FAQ

As developers, we want to have 100% control over the look and feel of the shopping cart and the product catalog. We want to be able to display and publish the products in a seamless manner that respects the brand and the design of the website. 

When using Snipcart, you have access to a shopping cart that is pure HTML/CSS, injected directly into your website's source code. You basically turn any links in your HTML into buyable buttons you display on your product pages. Those buttons will make our shopping cart pop. The cart itself can be skinned and customized by any developer: there are no creative limits! And since the checkout process is injected into your website, the customer never leaves your website and goes through a seamless navigating and shopping experience.

On the other hand, the catalog and products are managed within your CMS or static site generator, like any page and content type you already use and manage. So adding a product page basically means adding content. This means Snipcart will work seamlessly both on traditional CMS like WordPress and modern site generators like Gatsby or Nuxt.

As for the administration panel, it’s hosted on Snipcart. By logging into their dashboard, merchants will be able to configure their accounts and track their sales, payments, and shipping. In other words, we think we’ve nailed the best of both worlds: the cart is fully customizable and is “installed” – it’s a basic JavaScript inclusion – within the CMS and the invisible administration section that is hosted. Yet again, using our API, you could retrieve Snipcart data information and display it within your CMS. 

So yes, Snipcart does require a minimum of HTML and CSS knowledge, and it’s certainly not a service that suits everybody. We’ve built Snipcart as developers and we know that it’ll be more suitable for developers who want to offer simple shopping carts to their customers without compromising the CMS or design of the whole online shop.

Generally speaking, developers dig Snipcart. It's a technical, clean and customizable e-commerce solution. By reading our code and looking at integration demos, they can see for themselves how good an e-commerce option our cart really is.

Unfortunately, this smooth communication phenomenon doesn't happen as much when non-technical individuals stumble upon Snipcart. But we know how important it is for developers to justify their choices of tech to non-technical clients. So here’s a quick guide to selling Snipcart to these users.

1. Vulgarize & turn technical features into tangible benefits. Example? Time = money. Since Snipcart is directly injected inside a website's code using pure HTML/JS, the shopping cart integration can be done very quickly. This is even truer if the client already has a website he wants to keep.

Another example? Infinite customization. With a few lines of CSS, you can make our pop-up shopping cart match your website's colors and branding. For the client, this means you can adapt Snipcart's look and feel to the existing online brand experience. Oh, and all this, without ever letting the customer leave the website.

2. Show & compare. Show them the cart & checkout flow. If you head to our homepage and hit the “Try the cart” button our default cart will pop up with our minimalistic theme designed to fit most websites. Going through the whole checkout process should convince them of the smooth e-commerce UX Snipcart brings. If it’s not enough for them, go on and show comparisons to other e-commerce solutions.

3. The merchant dashboard. The part of Snipcart these non-technical users will find themselves using the most in the dashboard. You can access it freely, no credit card required, by clicking the Sign up button. Walk them through the basic configurations & advanced e-commerce features to give them a sense of what Snipcart can do for their business.

Yes we do! We offer you a lean, powerful cart in the front, and an effective, robust dashboard in the back. 

Once you sign up for a free account, you'll access your own back-office merchant dashboard. From there, you'll be able to:

• Track sales & orders with visual analytics
• Manage and export orders & customers
• Create and manage discounts & promotions
• Set up tax details for your online store
• Connect your payment gateway & shipping providers
• Integrate with external systems using our webhooks

Still got questions? Check out our documentation, or hit us up!

Of course! Snipcart is technology independent: this means that you can integrate it to any content management system (CMS) available out there, and WordPress is no exception.

You can read this post to learn about an easier way to manage your Snipcart products with a WordPress integration. Also, if you're a developer/designer looking to give more inventory management autonomy to your WordPress customers with Snipcart, this post is for you.

If you’re searching for some more in-depth explanations and examples of CMS integrations, go ahead and look up our comprehensive documentation section.

What you need to know is this: yes, integrating Snipcart with your website will require a basic amount of programming skills, whether they’re yours or somebody else’s.

HTML: Basic Snipcart set up

Minimal knowledge of HTML will be needed in order to get Snipcart (and your awesome new e-commerce site) up and running. You’ll need to be able to add and remove some HTML content from a web page. If you’re using a CMS, having direct access to your code so you can modify it will be key. Essentially, HTML manipulations will allow you to define and create buy buttons for your products.

