Digital River vs. FastSpring

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Digital River
Score 3.0 out of 10
N/A
Digital River Global Commerce offers cloud commerce tools and services for selling digital and physical products across global online markets, handling taxes, regulations, payments, e-marketing and more.N/A
FastSpring
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
FastSpring is an ecommerce solution with features such as subscription billing and customer relationship management.N/A
Pricing
Digital RiverFastSpring
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Digital RiverFastSpring
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Digital RiverFastSpring
Considered Both Products
Digital River
Chose Digital River
Digital River Global Commerce is a powerful tool which hard to compare with others because of its uniqueness. However, because of its massiveness and sometimes сlumsiness, it's easier and more effective to use analogs. Strong sides of Digital River Global Commerce are …
Chose Digital River
Digital River versus ATG:
ATG requires significantly more personnel to manage / operate on a day to day basis
ATG platform is cumbersome comparatively
Chose Digital River
We evaluated our ability to expand internationally with our current e-commerce platform and decided we could get to market faster with Digital River.
Chose Digital River
This was in place when I migrated to the role. We were greatly satisfied with the server and products that we did not pursue other products.
Chose Digital River
N/A
FastSpring
Chose FastSpring
We are getting the best possible support from the FastSpring team, even within a few hours. But with Stripe, and others, we had to wait for days to resolve the simple issue.
Chose FastSpring
FastSpring provides an easier solution, and definitely a much better fit for our configuration, which doesn't require a lot of power, just an easy workflow with a single product to purchase, to provide the most straightforward experience to the user.
With FastSpring we have been …
Chose FastSpring
Compared to Paddle – FastSpring has much more experience in the e-commerce solution market. They already patched many things that Paddle might still go through.

And Avangate is just very user-unfriendly (In my personal opinion). Their dashboard and checkout are just outdated. …
Chose FastSpring
I have previously used PayPal - but customers complained because they thought they had to set up a PayPal account. Other customers didn't think that PayPal was as professional looking overall as FastSpring. PayPal is fine for accepting ebay auction payments, but businesses who …
Chose FastSpring
I have been using FastSpring consistently for the past nine years, and I cannot now recall what other products I considered when I selected FastSpring. I am not currently aware of any other company that would handle my type of business any better than FastSpring.
Chose FastSpring
With this new "Risk Assessment Fee," FastSpring is just the same as your average e-Commerce platform.
Features
Digital RiverFastSpring
Online Storefront
Comparison of Online Storefront features of Product A and Product B
Digital River
5.6
Ratings
33% below category average
FastSpring
-
Ratings
Product catalog & listings2.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Product management2.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Bulk product upload10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Branding5.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile storefront5.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Product variations7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Website integration5.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Visual customization5.00 Ratings00 Ratings
CMS9.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Online Shopping Cart
Comparison of Online Shopping Cart features of Product A and Product B
Digital River
7.4
Ratings
4% below category average
FastSpring
-
Ratings
Abandoned cart recovery9.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Checkout user experience5.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Online Payment System
Comparison of Online Payment System features of Product A and Product B
Digital River
5.0
Ratings
50% below category average
FastSpring
-
Ratings
eCommerce security5.00 Ratings00 Ratings
eCommerce Marketing
Comparison of eCommerce Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Digital River
6.9
Ratings
11% below category average
FastSpring
-
Ratings
Promotions & discounts9.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Personalized recommendations6.00 Ratings00 Ratings
SEO5.00 Ratings00 Ratings
eCommerce Business Management
Comparison of eCommerce Business Management features of Product A and Product B
Digital River
8.2
Ratings
2% above category average
FastSpring
-
Ratings
Multi-site management2.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Order processing9.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Inventory management10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Shipping10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom functionality9.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Digital RiverFastSpring
Small Businesses
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Score 10.0 out of 10
WooCommerce Subscriptions
WooCommerce Subscriptions
Score 7.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus
Score 9.0 out of 10
Sage Intacct
Sage Intacct
Score 8.6 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
Salesforce Revenue Cloud
Salesforce Revenue Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Digital RiverFastSpring
Likelihood to Recommend
3.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Digital RiverFastSpring
Likelihood to Recommend
It is well suited for large organizations with many SKUs, promotions, and large teams, where flexibility and speed to market are not necessarily as important as repeatability and stability. It is also well suited for digital products, especially if they sell internationally. They have the ability to integrate with an existing system for user management and website in a rather straightforward way as well.
