EggSpurt
01-28-2003, 04:43 AM
I'll preface this by saying I'm not in the web hosting business, but these forums have a wealth of valuable information and experience that apply to other online businesses as well.
I'm based in Australia and need to charge in $US. Ideally, I'd be using PlanetPayment for their full Authorize.Net solution, but due to the recent Visa/MC changes, they can't do Australian businesses -- so much for being a global solution.
I've narrowed my choices down to WorldPay (WorldDirect) and 2Checkout. I've decided not to go with PaySystems, and the other services I've seen have way too high discount rates. I might consider using PayPal, but only as a secondary payment option.
Recurring billing is not a priority for me, as I'll likely be doing yearly charges (I know 2CheckOut has had plenty of issues -- pun not intended -- with recurring billing). I don't consider WorldPay's setup and ongoing fees as a problem if the rest is okay.
I've been reading about WorldPay and 2Checkout for a while, on the forums here, on their support pages, and on their forums. I also have a recently created 2CheckOut account.
Advantages I can see with WorldPay:
More professional company
Apparently more reliable processing and servers
"WP: Your Company Name" on the CC statement
Disadvantages with WorldPay:
Poor fraud detection/screening, even with WorldAlert
Very limited customization of order pages with a lot of WorldPay branding and options. "Make Payment", "Cancel Payment", and Refund buttons seem like overkill, and they use images for those form submission buttons. The page is quite long and scrolling is required
Advantages of 2CheckOut:
Good fraud detection/screening
Ability to refund within 48 hours without any fees (good for doing manual fraud screening in addition to their own)
Order pages are simple, short and unobtrusive allowing a better blend with custom headers and footers
Disadvantages of 2Checkout:
Slow moving. Features such as company name on CC statement have been promised for a long time (and they even claim are now available), but do not yet work
They don't seem to be very technically proficient as evidenced by unbalanced tags in order pages
Very little information given as far as changes or server problems
Many reports of slow or non-existent support responses (I'll reserve judgement as many have also said they've had no problems)
Instant activation is something that's important to me (but there's no risk of spammers like with web hosting), but I'd still like to manually review each transaction afterwards and void if necessary -- as opposed to deferred activation and manually approving each transaction before it goes through.
2CheckOut suits this procedure with the refunds up to 48 hours afterward. I think I can do something similar using WorldPay and their pre-auth, post-auth options. That means if I don't do a post-auth after 5 days it will expire automatically. They claim they have ways of automating the post-auth, but I don't have any details of how it works (anyone familiar with that?).
Comments? Experiences? Suggestions anyone?
I'm based in Australia and need to charge in $US. Ideally, I'd be using PlanetPayment for their full Authorize.Net solution, but due to the recent Visa/MC changes, they can't do Australian businesses -- so much for being a global solution.
I've narrowed my choices down to WorldPay (WorldDirect) and 2Checkout. I've decided not to go with PaySystems, and the other services I've seen have way too high discount rates. I might consider using PayPal, but only as a secondary payment option.
Recurring billing is not a priority for me, as I'll likely be doing yearly charges (I know 2CheckOut has had plenty of issues -- pun not intended -- with recurring billing). I don't consider WorldPay's setup and ongoing fees as a problem if the rest is okay.
I've been reading about WorldPay and 2Checkout for a while, on the forums here, on their support pages, and on their forums. I also have a recently created 2CheckOut account.
Advantages I can see with WorldPay:
More professional company
Apparently more reliable processing and servers
"WP: Your Company Name" on the CC statement
Disadvantages with WorldPay:
Poor fraud detection/screening, even with WorldAlert
Very limited customization of order pages with a lot of WorldPay branding and options. "Make Payment", "Cancel Payment", and Refund buttons seem like overkill, and they use images for those form submission buttons. The page is quite long and scrolling is required
Advantages of 2CheckOut:
Good fraud detection/screening
Ability to refund within 48 hours without any fees (good for doing manual fraud screening in addition to their own)
Order pages are simple, short and unobtrusive allowing a better blend with custom headers and footers
Disadvantages of 2Checkout:
Slow moving. Features such as company name on CC statement have been promised for a long time (and they even claim are now available), but do not yet work
They don't seem to be very technically proficient as evidenced by unbalanced tags in order pages
Very little information given as far as changes or server problems
Many reports of slow or non-existent support responses (I'll reserve judgement as many have also said they've had no problems)
Instant activation is something that's important to me (but there's no risk of spammers like with web hosting), but I'd still like to manually review each transaction afterwards and void if necessary -- as opposed to deferred activation and manually approving each transaction before it goes through.
2CheckOut suits this procedure with the refunds up to 48 hours afterward. I think I can do something similar using WorldPay and their pre-auth, post-auth options. That means if I don't do a post-auth after 5 days it will expire automatically. They claim they have ways of automating the post-auth, but I don't have any details of how it works (anyone familiar with that?).
Comments? Experiences? Suggestions anyone?