Mijireh WordPress Checkout Alternative – wpFortify

I’ve been looking for a Mijireh checkout alternative because of their new $5/mo minimum fee (if you’re not on an annual $49 plan). That’s when I found wpFortify. It is a new service that allows you to collect Stripe credit card payments on their SSL checkout page and remain PCI compliant.

If you want to accept payments for digital or physical goods on your website, you need to process payments with a SSL certificate and handle payments details (like credit card numbers) according to PCI standards. Services like PayPal process credit cards, but the user is sent through the PayPay website – PayPal bears the compliance burden. However, many people (including myself) have a strong distaste for PayPal because of how they mistreat sellers. I’ve found that accepting credit cards through Stripe.com creates much more flexibility (ex: directly fighting chargebacks) and they have a strong development team. Their fees (2.9% + $0.30) are comparable to PayPal and Stripe is very easy to work with. In order to process credit cards with Stripe, be PCI compliant, and instill trust in your customers, your checkout page needs to have SSL protection. This can get pricey every year if you don’t do a ton of transactions.

wpFortify – Secure Stripe Credit Card Processing

That’s where wpFortify comes in: they will host your custom checkout page with a SSL certificate where Stripe processes the payments so that you don’t keep any credit card details on your own website. For the use of their SSL certificate, wpFortify only adds $0.05 to the price of your transaction (as opposed to Mijireh’s $5/mo for the first 10 transactions + $0.50 per additional transaction).

Easy Digital Downloads or WooCommerce

If you use WordPress, Easy Digital Downloads and WooCommerce are two of the most popular plugins for selling things on your site. They both allow for collecting payments through various gateways and credit card payment processors. However, you typically need to buy a separate payment processor plugin (as high as $50-80) plus pay for a SSL certificate ($25-60 annually). Alternatively, you can use the free plugins from wpFortify or Mijireh and pay a per transaction fee.

There is a version of wpFortify for Easy Digital Downloads, WooCommerce, and Gravity forms. Coming soon are plugins for Exchange, Ninja Forms, and WP eCommerce.

Brian Ross is the creator of wpFortify and is very responsive to questions. I’m very impressed with the clean coding, integration, and options available on wpFortify.

Getting Started with wpFortify

To get started with wpFortify, search “wpFortify” in the WordPress plugin repository. After you’ve installed, head over to wpfortify.com to sign up for a free account. After you log in to your wpFortify account, connect your Stripe account and paste the wpFortify public and private keys into the respective WordPress plugin settings. You can put the WordPress plugin into test mode to try out some test purchases (use VISA credit card # 4242 4242 4242 4242 and any future expiration date and random CCV #). There are also more advanced features where you can customize the checkout page on wpFortify that your customers see, but that deserves a whole separate post.

Hope you find wpFortify as easy to use and affordable as I do!