CoinGate Review 2022: WooCommerce Cryptocurrency Pay Plugin

Do you want to add a cryptocurrency payment method to your eCommerce store? And wondering which is the best WooCommerce cryptocurrency payment gateway plugin? Then, we present you with an honest review of the CoinGate WooCommerce plugin.

In recent times, crypto has come to great hype. Not just everyone is talking about it, but many are also trading and expanding their businesses to accept cryptocurrency currencies.

You can now easily add a new payment method (cryptocurrency) to your WooCommerce store. Buyers can  purchase any physical or digital goods from your store using cryptocurrency

Here, we are going to show you one of the best cryptocurrency plugins for WooCommerce named CoinGate. This plugin will seamlessly integrate with WooCommerce and lets you accept cryptocurrency payment.

Nevertheless, let’s review this plugin and see everything you need to know about it. Well, here, we’ll look into its key features, installation, support, and more in this in-depth CoinGate WooCommerce review.

So, let’s dive in!

A. What is CoinGate? – Overview

CoinGate is a popular trading platform for buying, selling, and trading crypto-assets. It was founded by Dmitrijus Borisenka, Irmantas Baciulis, and Jonas Giles back in 2014.

Not only does CoinGate offer a trading platform but also an all-in-one platform for gift card retailers and crypto payment gateway.

It comes with its official WordPress plugin that allows WooCommerce stores to accept various cryptocurrencies as payment. 

CoinGate Plugin

With crypto being the new digital money, CoinGate has already been able to collect 900+ active installations so far. Here, CoinGate is not just a plugin, but also a platform for buying and selling several crypto-assets with a single payment.

If we talk about it being a plugin then it offers multiple options for setting up crypto payments for any online businesses. Besides, it lets you quickly and easily accept Bitcoin, Litecoin, Doge, and other cryptocurrencies.

The best thing is that it integrates well with the WooCommerce plugin. This will allow stores that use the WooCommerce shopping cart system to easily accept crypto as payment. 

How Does CoinGate Work with Your WooCommerce Store?

Before we go further with this review, let’s first look at how CoinGate works with WooCommerce stores.

For instance, a customer purchases an item of €100 from your online shop. They later choose to pay the bill with crypto-assets via the CoinGate payment option.

Now, the order will be generated on your Blesta web store and your customer will be redirected to the CoinGate payment window. After that, the pricing that the customer will get will be calculated in real-time, according to the current market rate. 

Finally, your customer will make the payment with their crypto wallet. Following that, you both will receive the confirmation notification immediately after the payment has been made.

With the notification, you’ll be credited 98.7 euros (100 euros minus a 1.0% flat fee), or 0.001 BTC. And the payment that has been made cannot be charged back.

However, one thing you need to remember is that to be able to accept cryptocurrency payments, you’ll have to verify your CoinGate business account or pass the trial KYC.

In this way, CoinGate will work together with your WooCommerce store to help you accept cryptocurrency payments easily and quickly.


B.CoinGate Key Features

Now that we got a small glimpse of what CoinGate is all about. Let’s go through some of its features that are available for you:

  • It’s a fully automatic payment gateway that you just need to set it up and forget about it.
  • On every purchase with it, you’ll receive automatic payment confirmations (instant) and order status updates.
  • Allows your customers to choose from 70+ cryptocurrencies to pay with – Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, Doge, XRP, Lightning Network, and more.
  • You can set your prices in any local fiat currency and the payment amount is calculated in cryptocurrencies using real-time exchange rates.
  • Let’s extend the invoice expiration time up to 24 hours.
  • Allows you to select the settlement currencies and payout options for each crypto-asset.
  • Any unsuccessful payments are refunded directly from the invoice.
  • Provides a Sandbox environment for texting with Testnet Bitcoin.
  • Allows you to fully customize your invoice – disable/enable cryptocurrencies, change their position on the invoice, and more.
  • It can accept slight underpayments. 
  • Doesn’t charge you any recurring fees or setup fees.

