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Hello again. I'm still in the process of evaluating e-commerce vendors. I am in need of a hosting site, shopping cart, merchant account, and a SSL certificate. (I already have my web-site built via M/S Frontpage) I would really like to get opinions from those who have all of these set-up, and live. So, for those that are live with the above ....
- What vendor(s) are you using for host, shopping cart, merchant acct, and SSL certificate?
- What do you like the most/least about your set-up?
- If you had to do it again, what vendor(s) would you choose, and why?
ThanX so much for any information you can provide!
Hi Brad, I use authorizenet as my merchant account (actually the provier is e-onlinedata). I also use Cardservice international which uses the "linkpoint" gateway (the gateway is just how the shopping cart sends the transaction securely from your site to the customer's bank and back so they never have to leave your site).
I would recommend finding a merchant account that uses the authorizenet gateway since many shopping carts work well with this gateway.
For hosting, there are a lot of choices. I like to recommend pair.com because they are super stable, but they may be out of the budget for some. LunarPages also offers good hosting packages and support from what I've heard.
Shopping cart: I use shopsite (a paid solution) and I've used the free script at cubecart.com before. If I was starting fresh today, I'd pick the free cubecart script over the paid shopsite script (even though shopsite is great).
I thought I might just hijack this thread and add to it, so here goes... for an ecommerce site and to accept payments online I have come to the conclusion that this is what the formula is all about:
1. Website - Basically internet packaging.
2. Shopping Cart - Online catalogue with pricing.
3. Payment Gateway - To collect payments online.
4. SSL Certificate - To make payments safe and secure.
5. Internet Merchant Account - Somehow links together with payment gateway.
6. Bank Account - Final destination so you can take a holiday.
I thought I might just hijack this thread and add to it, so here goes... for an ecommerce site and to accept payments online I have come to the conclusion that this is what the formula is all about:
1. Website - Basically internet packaging.
2. Shopping Cart - Online catalogue with pricing.
3. Payment Gateway - To collect payments online.
4. SSL Certificate - To make payments safe and secure.
5. Internet Merchant Account - Somehow links together with payment gateway.
6. Bank Account - Final destination so you can take a holiday.
Nothing like bumping an old thread, but this pertains a lot to my first official question here at T-Shirt Forums.
I am starting up an online business and am trying to put the pieces together to take care of the transactions.
I have installed a shopping cart program to my site (WordPress e-commerce plugin) and I have a merchant account setup with my bank.
It looks like I still need to get some security for the transactions, am I missing anything else? I see the 6 steps listed here, but my bank being my merchant service should take care of a few of them.
I thought I might just hijack this thread and add to it, so here goes... for an ecommerce site and to accept payments online I have come to the conclusion that this is what the formula is all about:
1. Website - Basically internet packaging.
2. Shopping Cart - Online catalogue with pricing.
3. Payment Gateway - To collect payments online.
4. SSL Certificate - To make payments safe and secure.
5. Internet Merchant Account - Somehow links together with payment gateway.
6. Bank Account - Final destination so you can take a holiday.
And that would make it complete?
I Really Love this site, People are just great wish I knew that when we were hooking up our shopping cart, man it was a pain in the ***, its up and running now but I wish I found this thread sooner
The gateway is a computer your web site connects to process the transaction. The merchant account is the account that allows you to connect to the gateway.
Host - Shopping Cart - Merchant Acct - SSL 
