Chargeblast pricing and what each alert costs a month

What Chargeblast charges for alerts

Chargeblast is an alert reseller. It enrolls your merchant account in the card network alert programs, receives the alert when a cardholder starts a dispute, and refunds the order so the dispute closes before it becomes a chargeback. You pay for each alert that comes through, not for a seat or a plan.

Chargeblast's pricing page renders its rate card inside the app, so the figures below come from the listings and reviews that quote it. Treat them as the starting point for your own quote.

Two things stand out. Rates are negotiable, so the list price is not what every merchant pays. And the reported numbers disagree on whether the 19 USD figure is per alert or a monthly fee plus a per stop charge, so ask Chargeblast to confirm the structure in writing before you sign.

What the per alert fee does not include

The alert fee is only part of what an alert costs you. When you accept an alert, you refund the order, so the sale is gone either way. What the alert saves you is the chargeback fee from your processor, the dispute counting against your Visa and Mastercard ratios, and the time spent fighting a case you might lose.

Check these lines on top of the alert fee.

• The refunded order value. This is usually the largest number, and no alert vendor charges or refunds it.
• Duplicate alerts. Some disputes trigger both a CDRN and an RDR alert. Ask whether you pay once or twice.
• Alerts on orders you would have won. If you shipped with tracking and the customer clearly received the goods, refunding through an alert may cost more than fighting.
• Representment. Disputes that slip past the alerts still need evidence and a response, and that is a separate bill.
• Ratio monitoring. Alerts reduce your count, but you still need to watch the Visa VAMP and Mastercard thresholds yourself.

What Chargeblast costs at three store sizes

These figures apply the reported list rates and assume 80 percent of alerts are Visa RDR or CDRN and 20 percent are Ethoca. They are illustrations, not quotes.

At 10 alerts a month, per alert pricing is easy to justify. At 50 or more, the fee becomes a real budget line, and it climbs in exactly the months when disputes spike, such as after the holidays.

To get your own number, count alerts by network for the last three months. If your processor only gives you deposits and debits, you can turn the bank statement PDF into a spreadsheet and total the alert refunds and fees by month in a few minutes.

A flat plan instead of a per alert bill

NoChargeback charges one monthly price per plan, with alerts included up to the plan limit and no fee tied to what you recover.

Network alert enrollment for Ethoca, Verifi CDRN and Visa RDR rules runs on Scale. Put that next to the mid sized store above: about 1,050 USD a month in alert fees against 799 USD a month, or 399 USD billed yearly, and Scale also covers 400 disputes with an evidence pack and a drafted rebuttal letter for each one. For the high volume store the gap is about 3,150 USD against the same 399 USD.

For the small store with 10 alerts a month, the honest answer is that per alert pricing may cost less, unless you also need dispute responses. The full side by side is on the Chargeblast alternative page.

What Chargeblast does well

Per alert billing has real advantages. You pay nothing in a quiet month, you can start with a small store and no commitment, and the cost per alert is easy to compare with the chargeback fee and the ratio risk it avoids. Chargeblast also sells deflection, recovery and representment services, so a merchant can buy alerts first and add more later.

The trade off is predictability. A flat plan costs the same in January and in July. Per alert billing moves with your dispute volume, which is the one number you are trying to bring down.

How to compare Chargeblast pricing with a flat plan

1. 1 Pull 90 days of alerts from your current alert provider or processor, split by Visa RDR, CDRN and Ethoca.
2. 2 Ask Chargeblast for its current rate for each network, any monthly fee, the per stop fee and whether duplicate alerts are billed once.
3. 3 Multiply by your monthly alert count and add the representment price for disputes that still land.
4. 4 Compare the total with the plan that fits your alerts and disputes on the pricing page. For most stores above 30 alerts a month, a flat plan comes out lower.
5. 5 Before you switch, turn on chargeback alerts in the new tool first, so no dispute slips through between providers.

If you are weighing other vendors at the same time, the pricing posts for Chargeflow and Chargebacks911 use the same worksheet, and the Midigator alternative page covers the enterprise quote route.