C. How Does CoinGate Plugin Work?

In this section, we’re going to look at how CoinGate works. As mentioned earlier, CoinGate is an easy-to-use plugin that doesn’t require any vigorous knowledge on how to integrate crypto payment into your WooCommerce store.

Step 1: Create an Account with CoinGate

Before you start installing and setting up a WooCommerce store that accepts crypto payments, you need to first create an account on CoinGate. 

For that, you need to go to the CoinGate official homepage and then click on the Sign-Up button as shown in the image below.

Click on CoinGate Signup Button
Click on CoinGate Signup Button

This will then redirect you to another page where it’ll ask you to choose what kind of account you want to set up. There are two options – Person or Business to choose from.

CoinGate Configure Type of Account
CoinGate Configure Type of Account

Here we’re going with the Business option since we want cryptocurrency to accept payment online for our business.

Once you’ve selected your desired account type, it’ll then ask you “What is your registration country?”. This question is quite an important one because if your country doesn’t support cryptocurrency then you’ll not be able to further move ahead to create your account.

CoinGate Configure Registration Country
CoinGate Configure Registration Country

Therefore, you need to make sure that your country allows you to trade cryptocurrency within your country. To know whether your country supports crypto payment or not, have a look at this Supported Countries page.

Now that you’ve selected your country, don’t forget to click on the Continue button to move further ahead in this process.

After carefully reading through the Terms and Conditions for users and Purchases, it is time to select how you want to Create a New Account either through Google, Facebook, or Email.

CoinGate Create New Account
CoinGate Create New Account

Following that, once you’ve selected how you want to create a new account and then provide all the necessary information, then it’ll redirect you to your CoinGate Dashboard.

CoinGate Official Dashboard
CoinGate Official Dashboard

In this way, you’ll be able to create your new account for your CoinGate. Now, from here onward, you can start installing and using the CoinGate plugin for accepting cryptocurrency for your business.

Step 2: Install WooCommerce Plugin

Now that we’ve created our official CoinGate account, it’s time to install and activate the CoinGate plugin. But before we do so we’ll have to install the WooCommerce plugin first.

Because this plugin acts as an integration plugin that connects your WordPress site with CoinGate to a payment solution via the WooCommerce plugin.

Install WooCommerce Plugin
Install WooCommerce Plugin

To install WooCommerce, log in to your WordPress dashboard and go to the Plugins > Add New. Following that, search for “WooCommerce” in the search bar. After you’ve found the plugin click on the Install Now button and then click on the Activate button.

Now that you’ve activated the plugin, it’s time to configure the setup wizard of WooCommerce. Although it’s optional we recommend you go through all these initial steps to configure your store’s key settings.

To access the setup wizard, you’ll need to navigate to WooCommerce > Home from your WordPress dashboard. Inside the Home section, you’ll find that it’ll ask you to Get ready to start selling

Here you’ll find that the setup wizard is divided into six different sections, namely Store Details, Add My Products, Set Up Payments, Set Up Tax, Setup Marketing Tools, and Personalize My Store.

WooCommerce Home Menu
WooCommerce Home Menu

However, we’re only going to look at how you can configure the Store Details section.  To get started with that, click on the first section – Store Details.

i. Store Details 

Following that, in this section of the setup wizard, you’re required to provide some basic detail about your store. The details include your store’s address, country, city, and email address.

WooCommerce Store Details Setup
WooCommerce Store Details Setup

ii. Industry

The Industry section allows you to add the industry your store operates in. If it’s multiple stores then you can click as many options as you want and click on the Continue button.

WooCommerce Industry Setup
WooCommerce Industry Setup

iii. Product Types

In this next step, you’ll set the product type and whether you plan to sell digital or physical products. Similarly, you have to pay an extra amount if you want to have memberships, bookings, bundles, or customized products.

