Hi,
just wanted to tell you that one-time donation via liberapay is very discouraging.
I have to open a new account (that alone is a dealbreaker for many)
The page really wants you to join a subscription model and the user is not assured what happens when clicking a further button
The page doesn’t have “going back” or “cancel” buttons e.g. from print view or in a donation process (best practice is to never use the browser’s “back” button on banking sites) which also leaves you unsure about what inputs are saved and confirmed an which may be overridden
My personal experience:
I wanted to pay by “Überweisung” but then only “Lastschrift” was available which wants me to give a “Lastschriftmandat” to another third company… Not doing that, so I wanted to change to paypal (they already have my data).
In the Liberapay account paypal is not offered as paying method anymore (but it has been before!) so I first have to set up a connection to the paypal account which is located in the “revenues” menu which makes no sense as I don’t want to earn something but donate something.
To finally make the donation, I had to “renew my payment” which is also misleading as I only wanted to trigger the already ordered payment. I didn’t want to renew it since it should be manual renewal for every month and it’s not clear if the button renews it for the next month.
Alternative paying methods to consider:
Paypal direct email address transfer
Direct banking transfer (yes, you have to provide account data)
For Germany: Giropay (like banking transfer but easier and no third party included and already enabled for most german banks)
For Europe Sofortüberweisung
Crypto
IMHO Liberapay looks like another patreon or flattr service which have their right to exist but I’d consider it a mistake to rely on one service.
Make it easy to donate, the many small one-timers will make up a big percentage of the overall sum.
Thanks for maintaining and developing K-9 Mail.
Eschi
Things are a bit tricky since there’s no dedicated legal entity for K-9 Mail. Right now my Stripe and Paypal accounts are connected to K-9 Mail’s Liberapay account. In the future this might change. So the indirection Liberapay provides is really helpful there.
Because of the environmental impact I’d rather not accept crypto currency.
Hm I can understand that. Leaving a few comments though:
Things are a bit tricky since there’s no dedicated legal entity for K-9 Mail.
But what is different at Liberapay? The legal aspect concerns them equally. Actually as long as it’s complicated it would be better to make clear the money goes to you personally, no matter which payment channel.
Right now my Stripe and Paypal accounts are connected to K-9 Mail’s Liberapay account.
Consider giving an emailadress that one can directly donate to via paypal.
In the future this might change.
But you now got the attention because of the funding call.
Because of the environmental impact I’d rather not accept crypto currency.
Fair enough. I personally don’t have any crypto currencies but I know they are popular among very privacy concerned people.
PayPal automatically blocks your account if you receive more than 1000€ in the same month without delivering any material goods: For one they fear that you declare your goods as “donation” in order to save fees and everyone who does receive money without delivering goods might be trouble if he turns out a terrorist. It is possible to unblock it again, but that takes time. Other services follow different policies.
If one really wanted to support all micropayment platforms flatter, patreon and bountysource might be possible additional candidates; my guess is that liberapay tries not to scare away potential clients by asking too many questions in the first step. I would have selected different ones for this purpose as the ones they ask don’t meet all common use-cases. But they eventually ask the right questions if one follows through.