Ontraport Adds Stripe Integration (Say Goodbye to Merchant Account Fees)

Ontraport (formerly OfficeAutopilot) has just announced Stripe integration.  If you either don’t have a merchant account, are tired of high merchant account fees, or if you are currently relying on Paypal (with it’s painful conversion-decreasing registration/login step), this is great news.

Stripe, a relatively new but rapidly growing online payment processing service, has proven itself to be wildly popular because it’s easy to use, has no monthly fee, and it removes some of the painful steps required by other solutions.

Ontraport is an online software that integrates your email marketing, behavioral based marketing (more about that in a minute), direct mail, SMS marketing, order processing, and fulfillment.  Using Ontraport, you can automate the majority of your marketing, sales funnel, and fulfillment with a single software solution.

Once implemented, Ontraport can save your company countless hours while adding capabilities, like the ability to respond to prospects, leads and customers based on their behavior (page visits, links clicked, emails opened, etc.) that can dramatically increase engagement and your conversion rates.

Click here for a demo of Ontraport(aff link)

The addition of Stripe integration gives Ontraport users the ability to bypass the need for merchant accounts and monthly shopping cart fees.

Say Goodbye to Monthly Recurring Merchant Account Fees

One of the major pain points of starting to sell your products and services online is payment processing. In the past, the best available options were often Paypal, a merchant account + payment gateway (like Authorize.net), or a combination of the two.

The challenge has always been the number of hoops you have to go through to get a merchant account, the ability of the merchant account provider to freeze your funds by automatically increasing your “reserve” if they feel like some of your transactions are risky, and of course, the high recurring monthly fees which you pay even if you aren’t making any sales. Over the course of a year, the recurring fees can saddle your business with significant costs.

The counter argument is that merchant account per-transaction fees and monthly fee can be a better option if you’re routinely running a lot of transactions through the merchant account. The challenge for many is reaching that breakpoint. That’s where Stripe comes in with low per-transaction fees and no monthly fee. Make no sales and you pay nothing for the privilege of being able to use Stripe (unlike a merchant account).

Shopping Cart Fees Optional

Another reason why you may just fall in love with the Ontraport/Stripe combination is that you no longer need a shopping cart. Of course, you can still use a shopping cart if you want to, but Ontraport’s built in “Order Page” feature gives you the option of creating a secured online order form and with the addition of Stripe, you no longer need a shopping cart.

For those that love their shopping cart, Ontraport integrates with a number of shopping cart providers and provides full integration with Ultracart, a powerful shopping cart solution with tiered pricing that many prefer to 1ShoppingCart.

How to Setup Stripe in Ontraport

Once you have a Stripe account, which just takes a few minutes, setting up Stripe inside of your Ontraport account is brain-dead simple. Just give it a name and copy and paste your Stripe secret key, which you can find by clicking on your account name and the API tab like this:

You can also setup a Stripe / Ontraport integration with your Stripe “Test Secret Key” which will allow you to easily test your order pages and you can keep them straight in your mind by naming it, “Stripe – Test” in Ontraport.

Is Ontraport A Good Solution For You?

If you are not running an extremely high volume of transactions, and you want to automate your marketing, then the Ontraport / Stripe combination is hard to beat.

The marketing automation capabilities of Ontraport alone are worth the small monthly cost (I should know, it’s what I use) and if you’re still using a regular CRM, Aweber, iContact, or another email autoresponder service that is incapable of behavior-based rules (If the contact does X, then do Y), I think you’ll be very happy once you decide to upgrade.

Either way, Ontraport offers a 90 day trial period which is more than enough time to get up and running because they assign on of their experts to help you migrate.

See what Ontraport can do here or click here to start your trial.

P.S. I’m an Ontraport user and love the software, so if you sign up using any of my affiliate links on this page, I’ll give you access to Social Video Mastery – a complete video training program that will show you step-by-step how you can use the power of social media and video to grow your business. Just keep this page open and send me your contact information if you decide to sign up.