WooCommerce Product Types Setup
WooCommerce Product Types Setup

iv. Business Detail

Here, you’ll have to provide some extra information about your business. For instance, you need to select the number of products you plan to display. With that, you also need to state if you are selling products on another platform or not. 

Similarly, in this section, you’re also recommended with some free extensions in Free Features. You can choose any required extension that is required for building and growing your business. 

WooCommerce Business Details Setup
WooCommerce Business Details Setup

v. Theme

Lastly, you’ll need to choose a theme to display your store’s appearance to customers. Plus, you can always switch themes and edit them later. Here you’ll find many themes, both free and paid, that are available for WordPress.

WooCommerce Theme Setup
WooCommerce Theme Setup

Ok, after you’ve completed configuring the Store Details, you can now similarly add products, set up payments, set up tax, and set up shipping details.

Congratulations, if you’ve been able to install and configure the WooCommerce plugin on your WordPress site.

Step 3: Add Products to Your WooCommerce Store

In this step, we’ll look at how we can add our very first product to our WooCommerce store.

For that, open your WordPress dashboard and navigate to WooCommerce > Products > Add Product. You then get a WordPress editor where you can add products for your store.

WooCommerce Add New Product

The first thing here you’ll enter is the name of your product in the title section and add the description of your page. 

Now that you’ve added the title and description, it’s time to choose the product type for your product. Depending on what you’re selling, you get to choose from four cour product types – Simple, Grouped, External/Affiliate, Variable, and more.

WooCommerce Product General Settings
WooCommerce Product General Settings

Similarly, in this very Product Data section, you’ll have to provide all the important data that is related to your product.

For instance, in the General section, you’ll have to enter the price for regular and sale prices. With sale prices, you can even schedule the dates for a certain date range.

Whereas in the Inventory section, you’ll enter the number of pieces available in the stock quantity and define whether to allow backorders and more. 

WooCommerce Product Inventory Settings
WooCommerce Product Inventory Settings

Following that, you’ll configure the settings for Shippings, Attributes, Linked Products, and more.

Once you fill out the Product Data box, scroll down a little to the Product Short Description box. Here you’ll provide a short description of the product that will appear next to product imagery on the listing page.

WooCommerce Product Short Description
WooCommerce Product Short Description

At last, you’ll finish this step by adding product categories and tags, product images, and product galleries in the sidebar on the right. 

WooCommerce Product Extra Settings

Congratulations! your product page is almost ready, once you double-check all of the product details are correct, you can hit Publish to make your product live.

Step 4: Install and Activate CoinGate Plugin

To install and activate the CoinGate plugin, you have to first log in to your WordPress dashboard. After that, go to the Plugins section and then click on the Add New button.

On this page, you’ll see the search field located at the very top right-hand side. Then, type in CoinGate and click on Enter to search for the plugin.

Install CoinGate Plugin
Install CoinGate Plugin

Once you found your plugin, click on the Install Now button for installing it on your dashboard.

After the installation has been completed, click on the Activate button. This is how you fully install the CoinGate plugin on your website.

This is how you fully install and activate the CoinGate plugin on your WordPress website.

Step 5: Set Up CoinGate Plugin for Payment Gateway

In this final step, we’ll see how we can set up a WooCommerce store that accepts payments via CoinGate. For that, you need to navigate to WooCommerce > Settings > Payments option from your WordPress dashboard.

WooCommerce Payments Settings
WooCommerce Payments Settings

There you’ll find a list of payment methods that you want to enable for your payment option. Likewise, you can also sort the control the order of display on the front end.

Here all you need to do is enable the toggle button for CoinGate and then click on the Set Up button next to it.

Enable CoinGate for WooCommerce
Enable CoinGate for WooCommerce

After that, it’ll redirect you to the setup page for CoinGate where you can change the Description, Title, and more according to your preference. But before that, you need to make sure that the check box next to “Enable Bitcoin payment via CoinGate” is enabled.

