WP Simple Pay vs Payment Page: Which Is the Best WordPress Payment Plugin?

Trying to decide between WP Simple Pay vs Payment Page?

If you want to accept payments via your WordPress site, both of these plugins can get the job done well. However, they each have unique strengths and weaknesses that might make one or the other better for your situation.

In our hands-on Payment Page vs WP Simple Pay comparison, we’ll help you understand the pros and cons of these two plugins so that you can pick the right one for your situation.

Quick Introductions

Before getting to the more hands-on section of this comparison, let’s start with some quick introductions to these two plugins.

WP Simple Pay

WP Simple Pay was originally developed by Phil Derksen to be a solution for accepting payments via Stripe. You can easily create a Stripe payments form and add it anywhere on your site.

In 2018, the plugin was acquired by Sandhills Development which, at the time, was the same company behind Easy Digital Downloads, Restrict Content Pro, and some other popular plugins.

Then, in 2021, it was acquired by Awesome Motive, as part of Awesome Motive’s acquisition of most of Sandhills Development’s plugins. Awesome Motive is the company behind WPBeginner, OptinMonster, WPForms, and a ton of other plugins.

Over that time, it has maintained its singular focus on using Stripe for payments, though it does support additional gateways via Stripe.

Payment Page

Payment Page is a newer WordPress payments plugin from Gaucho Plugins, which is the same company behind other plugins like Domain Mapping System. 

Unlike WP Simple Pay, Payment Page doesn’t focus exclusively on Stripe. While it does certainly support Stripe, it also supports PayPal, with support for even more payment gateways on the way.

Another unique detail is that Payment Page focuses on both function and form. That is, beyond letting you create payment forms, it also gives you lots of design options for customizing your form and your payment page in general.

You’ll see this detail in features such as pre-built templates that help you create a complete payment page (though you can also just add a payment form to any page).

In contrast, WP Simple Pay is more focused on just the payment form itself as it includes very little style options unless you use custom CSS.

Payment Gateways and Options

Next, let’s look at the payment gateways and options that both plugins support.

When talking about payment gateways, I’m going to use two terms:

• Parent gateway – the main payment gateway that you sign up with. E.g. Stripe or PayPal.
• Child gateway – the additional payment gateways that you can access through the parent gateway.

I’m not sure if these are the “correct” terms, but I find it useful to think about them in this way. For example, a plugin might only support one or two “parent” gateways, but that might still get you access to dozens of “child” gateways.

WP Simple Pay

Ever since its launch, WP Simple Pay has only supported a single parent gateway – Stripe.

However, underneath the Stripe umbrella, you still get access to multiple different payment options including the following:

• Apple Pay
• Google Pay
• ACH debit payments for the USA
• Alipay
• SEPA
• Bancontact
• iDeal

You can accept both one-time payments (free version) and automatic subscription payments (higher-tier premium versions).

You can have preset prices or let visitors enter custom amounts.

With the higher-tier premium versions, you can also access other payment modifications such as coupons, one-time setup fees, and free trials.

WP Simple Pay also lets you accept payments in multiple currencies if needed.

Payment Page

Unlike WP Simple Pay, the Payment Page currently supports two different parent gateways:

1. Stripe
2. PayPal

So if you’d rather use PayPal over Stripe, that’s one big advantage right away. 

The developer also has plans to add other payment gateways, with potential additions being Authorize.net, Square, 2Checkout, and more.

Within each parent gateway, you also get a number of different options.

Stripe:

• Credit/debit cards
• Apple Pay
• Google Pay
• Plaid for ACH direct debit in the USA
• SEPA for direct debit in Europe
• Microsoft Pay
• Alipay
• WeChat Pay

The developer is also working on adding more Stripe sub-gateways including Bancontact, giropay, eps, Klarna, Afterpay Clearpay, and more.

PayPal:

• Venmo*
• Pay Later*
• Bancontact*
• …several others*

*These additional PayPal options aren’t here quite yet when I’m writing this, but they’re on the way and will likely be here by the time you’re reading this.

You can see the full list of planned payment gateways here.

In terms of payment options, Payment Page supports both one-time payments (free version) and automatic subscription payments (all premium versions). You can also add a filter to let visitors choose between the two payment options.

For payment amounts, you can enter preset pricing options or let visitors enter custom payment amounts.

One feature Payment Page does well is multi-currency payments. You can assign a currency at the individual payment plan level, which lets you include multiple currencies within the same payment form. You can also add a filter to let people filter out only options for their specific currency, which is a unique option.

Because of these filters for both payment duration and currency, I think Payment Page makes it easier for visitors if you want to mix-and-match payment options/currencies.

If you want to experience it for yourself, you can check out a demo here. The demo has test mode enabled, so you can actually submit real payments using the provided dummy data:

Payment Form Builder and Design Options

Both WP Simple Pay and Payment Page offer form builders that let you fully customize your payment forms. You’ll be able to:

1. Add as many different payment options as needed.
2. Add or remove non-payment fields to collect more or less information from people.

Both also let you choose between using an inline payment form or a popup payment form.

In general, WP Simple Pay is focused just on helping you set up the payment form functionality, while Payment Page lets you customize both the functionality and design.

WP Simple Pay

WP Simple Pay offers its own form builder interface that lets you configure payment options and additional form fields (with the premium version).

The form builder is a backend interface, which means you can’t see what your form will actually look like until you hit the preview button.

