Jetpack Payments & What You Need to Know

This article covers the “payment feature” for Jetpack and WordPress.com subscriptions.

If you read my article, WooCommerce Payments, What You Need to Know, then this article might sound familiar. Like WooCommerce Payments, Jetpack or WordPress Payments has its pros and cons.

The Biggest Benefit

As I see it, this payment feature just makes adding payment buttons to your site really easy.

If you’re not using Gutenberg when creating your pages and posts, you won’t really benefit from this feature at all because it is literally just a button (as shown below).

This is a working button. Click it and see how it works. Feel free to donate if you’d like to help support our content efforts.

How it Works

This solution integrates with Stripe.com, which, in my opinion, is the best payment processing solution available for those wanting to take payments online.

This video will show you how easy it is to connect your WordPress.com account with your Stripe account.

One additionally nice benefit with Jetpack Payments, you don’t have to create your products or subscriptions in Stripe first. You create them from within your WordPress.com account.

Now this video just shows me setting up the subscription options, but you can also do one time fee payment buttons too (like the one I demoed above).

Can you build nice product pages?

As mentioned above, if you’re using a 3rd party page builder like Elementor, then you may want to avoid this solution.

However, because this payment button is a Gutenberg block, you can build some really nice product pages and sections with different blocks.

Here is a working example.

It’s Not Worth It!

It really depends. If you’re going to use this for a simple donation button that will be placed throughout your site, it’s probably a good solution for you.

Using it to build out a full ecommerce website it probably a bad idea. It will require a lot of extra work and limit your ability to efficiently manage your orders and customers.

I haven’t mentioned this yet, but this solution does cost money! It is NOT FREE!

Here is how the pricing works.

First you will need a paid WordPress.com account or a paid Jetpack account.

A WordPress.com account will cost you between $4 and $45 per month.

A Jetpack account will cost you between $4 and $29 per month.

But that’s not all! There are additional fees as the chart below shows in the right column.

This fee is a percentage that WordPress collects for each transaction. Not sure why they need this additional percentage, but it’s there.

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

On top of the monthly fee for your WordPress/Jetpack account, and WordPress’ fee, Stripe is also going to get their cut, and they should really be the only one charging a percentage.

But Stripe charges 2.9% + $.30 per transaction. This you would pay no matter what if you use Stripe, this is their standard fee.

Let’s look at the math really quick. For this example, let’s say you have the Jetpack Premium plan.

• $9 for monthly fee
• 4% for WP fee
• 2.9% + $.30 Stripe fee

If you used this payment solution to charge a customer $100, your total cost just to collect those funds is $16.20. So once the funds hit your account, you’re actually receiving $83.80.

If you used Stripe without WordPress and their fees, you would only pay the 2.9% + $.30. Instead of paying $16.20 in fees, you’d pay $3.20 in fees.

A Better Solution

Yes, there is a better way! And it is just as simple to use.

It is a 3rd party plugin called WP Simple Pay.

It is not free. This plugin cost $99 per year, or, $8.25 per month (all pricing options here).

This plugin integrates with Stripe as well so the Stripe fees of 2.9% + $.30 per transaction still applies.

However, there is no 8-2% fees from WP Simple Pay like you have with WordPress.

The Wrap Up

We write these articles because we believe it is important that people be informed before they make a decision they wish they didn’t.

Please do your homework, review your options before moving forward and you’ll save yourself a ton of time.

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If you have questions, or need some additional information, feel free to use the comments or chat below.