WooCommerce CoinGate Settings
WooCommerce CoinGate Settings

Similarly, you’ll have to provide the CoinGate API Auth Token credential on the WooCommerce configuration page. Following that, you can even set the Payment Currency parameter to the currency in which your payouts will be made.

However, you can also configure CoinGate Order Statuses that will correspond to WooCommerce order statuses. If not then, you can leave the default options as it is.

WooCommerce CoinGate More Settings

Furthermore, you can enable the Sandbox Test Mode, if you’re using the Sandbox API credentials. Lastly, don’t forget to click on the Save Changes to save your changes and you’re good to go.

Congratulations, if you’ve been able to install, activate, and set the CoinGate plugin for the payment gateway using these easy-to-use steps.


D. CoinGate Customer Support

Accepting cryptocurrency payments is quite a new thing for everyone. With that said, even any plugins that lets you integrate such payment are only new to most of the users.

Hence, you’ll look for some kind of support in case you get yourself in trouble or have issues.

Don’t worry, CoinGate does come with a decent support option that can help you deal with your problems. You’ll have an extensive FAQ section on its official website which can answer most of the common questions users may have.

CoinGate Blog
CoinGate Blog

Similarly, its Blog section is extremely informative if you want to get some useful guides on new products or an article about the crypto industry.

However, CoinGate doesn’t seem to have any online chat option for instant support. Instead, you might rely on submitting a support ticket if you require any assistance. And these issues are replied to via email, with users commonly reporting waiting times of 1-2 days. 


E. CoinGate – Pros and Cons 

Till now, we’ve already looked at how this plugin works and what different support it offers. And before going with this plugin, you deserve to know all the good and bad portions of it. Hence, we’ve listed some of the pros and cons of CoinGate that we’ve found.

Pros of CoinGate Plugin

  • 100% free plugin
  • Easy to use and set up
  • User-friendly dashboard
  • Offers 70+ cryptocurrencies to choose from

Cons of CoinGate Plugin


F. Pros and Cons of Accepting Crypto Payments on Your eCommerce Store

No doubt, cryptocurrencies have become a hot topic in the world of business. Therefore, every business owner must have good knowledge of how good or bad it is to incorporate cryptocurrencies into their eCommerce businesses.

In this section, we’ll try to point out some of the pros and cons of accepting crypto payments on your eCommerce store.

Pros of Accepting Crypto Payments

  • Helps you easily make international customers with cryptocurrency being an international currency.
  • Quickest and easiest way of receiving payments from anywhere.
  • With cryptocurrency, there is no change in spending excess fees – low transaction costs, fraudulent chargebacks
  • The best way to avoid costly and inconvenient currency conversions.

Cons of Accepting Crypto Payments

  • The volatile nature of cryptocurrency pricing can easily hit the pocket of business owners.
  • Still some countries either don’t accept or ban the trading of cryptocurrencies.
  • People will think twice before transacting payments through crypto due to trust issues and risk factors. 
  • Transactions that are done through cryptocurrency are permanent and irreversible.
  • Need to have a good and strong understanding of what and how cryptocurrency works.
  • Heavy tax implication rule that says if your cryptocurrency loses value, you’re still liable for taxation on its full value at the time of acceptance.

Finally, what we can say is that although cryptocurrency is “the money from the future”, you must not rush toward it without proper knowledge.


Conclusion

That’s about it. This is a brief review of the CoinGate WooCommerce cryptocurrency payment gateway plugin. We hope that you’ll agree with our review.

If you have any further queries about CoinGate and how it works, then please leave a comment below. We’ll try to get back to you as soon as possible. 

Also, let us know if you’re using the CoinGate plugin and please share your review with us in the comments section below.

You may want to take a look at our article 7 best GetResponse alternatives and also have a look at the Mesmerize theme review

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