Best Reviewed
Online Bill Paying
- Best way to pay bills online Online bill payment through your bank *Est. $0
- Best specialized online bill-paying service Paytrust.com *Est. $5
- Free bill-paying service MyCheckFree.com *Est. $0
- Software-based bill paying Quicken 2008 Deluxe *Est. $60
Get info about new reports and updates
Best specialized online bill-paying service
- Manages and accepts your paper bills
- Bills available online for a year
- Keeps records for eight years
- Good option for those who are often away from home
- Expensive
- Not compatible with Quicken accounting software
- Receiving a bill and paying a bill are two transactions
Reviews say a major advantage of Paytrust.com over a bank's free online bill-paying service is that all paper bills go directly to Paytrust, are scanned in, and you get an e-mail each time a bill has been added to your online account. Payments are drawn against your checking account. Eliminating the snail mail is a good option for those who travel a lot. Your statements are accessible online for one year, and Paytrust keeps eight years of records. The downsides are that Paytrust is not compatible with Quicken accounting software (even though it's owned by Intuit) and you have to pay a monthly fee, plus transaction fees. The plans are either $5 per month plus 50 cents per transaction or $13 per month for up to 30 transactions in a month and 50 cents per transaction after that. If you don't travel a lot, most experts suggest trying free online bill payment through your bank.
We found the best general information about online bill payment at ConsumerReports.org. Specific reviews of Paytrust at MillennialLiving.com and StarReviews.com seem more anecdotal than based on a formal testing method. We found about 80 user reviews at Epinions.com, but most of them are quite old.
Our Sources
1. ConsumerReports.orgDetails/Subscribe
Consumer Reports lists several general techniques for dealing safely with online bill payment. Among other tips, they suggest creating a fraud-resistant password, using at least eight characters, including upper and lower-case letters, numbers and symbols.
Review: Paying Bills Online -- Safely, Editors of Consumer Reports, July 2007
Home remodeling website owner Tom Russo says he'll remain a PayTrust customer but wishes there would be some updates, such as improved integration with TurboTax and Quickbooks.
Review: 2007 Review of the Paytrust Bill Management Service, Tom Russo, April 25, 2007
3. Epinions.com
We found about 80 user reviews of Paytrust.com online bill payment, all but a handful dating from earlier than 2006, for a good average score. The more recent reviews are mostly complaints about ease of use, reliability and customer service.
Review: Paytrust Reviews, Contributors to Epinions.com
This review of PayTrust is mostly a rundown of features, but it does assign a rating of four out of six stars and notes that the cheapest online bill payment service is very limited and that customer service was not especially friendly or helpful.
Review: PayTrust Review, Editors of StaReviews.com
As is often the case on this website, an old ratings chart gets a new year slapped atop but most of the information isn't updated. (Yahoo! Bill Pay was discontinued in mid-2007 but it's still listed here.) Don't trust the ratings in making a decision, but the PayTrust.com review still has worthwhile descriptive information.
Review: 2008 Bill Paying Services Report, Editors of TopTenReviews.com