First off the CMS backend is nothing more than a Wordpress site. There are some nice templates but they are very barebones. Generally, though the idea is sound but the execution is terrible. In this age where we already have fully functional platforms such as GumRoad or even Paypal Pay Me pages, Leeflets Pay Me feels more like a rapid add-on than a market ready system. For example, I spent over 30 minutes trying to figure out how to activate the Pay Me pages until I realized that the template I was using was for books e-commerce. Instead, and very unfriendly user experience, when you are offered the list of templates, you MUST choose the Pay Me template and that one ONLY. You cannot add the Pay Me feature to any other template! Those are simplistic html templates that you can get for free at Weebly and others. But there could have been salvation yet: the product could have been the perfect marriage of Gumroad(payment ease) and Weebly(nice design) and have the best of both worlds. Unfortunately, you will need to give the complete access to your Stripe account. Doing this is borderline suicide as there are so many things that could go wrong. Maker did acknowledge this but we judge not on what it could be but on what it is right now. There was no timeline provided which all in all makes it feel like a quick idea thrown together with no guarantee that it will last. A couple more notes: when accessing the account section, the user is greeted with a bright red "Sorry but {email} is already registered." I had to do a double take to realize that this was my own email but for one second I thought someone had registered under my name! There is also no mention anywhere on any storage or bandwidth limits. So any user is left in the dark as to how this can scale. Would the site be able to accept 1000 users? What about 1M users? Maker was also involved in the Plasso product. This was unceremoniously bought by GoDaddy and then shut down to users. So without SLAs would anyone want to build a service on Leeflets? Lastly, there is a $10 fee AND you have to send over your PASSPORT certified by a solicitor or a bank(yes really!) and a copy of your utility bills. These onerous requirements feel like the company really does not want to deal with any requests which are given by right and by law and places the burden of proof on the user. Normal industry practice would have been to send a request via the same email you used to subscribe! So easy to get collect information but VERY VERY hard to get out. On the other hand, there is no mention of the company's street address in the terms if the USER wants to send a regular mail! So while the user has to send in a utility bill with their address the company does not publish its own and asks that all requests be submitted to a simple email address: hi@leeflets.com. Fortunately, I did some digging and the company is registered in Washington State(not Seattle city as claimed) and does have an address in Seattle. This can be found at https://ccfs.sos.wa.gov but I wont put it here for privacy reasons. I feel the maker should have done it. So there you go, another product review, another day. Let's see which other startups catch my eye! I still do think there is potential as perfection is only achieved by repeated iterations!
Pros:1. One time fee(?)
Cons:1. Have to use your own private Stripe key. 2. No integrated Stripe Connect or Paypal. 3. Horrendous privacy policy requirements.
Lemon Squeezy