Paymattic with FluentCommunity - Disaster!
I just went 'live' yesterday with my community.
It's been a disaster! 🤬
After building demand for my community, most people experienced an issue when trying to subscribe; (see below);
"Invalid URL: Non-ASCII characters in URLs must be percent-encoded in order for the URL to be valid."
I have trawled the Paymattic documentation, but nothing there helps.
I (eventually) received a message from Paymattic support (in the middle of the night, hours after the launch!), which was zero help (they gave me a link to a sitechecker tool, but useless)
I ran a site audit using the tool, but it found zero instances of non-ASCII characters - so a dead end.
Anyone else experience this issue?
I gambled using Paymattic (should've listened to my gut), but it's been a very disappointing experience thus far!
The only part that has been worse than the error is the Paymattic support.
Pretty much ruined my launch.
Would you please submit a support ticket so our support team can take a look. Many people use it with FluentCommunity. Once we get the issue, we will try to release the update ASAP.
Shahjahan Jewel I have already submitted two tickets!
John Bellingham I just notified the devs and asked them to take a look deeply.
After Googling, it looks like that error is coming from Stripe. Are you using non-ascii in your website URLs at all?
Thomas Oates No, Thomas - I used the Sitechecker tool to perform an audit, it came back with no non-ASCII characters on the website.
I also used Screaming Frog to double-check, but still nothing.
Thanks for checking, though.
Shahjahan Jewel Paymattic support contacted me an hour ago, saying it's not happening for them (the error, that is) - and now, after messaging them a further 3 times, it's radio silence again!
This is SO frustrating!
I also just received (5 mins ago) yet another screenshot from someone else trying to join my community, with the same error!!
Not sure if I'm helping or not but....does the Developers Log in Stripe show the errors? If so, does it provide any specifics for when the error happens? From what I've read online, it might be an issue with the return_url value that Stripe doesn't like.
Thomas Oates I'm not sure, Thomas, it could be, I guess... however, the support guys are looking at it now, so I'm waiting on their reply.
I'm sorry to hear about your challenging experience. This might not help you, but maybe others who are planning to launch their next project.
My two cents on launches is to start with a friendly user trial and launch to a tiny audience. Then, check if everything is working and continuously test before a full launch.
An update:
The support team at Paymattic resolved the problem, and it now appears to work. Below is an explanation from them with regard to what happened;
“The payment status (success, cancel, and failed) URLs we sent to Stripe may have unintentionally included some ASCII characters or emojis. We've now resolved this issue. Going forward, any such characters will automatically be removed from the URL, ensuring the links function correctly.”
Thank you to the team who fixed the problem, and to Shahjahan Jewel for the support.
Now I need to somehow try and recover all those lost leads.