Hello all you Hosting Gurus!

Just wondering, what do you guys use for the payment system. I am currently looking at www.paypal.com and www.merchantexpress.com. Both have thier good and bad. It seams that a merchant account is the professional way to go, but with that, Im looking at about a $300 setup to purchase a gateway, and about $50 a month minimum on fees. I would have to do more than $8200 in sales to have the merchant account become less than paypal. Im only worried about having a paypal account frozen, and the fact that on a customers statment, it says paypal instead of my hosting service.

Any ideas?
Thanks

Mike

Just my personal opinion, Pay Pal has "stepped out of the box" with their way of doing business and now the banking system is trying to take them down for their success at it.

You will find some clients who are taken aback by the fact that you use pay pal, but look at the bottom line with them.

It costs you nothing to do business with them unless you make a sale and when you do, you pay less than just about anywhere else.

If you can justify the costs and you think it reflects poorly on your business to use pay pal, then use the other systems. For the "little guy" and those of us who like to support those who "think out of the box" and do things differently, I'll keep using pay pal.

Again.. personal opinion..

Shortpal

I'm using PayPal almost since it started, I've never had a problem and I'm using them for customer signup for webhosting etc. as well.

Cyborg

Personally I use both a merchant account from Card Service International which uses the Linkpoint Gateway, and a Paypal account, the benifit is my sales have trippled since starting to use paypal as well and I think it has to do with how many people have paypal but no credit cards, its fast, effective, and they can run it from thier bank account, through my merchant account I have the ability to accdept online checks and have thus far in 2 years recieved 3 orders via that method, its hard, annoying to fill in all the correct information, and from a merchants point of view it takes almost 2 weeks to recieve funds in my bank account which causes serious annoyance on all ends of the deal, with paypal the funds are instant. I will warn against any merchant system which uses Authorize.net as a gateway as I recently found an article in which Authorize.net admits serious security issues, not the least of which include the fact that you have to transmit both your username and password from any form submitting into their gateway.. Mouse

I was a bit dubious about using PayPal to start with but if you use their business version (rather than personal) then it seems to be much cheaper than most of the other credit card processing companies.

Additionally it provides an easy way for your client to stop billing if they decide to cancel.

I've never had a problem with them anyway.

(Oh yes... and the added bonus that they pay me in my own currency)

Guess that settles it. Paypal it is. Thanks for all the great info. And thanks Mouse, MerchantExpress does use Authorize.net. Good to know.

Mike

I use Revecom and couldn't be happier.

For my company, I do take orders through PayPal, but I use Merchant services with Nova through Costco. For mail-order/internet type businesses, it's only 1.99% + 28 cents per transaction, and as long as you're an executive member ($100 per year), there's no monthly fee/minimum requirements, and for $50 per year and .05 per transaction, you can process it completely online. If you opt for the software credit card processing software (which is all that's needed for a online business), there's no costly equipment/supply costs. The Nova with Costco is by far the cheapest solution that I've found for credit card processing (plus they have no specific requirements other than I think being a business for signing up, unlike some other places).