JavaScript and CSS: leveraging Snipcart features

An understanding of JavaScript will allow you to use Snipcart’s API (say, to make your cart autofill some fields) and to link your site with Google Analytics. As a matter of fact, if you’ve already integrated Google Analytics, you should do alright using Snipcart. An understanding of JavaScript events will also help.

As for the CSS, well, all your cart’s visual customization depends on it. You’ll need to understand CSS in order to customize the look, feel, dimensions, and user experience of your own shopping cart.

Help

But don’t worry, we’re a bunch of good guys over here at Snipcart, and we’ll be happy to help you and hopefully guide your decision-making process towards the right path. So if you’ve got doubts or questions about anything regarding Snipcart’s technical integration, feel free to drop us a line at geeks@snipcart.com.

And if you’re looking for some more in-depth explanations and examples, go ahead and look up our comprehensive documentation section.

Even without an SSL/HTTPS certificate installed, we make sure all of your communication passes through HTTPS/SSL encryption even if there’s no green lock pad next to your URL.

Snipcart’s shopping cart is injected through JavaScript into your website. Even though the cart pops up on your domain and website, all of the information submitted during checkout is directly sent to Snipcart, which is already equipped with an SSL/HTTPS certificate. Then, we ensure the communication encryption between the client’s browser and Snipcart’s servers. The information entered during checkout is directly submitted to Snipcart without going through your servers (the “powered and secured by Snipcart” inscription displayed at the bottom of the cart informs the user of that).

Although you technically do not need any SSL/HTTPS certificate for Snipcart to work, we still strongly recommend you install one. Some browsers have now started flagging site pages with passwords & credit card forms on them as "not secure" when they're not using an HTTPS connexion. Visit Let's Encrypt to get a free SSL certificate.

Plus, during checkout, your customers will feel more secure if you have a certificate installed. We’ve also gone further than just using SSL/HTTPS encryption in terms of security; you can read more about it in the security section of our documentation. Also, it protects your website from certain man-in-the-middle attacks.

Yes! Snipcart allows you to set an unlimited configuration of plans, as well as physical products. Whether you're selling returning monthly products, magazine subscriptions, service memberships or any kind of recurring plan, we have you covered. Here’s a post introducing this feature, and here’s the documentation section to get you started with recurring payments.

You can also easily integrate a customer dashboard on your website to allow them to keep track of their transactions history or active/upcoming subscriptions. Learn how to do that here.

Yes, you can! We support all types of digital products, files, and downloads out-of-the-box. All you have to do is 1) upload files in your merchant dashboard, and 2) define digital products on your website.

More questions? Sign up for a free account and talk directly with our developers (lower right corner icon).

Sure thing!

Creating an account and using Snipcart in the test environment is 100% free, with no credit card needed.

Read the How much will it cost me to use Snipcart? section to learn more about our pricing

All of them! Well... let’s be more precise: we support any language that has been translated until now, and you can easily translate Snipcart on your own. While the merchant dashboard will stay in English, your shopping cart can be translated into any language (for instance, one of our users is fully set up in Turkish).

Snipcart is fully customizable, from top to bottom. Simply define your own JavaScript file language and the job’s done. Moreover, the localization files are available on GitHub, so feel free to poke around add your own language if it isn’t there yet!

For a concrete example and some more details, head over to our documentation section.

Mostly in all of them; we love the whole world! If there happens to be a problem with using Snipcart in your country, it will probably be because of the payment gateways, which, in some ways, we depend on. Since we’re neither brokers nor payment gateways, there are some variables (like these) over which we have little control.

Please note that we now support custom payment gateways. Should you need to accept a payment method we don't support out of the box, this could come in handy. Details here.

However, if your problem has something to do with the fact that we do not support a specific gateway, feel free to email us and we’ll get back to you as soon as we’ve looked into it more deeply.

Snipcart offers full online inventory management for your store.

When you sign-up free for our shopping cart platform, you'll get access to a comprehensive merchant dashboard. From there, you can manage all of your e-commerce operations, including your store inventory and products stock.

Among other things, Snipcart allows you to manage inventory in real-time using single products or more detailed product options. You can even allow out-of-stock purchases by checking a simple setting in your inventory panel.

To learn more about how to manage inventory with Snipcart, check out this comprehensive documentation section.

