling like it is. It’s $10 a month extra for a shopping cart. Snipcart has to make money at this, and providing a shopping cart plus support for only $10 a month no longer makes sense to them, so they raised their pricing. Seems pretty straight forward, I would think?
And it’s $10! That’s such a tiny change in the monthly cost of being in business, it’s not even worth a discussion. Suck it up and move on.
billywight,
If you don’t get what’s insulting about your attitude, I don’t know what to tell you. I’ll leave it to others to come in and comment on your quotes:
“they should be selling on eBay or something as they don’t have much of a business anyway”
“If your clients can’t afford an extra $10 monthly to keep a shopping cart running, they’re don’t own a business, they own a hobby.”
“Tell your clients to have one less Starbucks a month and they’ll be even. Or just try for better clients.”
Those weren’t insults, those were statements of reality. If you want to feel insulted, feel free. But it would be in your (or your client’s) best interest to take those comments as advice instead.
The hard fact is that if your client’s gross income from their business is less than half of the pay of a minimum wage job, they don’t have a business. Now I get that everyone has to start somewhere, but an extra $10 monthly should be the least of their worries as a startup.
Anyway, that’s the last of the free advice you’ll get from me. Good luck!
I was also suprised by this change. I was billed roughly A$30 in Jan, and I thought snipcart was being weird like that and billing me every two months, but nope, received another A$30 in February. I haven’t seen any comms in my email related to this change.
I understand you’ll need to increase your prices at one point (double though?). It would be good if everyone received early communication about it, as I commited on the 12th of Dec, 2023 with the price of $13 CAD/month.
And unlike seasoned business owners, it is definitely difficult for those who are trying to make their first sale, or their sale after some intial support from friends and family. And yes I agree with @billywight comment: “they don’t have much of a business anyway”, because they are likely starting out.
It simply hurts more than it helps, and it makes selling clients on snipcart vs alternatives much harder, despite how much I appeal to this product’s simplicity.
EDIT: A potential suggestion would be to start the billing after the first payment has been made. The seller gets paid by the customer, snipcart gets paid by the seller, and the customer gets their goods. Everyone wins. The incentive for snipcart then, might be to help small business owners make that first sale, by providing documentation, resources, etc., and drawing in more sales yourself.
Hi Kevin,
It sounds like notification was not handled very well for this. In addition to doubling the monthly fee, they also made it a surprise. Further, I cannot find any way to communicate with SnipCart on this issue. They don’t seem to monitor this forum at all.
billywight,
If you don’t see your comments as insulting, or at least belittling, I don’t know what to say. I doubt anyone reading this discussion would fail to recognize your comments as insults.
What I wrote in my previous posts are reflections of reality, not insults. Calling you an idiot would be an insult (though, seemingly accurate since you’ve now made this response twice).
Snipcart likely doesn’t care if you’re unhappy about a $10 increase to the minimum cost, nor should they. They’re a business and have to make money. The entitled attitude that their service should be free or very low cost is the problem here.
Do you get free website hosting? Free business bank accounts? Free rent? Free utilities? Why should this be any different? Take it as a business expense, like all your other expenses. Learn and adapt or your business will die. It’s on you, not others.
Snipcart likely doesn’t care if you’re unhappy about a $10 increase to the minimum cost,
An opinion that I don’t agree with. They should care about their customer’s happiness. As a business, your pricing should reflect the value you provide. The value provided didn’t double overnight. As Matthew pointed out they aren’t particularly active here it seems.
nor should they.
I will admit every business is different. But a business that doesn’t intentionally care about customer’s contentment is not a business I want to support. I don’t think that is what is happening here though - benefit of the doubt.
They’re a business and have to make money.
Yes. But not by all means neccessary.
The lack of communication I experienced, doesn’t fit well with me and likely others too, regardless of whether they can comfortably pay off this new price. Even a short blog or announcement post on their main website explaining the upcoming price changes would have been good.
The entitled attitude that their service should be free or very low cost is the problem here.
The expectation of a low cost service is something they intentionally or not put forth by having very competitive pricing. You can find articles and blog posts doing feature comparisons and low price is something they point out for snipcart.
Regarding the “free” point, there are reasons why it might make sense business wise. Space is cheap. It shouldn’t cost them much if anything, to hold some data that might be used later on. The first time it is used, they will earn $20USD. Easing the path for new businesses to be sold on snipcart. It’s also similar to the “pay for what you use” model, I would be fine with them charging half the amount for the test env, if it meant I only get charged for prod on my first sale.
Also, it’s only a suggestion for how they might approach the problem. It’s not a sense of entitlement. Entitlement would be demanding the point, and complaining or denying the feasibility of any other point.
Why should this be any different?
I think the problem here, at least for myself, is that we weren’t provided with official information as to the increase itself, and we don’t really know the reasons why it increased. If the business hasn’t made clear any changed expectation, that’s the businesses fault. I don’t list prices public and work on services for my clients, only to double them at billing time. That’s what “bill shock” is. If something is going to, or has gone past the expected price point, it should be communicated clearly. Then the other party, would have some time to adapt to the new expectations.
Learn and adapt or your business will die. It’s on you, not others.
100% agree.