BlueSnap Review

Pros

• Available in US, Canada, and 178 other countries
• Month-to-month contracts with no early termination fee
• No monthly account fees for merchants processing over $2,500
• Fully-featured payment gateway

Cons

• Flat-rate pricing option is expensive for medium or larger-sized businesses
• $75 per month account maintenance fee for merchants processing less than $2,500
• Customer support only available during US business hours

BlueSnap Overview

While BlueSnap is primarily an eCommerce-focused company, it now works with Fiserv (formerly First Data) to offer the complete line of Clover terminals and point-of-sale (POS) systems. BlueSnap’s integrated payments platform offers all the payment gateway features you could ask for. Also, BlueSnap accounts are all on month-to-month contracts, with no early termination fee. At the same time, flat-rate processing rates under its Quick Start pricing plan are on the high side. You may also have to pay a whopping $75.00 per month account maintenance fee if you process less than $2,500 per month.

Overall, BlueSnap scores 4 out of 5 stars. As long as you’re processing enough to avoid the account maintenance fee, it provides excellent service and an impressive list of features for eCommerce, retail, and omnichannel businesses.

Countries Served

BlueSnap is available in the United States, Canada, and 178 other countries.

Products & Services

BlueSnap’s product lineup is impressive, and merchants will find just about every feature they need to run a successful business. Offerings include the following:

• Merchant Accounts: BlueSnap is not a direct processor. Instead, it partners with several backend processors to provide merchant accounts to its customers. These partners include First Data (now Fiserv), FIS Worldpay, and several others.
• Integrated Payments Platform: The company’s primary product is its All-In-One Payment Platform, which uses a payment gateway to integrate with both your business website and physical credit card processing hardware. It can accept 100+ payment types in over 100 currencies, making it ideal for international merchants. Payment types include all major credit cards, PayPal, and ACH payments via eCheck and wire transfer.
• Mobile Credit Card Terminals: BlueSnap has expanded from its original eCommerce-only roots, and now offers support for retail merchants as well. Currently, only the Clover Flex and Clover Go are advertised on the company’s website. Other Clover terminals, however, might be supported as well.
• Virtual Terminal: Bluesnap’s proprietary virtual terminal allows you to accept orders placed by mail, email, fax, or telephone — all without a website. You can also send out invoices or requests for payment using payment links, allowing your customers to pay you instantly via credit/debit card, ACH, or wire transfer.
• Shopping Cart Integration: The All-In-One Payment Platform also integrates with a wide range of popular online shopping carts, including Magento, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and many others.
• Recurring Billing: BlueSnap’s gateway supports recurring billing and includes features such as full-scale customization and an account updater that updates your customers’ payment information when their card on file expires.
• Developer Tools: If you’d like to customize your interface, the BlueSnap Developer Hub gives you access to APIs and documentation to tweak features like hosted payment pages and the Account Updater feature.

BlueSnap Pricing, Fees & Rates

Like many providers offering credit card processing and payment gateway services as a bundled product, BlueSnap advertises a choice between two pricing plans:

• Quick Start Pricing: Designed for small businesses, this plan offers a flat processing rate of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction (for US merchants). Billing is pay-as-you-go, with no long-term contract or early termination fee (ETF). This plan is best for startups and other small businesses with no prior processing history.
• Customized Pricing:  For larger businesses, a customized pricing option is available that uses either flat-rate, tiered, or interchange-plus pricing rates. Special discounted rates for nonprofits are available under this plan, as is Level 2/3 processing for B2B transactions. Unfortunately, BlueSnap doesn’t provide any further details, so you’ll have to contact the sales department for a quote.

In the past, BlueSnap hasn’t charged an account setup fee or annual fee. You’re also not likely to be subject to a monthly minimum. The company charged a $75.00 monthly account maintenance fee for merchants who processed less than $2,500 per month, but this fee proved so unpopular with merchants that it’s no longer mentioned on the BlueSnap website. While the fee has probably been dropped, we strongly encourage you to review your contract documents carefully before signing up for an account. All fees — including incidental ones that you may never have to pay — should be disclosed somewhere in the fine print of your contract.

