Snipcart

What is Snipcart

Snipcart is an e-commerce solution designed for developers to add a shopping cart to any existing website. It is not a full platform that hosts your site, but a snippet of HTML and JavaScript that you add to your code. This allows you to turn any website, regardless of the technology it uses (like static site generators, CMS, or custom frameworks), into a functional online store. The core purpose is to provide a flexible and simple way to enable e-commerce without rebuilding a website. The company was founded in Quebec, Canada, with a focus on creating a tool that developers would find easy and powerful to use. It handles the cart, checkout process, and order management through a dedicated merchant dashboard.

Snipcart Features

Snipcart offers a complete set of features to manage an online store directly from your existing website.

• Product Types: Sell both physical goods and digital products. You can manage inventory for physical items and provide secure download links for digital files.
• Customizable Shopping Cart: The cart is fully customizable using HTML and CSS. You can change its appearance to match your website's design for a seamless user experience.
• Inventory Management: Track stock levels for your products directly from the Snipcart dashboard. The system can automatically prevent sales of out-of-stock items.
• Flexible Shipping Options: Configure different shipping methods based on destination, weight, or price. You can set up flat rates, real-time carrier rates, or offer free shipping.
• Discounts and Promotions: Create discount codes for customers. You can offer percentage-based discounts, fixed amount discounts, or free shipping promotions.
• Abandoned Cart Recovery: Automatically send reminder emails to customers who leave items in their cart without completing the purchase, helping you recover lost sales.
• Multi-currency and Multi-language: Sell to a global audience by displaying prices in different currencies and translating the checkout process into multiple languages.
• Secure Checkout: The checkout process is secure and PCI compliant. Customers stay on your website during the entire transaction, which builds trust.
• Developer Tools: Snipcart provides a powerful API and webhooks to connect with other services, automate workflows, and build custom e-commerce experiences.

Snipcart Pricing Plans

Snipcart has a straightforward pricing model. Instead of multiple complex tiers, it primarily operates on a pay-as-you-go basis. There is a standard plan that charges a small percentage of each transaction. This plan is suitable for most small to medium-sized businesses and includes all core features like unlimited products, inventory management, and abandoned cart recovery. For businesses with very high sales volume, Snipcart offers custom pricing plans. These plans provide lower transaction fees and dedicated support, making it a scalable solution for larger enterprises.

Snipcart Free Plan

Snipcart does not have a traditional free plan for live sales, but it offers an unlimited free testing mode. You can sign up without a credit card and use all of Snipcart's features in a test environment for as long as you need. This allows you to fully build and test your store's integration on your website. You only need to switch to a paid plan when you are ready to start accepting real payments from customers. This makes it completely free to develop and experiment with the platform.

How to use Snipcart

Getting started with Snipcart is a simple process for anyone with basic HTML knowledge.

1. Sign Up: Create a free account on the Snipcart website.
2. Get Your API Key: After signing up, you will find your public API key in your user dashboard.
3. Add the Snippet: Copy the Snipcart installation code, which includes a JavaScript file and a CSS file, and paste it into the HTML of your website, usually before the closing </head> tag.
4. Define Products: To make a product sellable, you add specific HTML attributes to your 'Add to cart' button. These attributes include the product ID, name, price, and URL. For example: <button class="snipcart-add-item" data-item-id="product-1" data-item-price="29.99" data-item-url="/products/my-product" data-item-name="My Awesome Product"> Add to cart </button>
5. Configure Settings: In your Snipcart dashboard, you can configure taxes, shipping rates, payment gateways (like Stripe and PayPal), and customize email templates.
6. Go Live: Once you have tested everything and are ready to sell, you add your website's domain to the live domains list in your dashboard. Snipcart will then start processing real payments.

Pros and Cons of Snipcart

Pros:

• Extreme Flexibility: It can be added to any website, regardless of the technology stack.
• Developer-Friendly: Easy to implement for developers and offers powerful customization through its API and webhooks.
• Simple Pricing: The transaction-based pricing is easy to understand and affordable for new businesses.
• Good User Experience: The checkout process is clean, fast, and keeps customers on your site.
• Lightweight: It does not slow down your website like some heavy e-commerce platforms.

Cons:

• Requires Some Technical Skill: You need basic knowledge of HTML to set it up; it is not a drag-and-drop tool for non-technical users.
• Dependent on Your Website: Since it is not a hosted platform, the performance and security of your store also depend on your own website hosting and setup.
• Limited Built-in Features: For very complex stores with thousands of products, a dedicated platform like Shopify or BigCommerce might offer more advanced built-in features for merchandising and marketing.

Snipcart integrations

Snipcart is designed to be flexible and connects with many other tools through its API and webhooks. It does not have a large app marketplace like other platforms, but it allows for powerful custom integrations.

• Payment Gateways: It integrates directly with major payment providers like Stripe, PayPal, Mollie, and Square.
• Tax Automation: Connect with services like TaxJar and TaxCloud to automate sales tax calculations.
• Shipping Providers: Integrate with Shippo or use webhooks to connect with any shipping service for real-time rates and label printing.
• Content Management Systems (CMS): Snipcart works with any CMS, including WordPress, Ghost, Statamic, Contentful, and GraphCMS.
• Zapier: You can connect Snipcart to thousands of other applications using Zapier to automate tasks like adding customers to a mailing list or recording sales in a spreadsheet.

Snipcart Alternatives

• Shopify Buy Button: A similar tool that lets you add e-commerce to an existing site. It is part of the larger Shopify ecosystem, which can be an advantage for inventory but also means less flexibility compared to Snipcart.
• Ecwid: Another embeddable shopping cart. Ecwid is more focused on non-technical users and offers a visual store builder, but may be less customizable for developers.
• Foxy.io: A direct competitor to Snipcart that is also developer-focused. It offers similar features and flexibility, making it a strong alternative for those looking for a headless e-commerce solution.
• WooCommerce: A powerful e-commerce plugin specifically for WordPress. It is a full-featured platform but is limited to WordPress sites and requires more management.

Snipcart API

Yes, Snipcart provides a comprehensive API for developers. The API allows you to manage products, orders, customers, and discounts programmatically. You can get your API keys for free by signing up for an account. The keys are available in your dashboard under the account settings.

There are two main parts to the API:

1. JavaScript API: This allows you to interact with the cart on the front end of your website. You can use it to add items, update quantities, or trigger events.
2. REST API: This is for backend operations. You can use it to fetch order data, manage inventory, or integrate with other systems.

Here is an example of how to use the REST API with cURL to fetch orders:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_API_KEY" \
     -H "Accept: application/json" \
     https://app.snipcart.com/api/orders

To get your YOUR_SECRET_API_KEY, you must first encode your private API key from the dashboard in Base64.

Snipcart Affiliate program

Snipcart does not have a traditional public affiliate program where you can sign up for a link and earn commissions. Instead, they offer a Partner Program designed for web development agencies, freelancers, and designers who build websites for clients. Partners may receive benefits like a share of the revenue from the stores they build using Snipcart. To join this program, you typically need to contact their sales or support team directly through their website to discuss a potential partnership. They will provide details on the requirements and benefits of becoming a Snipcart partner.