Shopping Carts
Carts one can use are either in PHP or CGI format. Both can be easy to use, but to keep costs down, you should learn either one or the other yourself so you can make changes, and add products without outside help.
Some carts we can recommend are the following;
Dansie.net shopping cart - This is a CGI based script. Requires some basic knowledge of html. They do offer an install service as well.
Agora Shopping cart - Powerful, flexible and FREE shopping cart. Open source cart free to download and use. This is NOT for a novice, although they offer installation for just $19.95 and offer for an additional charge customization services for you.
VP-ASP Shopping Cart - Windows Version or Unix Versions - A comprehensive e-commerce solution. Open source, free add-ons for languages, gateways, shipping.
SalesCart.com
- can provide you a complete end to end turnkey ecommerce
solution. Or you can be at the drivers seat to determine individual
pieces of the puzzle like your hosting company, your transaction
processing system and even your merchant credit card service
provider.
Carts that charge monthly and do not sit on your server;
StoreFront
Ecommerce Solutions - StoreFront
is a comprehensive shopping cart service that’s easy-to-use,
feature-rich and affordable.
Along with the cart, you'll need a gateway (if not provided
or if you want an alternative of the one they offer). Authorizenet.com
is one of the largest such services. They are compatible with
many if not most merchant accounts. Their service as an online
ecommerce real time payment processor is unmatched.
Gateways for Your Merchant Account are a neccessary proponent to making the merchant account function.
Probably the most common one is Authorizenet.com. They are used by many of the merchant providers and is usually set up for you. Authorizenet.com is one of the largest such services. They are compatible with many if not most merchant accounts.
One word of warning regardless of who you use for your gateway; make sure they allow for you to manipulate how many charges can be run thru consecutively in a very short time frame. If you do not control this, make sure they set it low.
Why?
I personally had a person(s) run a ton of credit card numbers, probably with some sofware that did it automatically in attempt to find an authentic credit card number (to use fraudelantly elsewhere). EACH and EVERY time a transaction is attempted...yes, that is JUST attempted you are charged a transaction fee of anywhere from .20 cents to .40 cents. Doesn't sound like a lot, but when none of them result in a sale, and there is just 200 attempts (some attempts run into the thousands) at .35 cents each, that's $70 for transaction fees alone and NO SALES! This does not include the discount rate minimums either. I know of one business that had about $2,000 taken from his account via gateway authority just for transaction fees for that one month...none that resulted in a sale.
Keep checking back for more updates.
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