Contract Length & Early Termination Fee

Contracts with BlueSnap do not have a fixed-length term and will continue until terminated by either party. In other words, they’re true month-to-month agreements. If you want to close your account, you’ll have to provide 60 days’ written notice before you can cancel. If you’re a BlueSnap Payment Services Limited Merchant, you only need to provide 30 days’ written notice.

BlueSnap also doesn’t charge an early termination fee. This is a great feature, as it allows you to try the service for as long as you’d like without being trapped in a long-term contract. If you later find a better deal with a different processor, you’re free to leave without any penalty. You should also note that these are better terms than some of BlueSnap’s third-party processors will offer you if you sign up with them directly. Most processors impose a three-year contract with an automatic renewal clause that renews your contract for one-year periods after the initial term expires. They also charge exorbitant early termination fees if you try to close your account before the end of your contract term.

If you’d like more information about BlueSnap’s contracts, take a look at their current Payment Acceptance Guide. Be aware that this is only one part of your merchant account contract. You’ll also have to fill out a Merchant Application that will list your processing rates and account fees. Be sure to thoroughly review all contract documents before you sign up!

Sales & Advertising Transparency

Today, a company’s website represents its first chance to make a good impression on potential customers. BlueSnap’s website performs this function quite well. It’s clean, professional-looking, and easy to navigate. It’s also informative, including a lot more information than just the standard marketing hype that clutters the sites of so many other companies. Hunt around, and you’ll find FAQs, case studies featuring actual customers, a robust knowledgebase, and more. It even includes some basic pricing information, although it’s not complete by any means.

BlueSnap also uses an in-house sales staff to sell accounts. This is an advantage, as in-house staff generally are more knowledgeable and better trained than the independent agents that many providers use to sell their accounts. We haven’t seen any indication that BlueSnap uses independent agents. The company also has a referral partnership program. Unlike similar-sounding programs with other providers, it’s designed to encourage third-party vendors to integrate their products with BlueSnap’s platform, not to recruit independent sales agents.

As you would expect for a tech-focused company, BlueSnap has an extensive social media presence. The company maintains active accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Most updates to these accounts are re-posts of content from the company’s blog, but there’s other content as well. BlueSnap’s YouTube channel has dozens of videos, including tutorials, educational resources, testimonials from customers, and marketing materials.

BlueSnap Customer Service & Technical Support

BlueSnap’s Help & Support Center contains an extensive knowledgebase with answers to common questions, tutorials, and product documentation. This should be your first stop if you’re having a problem with any of the company’s products or services. The amount of information presented here is very impressive, and we wish more processors would provide a self-help resource that’s this useful.

If you can’t solve your problem using the knowledgebase, you can also receive support via telephone, email, and live chat. If you submit your question via email, you can expect a response within 24 hours. Telephone and live chat, however, are only available during the following hours:

• Monday-Thursday 1:00 AM – 9:00 PM (EST)
• Friday 8:00 AM – 9:00 PM (EST)
• Sunday 1:00 AM – 12:00 PM (EST)

Honestly, we’d prefer to see 24/7 telephone support, especially from a company that provides services in 180 countries around the globe. However, it’s also true that most companies that provide 24/7 coverage also rely on outsourcing to cover their non-business hours. Late-night calls are usually routed to a representative with little training or authority to assist in solving your problem. Calls during business hours, on the other hand, will be handled by BlueSnap’s in-house customer support team, and the quality of support you receive will – in most cases – be much better. International merchants should pay particular attention to the time zone differences in scheduling their calls to customer support.

The quality of the customer service you receive is just as important as its availability. We’ve found both praise and condemnation for BlueSnap’s support team online, so you may or may not have a good experience when you call in.

BlueSnap Reviews, Complaints, & Common Problems

Negative BlueSnap Reviews & Complaints

The company, originally knowns as Plimus, re-branded itself as BlueSnap in 2012. This change of business name wasn’t done on a whim – in 2012 the company became the target of a class-action lawsuit alleging that it knowingly provided credit card processing services to online scammers and fake eCommerce businesses. While the suit was eventually dismissed after failing to achieve certification as a valid class action, the damage to Plimus’ reputation was severe enough to justify switching to a new business name.

