If you are using Paypal to process your business’ online payments and money transfers, you may be interested in the payment platform’s new cloud packages service for business owners… at least Paypal thinks you should be. Paypal Business users now have the option of four Web-based business add-on services, dubbed the Cash and Customer Management Package.
The new services are meant to help small business owners manage their flow of cash, customer data, and communications under one central login. There is also some integration between the apps which would allow users to automatically import data from one app to another.
Each of the four services represent some pretty well-known brands. Here is a brief rundown:
- Bill.com– Bill.com is a platform designed to ease your cash flow management by automating bill approval, payment invoicing and collections. You can also use the platform to create a three month cash flow projection and approve and pay bills securely from any device.
- Outright.com– Outright is an accounting and bookkeeping application designed for small business owners and sole proprietors. It allows you to automatically import sales and expense data and organizing it into IRS-approved categories.
- Cloudconversion.com– Cloud Conversion is a CRM solution that allows you to tap into the customer relationship management features of Salesforce.com. The result is that you will gain valuable insight about your target market, including why they make their purchasing decisions.
- Constantcontact.com– Constant Contact is a well-known email marketing platform. It lets you create professional looking marketing emails from a wide variety of templates. You can manage your email list, make your emails more social, and analyze performance with an assortment of reports. The Paypal package allows you up to 5,000 email contacts or subscribers.
Paypal is currently offering a 30-day free trial of its new business add-ons package. After that, the full cost is $90 a month. Those who opt for the service will receive a single bill from PayPal for all the add-ons. According to PayPal, the cost of the package represents a 40% savings over paying for the services individually.
But the million dollar question is: will the average small business owner find this package valuable? Though relying on Paypal’s “recommendations” may save you some time shopping around for the perfect services, and the integration between the apps is also the plus, still this short list of platforms may not be suitable for many small business owners. Even the savings involved in this “packaged” approach may not be big enough to woo the vast majority of business users.
Another factor at issue is that many Paypal customers are actually not happy with the level of service that they are receiving. Anti-Paypal sentiment is actually pretty high, with many users being forced to seek alternatives. Given this, businesses that rely (unhappily) on Paypal may not trust the payment processor to be involved with other areas of their business. What if their account were limited? How would this effect the other services?
In short, though Paypal’s packaged approach to web-based services may look good on paper, in practice it may not be enticing enough to bring small businesses on board.