Easy Ride Rent-a-Car
How a newly established Portuguese car rental business launched its website, configured online payments, protected vehicle availability and went live with hands-on VEVS setup and support.
Easy Ride Rent-a-Car
- Website
- easyride.pt
- Location
- Portugal
- Business
- Independent car rental
- Fleet
- 7 vehicles at project start
- VEVS services
- Software, website, Advanced Setup, support, payment configuration and custom development
Company Overview
Easy Ride Rent-a-Car is an independent car rental business in Portugal. When the project started, the company was newly established, operated a fleet of seven vehicles from one location and needed a professional online presence together with a reliable reservation system that could support the business as it grew.
The company wanted customers to be able to check availability in real time, reserve vehicles online, pay securely by card and receive the correct booking and rental documents. The website also needed multilingual capability, support for the existing easyride.pt domain and integration with the company’s business email.
Because the business was being launched from the ground up, the project involved much more than installing software. Easy Ride needed practical guidance on website configuration, payments, reservation rules, documents, email delivery, DNS, SSL and the final production launch. VEVS worked with the client through these steps until the website was live and operating.
What makes the business different
- Independent small-fleet rental company
- 7 vehicles at project start
- Real-time online availability
- Stripe card payments
- Multilingual website capability
- Direct online booking
- Hands-on launch and operational setup
The Challenge
Easy Ride needed to turn a new business idea into a production-ready online car rental operation. The challenge was not simply creating a website, but correctly configuring the booking process, payment flow, rental documents, vehicle availability and technical infrastructure around a small fleet where operational mistakes could have an immediate impact.
During testing, the client identified a particularly important overbooking risk: an unpaid reservation could expire, release the vehicle back into availability and still retain a payment path that might later allow the customer to pay for a car that had already been booked by someone else. The company also needed Stripe configured as the only customer-facing online payment method, with unwanted payment options removed.
At the same time, the client needed help with driver-information fields, Rental Agreement templates, deposit and balance values, digital signatures, long Terms & Conditions, SMTP email, domain DNS, SSL and the final switch from Stripe test mode to live operation. The implementation therefore required both VEVS Car Rental Software and close consultation from the VEVS team.
The VEVS Solution
VEVS combined the standard car rental platform with Advanced Setup, consultation, configuration, testing and targeted development so Easy Ride could launch a working system around its actual reservation and payment processes.
Preventing expired pending bookings from causing overbooking
During testing, Easy Ride identified a serious edge case. A customer could start a reservation, leave it unpaid until the temporary vehicle hold expired, and later return through the original payment path even though the vehicle might already have been booked by another customer.
VEVS reproduced the workflow, involved the development team and updated the installation so the original payment link becomes inactive once the pending hold is no longer valid. If the vehicle is still available, an administrator can create a new payment link after checking availability, preventing outdated payments from creating an overbooking risk.
Stripe-only online payment configuration
Easy Ride wanted a clear payment experience where customers would see only credit/debit card payment through Stripe, without PayPal, wire transfer, cash or other unnecessary payment choices.
VEVS configured the payment options, removed the unwanted methods, explained the difference between online and offline booking completion, tested Stripe transactions and guided the client through the final switch from test credentials to live Stripe credentials before launch.
Real-time availability and temporary reservation holds
With only seven vehicles at project start, Easy Ride needed confidence that pending reservations would block inventory only for the intended period and automatically release vehicles when payment was not completed.
VEVS tested the client’s two-hour “On hold while pending” configuration using real reservation scenarios, confirmed that expired pending bookings stopped blocking availability and explained how pending-on-hold and confirmed reservations appear in Fleet Availability. This gave the company a controlled real-time booking process for a small fleet.
Booking form configured for driver and document collection
The standard checkout needed to reflect Easy Ride’s actual customer-information process. The company wanted the main driver and additional driver details together with driving licence and ID/passport uploads, while removing fields that were not required.
VEVS guided the client through the Reservation Form settings, enabled the additional driver section, showed how individual upload fields could be displayed or removed and explained how front-end and back-end labels could be renamed. The result was a checkout form tailored to the information Easy Ride actually needed.
Rental Agreement and document adjustments
Easy Ride needed Rental Agreements that correctly showed totals, deposits, payment due and digital signatures. Its Terms & Conditions were also long enough to make printed agreements unnecessarily lengthy at the standard text size.
VEVS checked the document tokens, tested generated agreements and explained when reservation values are captured. The team also made a manual HTML/CSS adjustment to reduce the Terms & Conditions font size throughout the Rental Agreement, provided as a complimentary welcome customization.
Domain, SMTP email and SSL launch support
Easy Ride already owned easyride.pt and had email service with Netim, but the client was not experienced with DNS or SMTP configuration. The website also needed to move from the trial environment to the live domain with SSL.
VEVS reviewed the client’s setup, tested SMTP settings, explained what information was needed from the email provider, checked DNS records and identified old A records that had to be removed. Once the domain pointed correctly to VEVS, the website was moved live and the SSL certificate was installed automatically.
Hands-on Advanced Setup and launch consultation
The client was comfortable preparing much of the website content but needed help in technical areas such as payment behavior, notifications, email, branding, domain setup and launch readiness.
VEVS provided ongoing one-to-one assistance through the Advanced Setup service, including screenshots, videos, testing, configuration changes and developer checks. The support period was kept flexible so the client could complete the technical setup without being rushed. After launch, the client described the VEVS service as “exceptional” and said it had made the task much easier to complete.