BlueSnap has been accredited by the BBB since 2015 and currently has an A+ rating. The company has had only five complaints within the last three years, two of which were within the last twelve months. This represents a dramatic drop-off in complaint volume since our last review update, when the company had received 29 complaints in the same time period. We attribute this improvement to changes the company instituted in the wake of the Yordy v. Plimus lawsuit. The majority of the complaints filed against BlueSnap are actually from shoppers who made a purchase from a merchant that was using BlueSnap as their processor. Obviously, the merchant is going to be primarily responsible for issuing refunds, not the processor. BlueSnap has patiently tried explaining this, responding to every single complaint. However, not many people seem to have accepted this as a satisfactory resolution of their claim. BlueSnap has even gone as far as to issue a refund when the merchant wouldn’t respond to the complaint. This, of course, results in a chargeback against the merchant, and eventual account suspensions if the chargebacks happen repeatedly.

You’ll also find an unbelievable 167 older complaints filed against Plimus, the company’s former name on Ripoff Report. Again, almost all of them relate to problems shoppers had with merchants who were using Plimus as their processor. Note that Ripoff Report never removes old complaints, and the most recent one is from 2018. There are another ten complaints filed against BlueSnap on Ripoff Report, and again they all involve the same issue. While BlueSnap hasn’t been entirely successful in shutting down the merchant accounts of shady vendors and online criminals, it appears to have made a significant amount of progress in this area.

Positive BlueSnap Reviews & Testimonials

BlueSnap offers several testimonials and case studies from some of its better-known customers on its website. They’re relatively convincing and include more detail about specific features that their clients found useful than what we typically see from a business-provided testimonial. You’ll find three more testimonials on the company’s YouTube channel.

While it’s nice to see BlueSnap provide some relatively authentic testimonials from actual customers, let’s be honest: you’re never going to hear anything negative about a company in a testimonial that it produces and distributes about itself. If you’ve had a good experience using BlueSnap, please be sure to tell us about it in the Comments section below.

Final Verdict On BlueSnap

With simple, flat-rate pricing, no long-term contracts, and no early termination fee, BlueSnap has a lot to offer eCommerce merchants looking for a reliable payment gateway and an affordable merchant account to go with it. Robust international support also makes it a good fit for businesses located in one of the 180 countries where its services are available. As long as you’re processing over $2,500 per month, you won’t pay a monthly account fee, gateway fee, or PCI compliance fee, either. This is an excellent deal, as most merchant account providers will bill you separately for all three of these items.

At the same time, there are downsides as well. BlueSnap’s flat processing rate of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, while comparable to what most payment service providers (PSPs) charge, can get expensive at higher processing volumes. Once you’ve built up a solid processing history, you should be able to switch to a customized pricing plan with lower rates. Also, BlueSnap will not be the best choice for businesses processing under $2,500 per month. The $75.00 monthly account maintenance fee — which may or may not still apply — seems to function more like a penalty than a legitimate fee. There’s no indication that merchants paying this fee receive any additional services or benefits than larger businesses that aren’t paying a monthly fee at all. If your business is below the $2,500 monthly threshold, you’ll want to avoid BlueSnap.

For everyone else, however, we have no problem recommending the company. Whether you’re running an omnichannel or eCommerce-only business, BlueSnap can provide excellent service at a reasonable overall cost. Month-to-month billing, simple flat-rate pricing, and no monthly fees add up to a high-quality offering for businesses that are a good match for the company’s pricing structure. The availability of interchange-plus pricing under the customized pricing option makes this an attractive option for higher-volume businesses. However, we strongly recommend that you avoid any plan that uses tiered pricing, as it will usually be more expensive overall.

Overall, BlueSnap rates a commendable 4 out of 5 stars. As long as you can avoid the steep account maintenance fee, it’s a good, affordable choice for both online and retail merchants. As always, we encourage readers who have had experience with the company to leave a review in the Comments section below.

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