Read full review
FastSpring is better option for small business and enterprises as well. But if you're a single person managing a person, or don't have a developer on your team, you may need to hire one to integrate the platform on your site, otherwise, it works great on all the parts. Have integrations with Apple, Google and Amazon Pay and accept most of the cards. And handles and tax automatically, which is a plus.
Read full review
Pros
  • Regional settings like local payment methods, ability to apply or not apply local VAT etc.
  • Reporting and any kind of business analysis.
  • Easy usage of the platform.
  • Marketing is definitely strong side of Digital River Global Commerce. Apart from the features it has, there is a strong team behind it who can make all your fantasies come true using all their expertise and possibility of the platform.
Read full review
  • FastSpring makes the process of selling ebooks from my website quite painless and virtually invisible for me. I let FastSpring handle all details of the transactions, and I rarely have to get involved directly with the customers who purchase the books.
  • FastSpring is very responsive with respect to technical and customer support. I have had a few occasions when a customer was having difficulty completing a purchase transaction, and FastSpring has always been responsive and helpful in resolving such problems quickly and efficiently.
  • FastSpring offers a flexible set of options for customizing ordering pages that can be included in my website. There are many options, such as promotional coupons, discounts, multiple file downloads, and others.
Read full review
Cons
  • Integrating with any 3rd party is challenging. The more you can do to clearly define your requirements, the easier it will be to integrate.
  • It can be difficult to differentiate and customize your product with an outsourced solution.
  • Your internal timeline might not match with their timeline and delivery schedule.
Read full review
  • FastSpring uses 2 separate GUIs for store owners. Some features work with one GUI implementation and not the other one.
  • Some other providers do provide lower credit card processing fees, compared with FastSpring. But I have been very happy dealing with FastSpring overall in terms of support and overall usability - so I am happy to continue using FastSpring. If I was selling 10x or 100x my current sales volume, I might consider a change, but I have no plans to change at the present time.
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Likelihood to Renew
Inertia and cost. To switch platforms would require a significant undertaking to migrate product catalogs, websites and retool marketing efforts. It would require a significant cost differential or game changing technology that would bring a decent ROI on the change
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
This was in place when I migrated to the role. We were greatly satisfied with the server and products that we did not pursue other products.
Read full review
Compared to Paddle – FastSpring has much more experience in the e-commerce solution market. They already patched many things that Paddle might still go through. And Avangate is just very user-unfriendly (In my personal opinion). Their dashboard and checkout are just outdated. As a software company that builds and sells software via online in 2018 – we need to implement a fresh and simple experience for our potential customers. FastSpring offered this and Avangate didn't.
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • More sales and broader reach to consumers. With the web presence of the eCommerce site, Korn/Ferry products were accessible 24 hours/ 7 days a week. Prior to that change, consumers had to call to order products and had to wait on office hours of when a Customer Service Rep was available.
  • Access to data and analytical information for sales. This also allowed for making a more efficient inventory process.
  • Transformed the Customer Service role to Commercial Operations which was a major plus. The position became more a support position (which is what was needed) than what was previously a Data Entry position. This also allowed opportunities for marketing a lot of the eProducts to consumers that the organization had.
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  • Great impact on the cost efficiency of the payments.
  • Good impact on the "abandoned cart" users: we could reach out to such users and in several cases re-add them as paying users.
  • Good impact on customer support: FastSpring support is extremely helpful and available, in very rapid times.
Read full review
ScreenShots