PayPal Functionality - Express Checkout vs SubscriptionBoss

To handle PayPal transactions, we currently use SubscriptionBoss (the PayPal integration with IS was not around at the time), and I am trying to decide if moving forward with the built-in PayPal Express Checkout integration is a better option.

Does anyone know the difference between how these two integrations handle contacts in IS regarding purchases, returns, rebills, and other ecommerce activity?

Note sure if this is a vague start but I could not find documentation on how IS handles PayPal aside from setting up the integration.

Thanks

One major problem with using PPE is that if the payment attempt fails, there is no indication of that in IS…just an unpaid order and no way of knowing to ask them to try again (except for the order just hanging out unpaid). Subscriptions with PP can be tricky to manage as well since paypal doesn’t cancel a subscription based on you reflecting a cancellation in IS… It’s an ok solution for one off sales like t-shirts but not for subscriptions or service centered products.

Very helpful. Thanks John.

I think I read that when referral transactions are set through the IS integration with PP that a new order is sent to PP for each new payment cycle. In this way, the cancellation process is a bit smoother in that a customer would not have payment attempts continuing to be made as would happen if a subscription were set up in PP. With the sending a payment request per order set up, an admin would not have to manually go in and cancel the paypal subscription.

On the other hand, as we currently have PP set up through subscriptionboss, we can trigger an action set when there is a failed payment.

Is this possible with the PPE integration?

I believe Pay With Paypal and Paypal Express actually differ in this. PPE is by design, meant to insulate the vendor from the gateway. In both cases the objective is to isolate the CC information from the vendor. So the first version allows for subscriptions where the second does not (I pretty sure it doesn’t anyway). We’ve had clients that had trouble once the subscription was started. Even if a cancel goes to PP it only cancels the payment in the moment and the only way to actually cancel the actual subscription would be through the PP UI. They do have an API which might make some programming magic possible though. I’ve been meaning to look at writing an integration for this myself but time gets away from everyone sometimes :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Thanks John!