A year ago I posted a blog on how impressed with Sage Pay I was. I really was totally thrilled, with the application, with the gateway and most importantly of all, with the customer service. I have exclusively recommended Sage Pay since then and implemented it into all of our e-commerce launches. Even during the disastrous My Sage Pay update in October I was advising existing customers to hold tight and still recommending them to new customers.

At a birthday party in December I was talking shop (Sorry Sarah, you know I try not to) and Sage Pay came up. The general consensus in the group was that Sage Pay was just too good to abandon, and even with the difficulties I have faced, I still agreed and looked forward to a clean system in 2011.

Since then the original blog post about SagePay has received some comments, mostly negative, mostly after the big website re-design. It is the ongoing problems and these comments that prompted me to write this update. Also, I can tell you that last week my first customer weighed up the pros and cons and signed up with WorldPay. I just couldn’t with a hand on heart recommend Sage Pay any more.

What Went Wrong?

Sometimes you can’t pinpoint the moment that a service stopped firing. With Sage Pay you can see it clearly. The October My Sage Pay update was problematic and it never seems to have worked right ever since.

I constantly have to report issues with parts of My Sage Pay not working. It is usually the Sage Pay security element, 3rd Man. It either doesn’t calculate the score, or you can’t see the detail or My Sage Pay just crashes. At least when it crashes now it doesn’t lock you out for 15 minutes and it does work in the Internet Explorer web browser (it didn’t for about a month you know).

New E-Commerce Website Recommendation?

At the time of writing all of our existing e-commerce customers are staying put, those with SagePay are sticking with Sage Pay and those with WorldPay or PayPal for their websites are staying with them, but some of them are considering their options. New customers get the full low down and then get to make a choice.

It is much easier for us to just implement Sage Pay and PayPal, we don’t want to have to support different gateways, but we have a responsibility to our clients. Will WorldPay work out any better? Time will tell, and I’ll try to keep you posted.