We support all currencies. Within the Snipcart merchant dashboard, you can directly configure the currency you’d like to use for your online store. However, the currency you choose must be supported by your payment gateway. Make sure your Snipcart account and your payment gateway account both use the same currency. For instance, if your Stripe account is set up in Canadian dollars (CAD) and you set American dollars (US) in your Snipcart dashboard, then the payments won’t be processed. You’ll also be able to customize the numbers format within the dashboard. As for our billing, we’ll use the conversion rate at the time of billing.

Check out our supported payment gateways for more detailed information about the currencies they support.

Note that we also have a custom payment gateway feature. It allows you to integrate Snipcart yourself with any payment method. Details here.

Though we are sorry to see you leave, we understand that business models/needs can change. To cancel your Snipcart account:

• Log in to your merchant dashboard.
• Make sure you toggle the Live mode at the top of the screen.
• Click on the small user icon at the top right corner.
• Under the Account section, click on Profile.
• Click on the black Cancel my account button.

We also really value feedback from our current or former customers. We would really, really appreciate it if you took a quick moment to write and tell us why you're cancelling your account! This helps us improve the quality of our product and customer service. Thanks! 

Chargebacks aren't directly handled through Snipcart. Your chosen payment gateway is the entity that'll be able to help you settle disputes & chargebacks. We'll gladly point you towards the right resources, should you need it.

Of course. Partial and total order refunds can be handled directly within the merchant dashboard. Go to Dashboard > Orders, click on any Invoice number. Beneath the Details section, you’ll find a Refund button.

If you prefer to handle refunds using API, head to this documentation section.

Well, first of all, what you can do is to tell us about it! Right now, we’re doing our best to make Snipcart available to the most widely spread audience possible. See the e-commerce payment gateways we currently support.

Please note that we now support custom payment gateways. It lets you integrate Snipcart with any payment method on your end. Details here.

In order to make sure most merchants can use Snipcart, we also support PayPal Checkout, which is supported in most parts of the world. Now we know that PayPal Checkout isn’t la crème de la crème in terms of user experience: not keeping your customer on your site during checkout and payment processing is never an ideal solution. That’s why we try to include as many gateways as we can. Also, we’d be happy to look into integrating whatever payment gateways you suggest! 

We’d love to see you using Snipcart too, so feel free to contact us at geeks@snipcart.com and we’ll try to integrate your payment gateway as quickly as we can!

Your customers don’t have to pay online, and yes, you can bill them later. Our aim here is to accommodate different payment methods and facilitate the already existing relationships between you and your clients. If, say, your client is an institution, sometimes they won’t be able to pay online with a credit card number. It’s important to us that you can use Snipcart the way it suits you best. That’s why we support deferred payments.

When configuring your Snipcart dashboard, you can choose to enable the "bill me later" option. By doing that, your customers will have an additional option when they reach the payment step inside the online shopping cart. They’ll be able to choose to pay later. No payments will be processed; you’ll be able to manage the transaction any way you see fit and bill them later!

Yes. We published a Data Processing Addendum (DPA) and included it in our Terms of Service. You can find a copy here.

Yes. Send us an email at privacy@snipcart.com and we’ll take care of deleting all of sensitive, personal data associated with your account.

Yes. Send us an email at privacy@snipcart.com and we’ll send you a file with all of your sensitive, personal data associated with your account.

As of now, we’ll be the ones helping you out with this. Send us an email at privacy@snipcart.com, and we’ll provide you with requested customer data. The same thing applies if they wish to delete their data.

At Snipcart, we believe in providing stellar support to all of our customers, regardless of the amount of monthly sales they generate. We also believe in offering a great product that will be used to create awesome web experiences, not online zombie stores.

This minimal $20 fee is a way of making sure we can achieve those two things.

It’ll cost you 2% on total monthly sales, with a minimal monthly fee of $20.

So:

If you’re selling over $1000 a month, it’ll cost you a 2% commission on your monthly sales to use Snipcart.

If you’re selling under $1000 a month, it’ll cost you $20 per month to use Snipcart.

We’ll only be billing you on a monthly basis. Every month, on the day you first went live, we’ll automatically calculate and charge 2% of your monthly sales on the credit card you entered to your account when setting up your Snipcart admin dashboard. We'll be charging you in US dollars (USD). Please note that we charge a $20 minimal monthly fee. This means that if you're selling under $1000 a month, you'll be charged a flat $20 to use Snipcart. If you're selling over $1000, you'll be charged the 2% fee.

*Please note that some banks might require international transactions to be authorized before you start selling online. If your card doesn't seem to be working with Snipcart, this might be the reason.