In the Payment tab, you can add the payment options for your form. For each payment option, you can choose a currency and set up details such as whether it’s one-time or recurring. I’m only using the core premium version for this screenshot, so you won’t see the options for recurring payments as you need the higher-tier plans for that:

Then, the Form Fields tab lets you configure the non-payment form fields that people will need to enter:

To embed your WP Simple Pay form/button, you can use the shortcode.

WP Simple Pay also integrates with some page builders so that you can launch a popup payment form from a page builder button or pricing table. However, you can’t customize the form using the page builder’s settings, which is a notable limitation in comparison to the Payment Page.

Payment Page

At the time that we’re writing this comparison, Payment Page utilizes Elementor to help you create and design your form. However, the developers are working on also adding a standalone form builder that will work with the native WordPress editor or a different page builder.

One big advantage of the Elementor approach is that you can utilize Elementor’s visual interface and detailed style/layout options to control the design of your payment form and the rest of your payment page.

To control the form itself, you’ll get a dedicated Elementor widget.

Within this widget’s settings, you can configure everything about the functionality and style of your form.

First, you’ll use the Content settings to set up the functionality of your form including:

• Adding unlimited payment options. Each plan can be one-time or recurring. You can also use different currencies at the plan level.
• Customizing the non-payment form fields to collect information from people.
• Setting up after-form behavior, such as sending emails, redirecting users to a page, and/or showing a custom confirmation message.
• Adding filters to the form. This is a nice detail in Payment Page as it lets people filter payment options by one-time/recurring or currency.
• Etc.

Here’s what it looks like to set up the pricing plans:

And here are the options to set up actions after submission: it uses the “standard” Elementor interface (just like Elementor’s Form widget):

Once you’ve set up the functionality, you can use the Style and Advanced tab to fully customize the design and spacing of your form. You can also use Elementor’s responsive settings to control how your form looks on different devices:

Again, Payment Page is also working on developing its own standalone form builder. So while you do need to use Elementor at the time that I’m writing this comparison, you might have access to a standalone builder by the time you’re reading this.

Pricing

Finally, let’s take a look at WP Simple Pay vs Payment Page pricing.

Both plugins offer a free version at WordPress.org as well as premium options. However, they have a different approach when it comes to premium functionality:

• With WP Simple Pay, there are both feature differences and site limit differences on the premium plan. The cheapest premium plan only has limited features, while the higher-tier plans unlock every feature.
• With Payment Page, all of the premium plans offer every single feature – the only difference is the site limits.

There’s another important detail to understand about the WP Simple Pay pricing – the big prices that you see on the pricing table only apply to your first year. If you want to renew your license to continue receiving support and updates after the first year, you’ll need to pay the “regular” price (kind of like how it works with many shared hosting providers).

At regular price, WP Simple Pay gets a lot more expensive – more than double the first year prices.

When writing about WP Simple Pay’s prices, I’ll write them like this – $[first_year_price]/$[regular_price]. I’ve also highlighted them in red in the screenshot below.

Here are WP Simple Pay’s premium pricing plans:

• Personal – $49/$99 for use on a single site and limited features.
• Plus – $99/$199 for use on three sites and all features. You need at least this tier for recurring payments.
• Professional – $199/$399 for use on 10 sites and all features.
• Elite – $299/$599 for use on unlimited sites and all features.

And then here are Payment Page’s premium pricing plans:

• One site – $99 for all features.
• Three sites  – $179 for all features.
• 25 sites – $599 for all features.

Overall, Payment Page is generally significantly cheaper at the regular renewal price, though it might vary depending on the exact number of sites on which you need to accept payments.

In terms of first-year prices, I would say they’re pretty equal. While the WP Simple Pay does have that cheap Personal license, you’ll need at least the $99/$199 Plus license for recurring payments, which already puts it equal to Payment Page even at the first-year pricing.

Final Thoughts

To recap our WP Simple Pay vs Payment Page comparison, let’s go over some of the main feature advantages of both plugins. Then, I’ll also highlight the differences in terms of pricing.

Notable Feature Differences

Here are the main advantages that I see in WP Simple Pay:

1. You can offer coupons that give a discount in your form, which can be helpful for implementing various marketing strategies.
2. You get a little more flexibility for configuring subscription payments. For example, you can offer free trials or one-time sign-up fees. You can also do installment plans.

And then here are the main advantages that I see in Payment Page:

1. It supports both Stripe and PayPal, as well as numerous other payment options via those gateways. The developer also has plans to add many more payment gateways, so you’re getting a lot more flexibility here.
2. You get way more control over the design, especially if you use Elementor. You also get templates for complete payment pages, rather than just the form. Unless you know your way around custom CSS, this is essential if you want to customize your form.
3. It lets you add filters to your payment form, which is really handy for multi-currency payment forms or forms where you have both one-time and subscription payments. Visitors can filter out just the payment options that they’re interested in. As far as I can tell, WP Simple Pay doesn’t give you an option to do this.

All of these pros and cons might change, especially because Payment Page has a number of features on its roadmap. 

Pricing Differences

In terms of pricing, I’d say you generally get noticeably better value with Payment Page for two reasons:

1. Payment Page’s free version is a little more powerful than WP Simple Pay’s free version.
2. Payment Page’s premium version is more affordable at regular price because it gives you all the features on all pricing plans. More importantly, WP Simple Pay’s prices more than double after the first year if you want to continue receiving support and updates, which makes a huge difference if you’re planning to use the plugin for multiple years.

Based on those details, I hope that you’re able to choose the right WordPress payment plugin for your needs.

Do you still have any questions about WP Simple Pay vs Payment Page? Let us know in the comments.

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