Are there any company that will handle the billing for you? Charging of CC monthly.

Dear Karl,

There are companies that do that; however, that might not be the most financially feasible route. If you do setup as a reseller, it is a real business. Just like you were the primary service provider, you will need to setup a rock solid billing system. A calendar will work at for (this is how we started) and then once you obtain more customers you can move to a more automated database based system.

You will want to set yourself up with a credit card processor. This requires a merchant credit account and some hefty hardware, software, and service fees. However, you can use a service such as paypal.com to get started with little to no overhead. You will need to submit your customers’ billing information to the credit card processor each time you wish to bill them. You should also print and mail receipts (or at least an e-mail acknowledgment of charges).

There are many aspects that you will need to workout (as does anyone who is starting a business). Be sure to keep very accurate and detailed records. It is important to never miss a billing date. The cash flow is the lifeblood of the business!

Best regards,
Frank Rietta

I don't live in the U.S. so paypal.com may not work for me. Is there anyone here who have is using a merchant account that allows non-US residents?

Frank, I've been looking at paypal...looks great for USA based clients and resellers. Have you actually used it and recieved the funds? Has anyone else used paypal to bill hosting customers? Tell us of your experiences.

Go to IBILL - www.ibill.com (http://www.ibill.com) you can use them regardless whether you are a US citizen or not. They will just send you the check.

Thanks Gordon for me the USA isnt a problem and you are right iBill is international... the downside being the fees charged compared to paypal...or at least what I'd seen of paypal

My company has never used PayPal.Com, but I mentioned them since I have read that they are good.

We use a company called RegSoft.Com. Their normal rates are too high and they are not really designed to work with service purchases. We work with the company on negotiated rates and setup. It would be improper for me to give the details of our arrangement.

PayPal.com is good for sending/recieve payments for Auctions at Yahoo, eBay, Amazon etc but it's limited to USA. I have a other simpilar to PayPal but it's called iescrow and it's more powerful and you can accept ALL CC (AMEX, Discover, Diners, Mastercard, VISA) and Wire Transfers. But they charge you a small fee starting at $1.25 upto any amount depends on the request of fund. Though you can try at: http://www.iescrow.com/

If you read the terms and conditions for iescrow they specifically exclude services such as web design. While seeming to be a good service for the supply of physical items they are not the solution (unless you break the rules and risk your money) for hosting and services.

i use ccslide.com

another non-merchant account service like ccslide.com is instabill.com which I use.

I would wholeheartedly recommend www.worldpay.com (http://www.worldpay.com) to anyway. They allow you to bill in US dollars, and receive payment in your own currency. They also only charge £125pa (they are UK based I think) for the service, and 4.5% per transaction. I haven't seen better anywhere else.

The only downside is that the fill-in-your-card-details page sits on their domain, which might not be what you want. Another good one is Bibit (www.bibit.com), who mainly deal in Euro's.

We have a PayPal Business Account (a new service they started) for a backup system, just to handle some of our clients who do not have credit cards. Other than being pretty slow with the batch transfers, one of the things that everyone should be wary of is that a personal money transfer account makes you liable for the income you receive at tax time. That's why they all want your SSI at signup. You should always make sure you opt for a business account status if you want to transfer large amounts over time and stay out of hot water with these services.

While it is a very costly expense to get setup with a legitimate merchant provider, if you're going to provide a strong service to your clients, you need to offer a real merchant process for them to pay by. It might mean that you have to wait a few more days to do your startup, but it's just the cost of doing business. Besides, how do you think it's going to affect your business if you have all those extra steps involved to sign someone up for service?

Something like a PayPal should only be used as a convenience for special situations. Our merchant agreement also has another benefit that may be worth consideration ... some of the providers allow you to buy a "global" license which allows you to offer a substantial discount, or markup when you provide a merchant solution to your hosted clients.

If you're going to be in this business long, you'll find that most business sites (especially if you provide design) will require that in time. So, there's a great chance that you can add a serious profit center to your services at the same time!

The point is, what you don't provide ... you loose!

Just a thought!
Alex




------------------
AV Host Support
http://www.atlantavirtual.com
Open your world ... Online!

Is there a company that would allow for a webhosting company and send them a reply and a bunch of stuff that makes customers happy :p

I hear http://cybercash.com/ is pretty godd and it does just that.

What do you guys suggest

As far as I know cybercash is just a gateway to allow you to process charges in real-time through an existing merchant account (with another processor) You have a merchant account with a company, say Total Merchant Services, that supports cybercash, then sign-up with cybercash (which is free) - and you can send transactions to cybercash, which then validates them through your merchant acct provider (TMS in this case). Your merchant acct provider will charge you more for this (like $10 a month) but cybercash itself is free. We use it.

Chris Marks
http://www.netfronts.com

triumph595, if you are still following this thread....

I am also considering starting up as a Web Host. I like the sound of www.worldpay.com (http://www.worldpay.com) but I would really like to see it in action in a web hosting environment.

Would you mind pointing me to your site
(or *any* Web Host which uses worldpay)?

Thanks a lot

Mike
manfrommac@usa.net

We are in the UK and use CyberCash (Through Barclays) for our CC processing but we are looking at WorldPay with our bank NatWest.

------------------
Karl Austin
KDA Web Services

So someone actuallt uses natwest? what are they like? i currently use hsbc and halifax plc.

Originally posted by KDAWebServices:
We are in the UK and use CyberCash (Through Barclays) for our CC processing but we are looking at WorldPay with our bank NatWest.

I have an HSBC business account for my business and our Web Hosting company uses NatWest and I have to say that they are very accomodating with us.

------------------
Karl Austin
KDA Web Services

Originally posted by Chicken:
another non-merchant account service like ccslide.com is instabill.com which I use.

So what do you think of them? After seeing your message I signed up last night. Until I look into registered company names etc they seem like a good alternative (to start with). Their support is top notch I've noticed. I fired off a few question to them and got a great response time, and from the same person... Is this a general opinion of them?

Well, since I posted this I have run into a few snags when trying to use them. One is that checks *are* sent late often. And two, is that one of my transactions was pending for over 24 hours.

Hard to offer even speedy account setups with a delay time like that. I recommend your own merch. account, and that is the route I am following.

I think the 3rd party billers are only good until you get a merch. account setup, and even then, they aren't all that great.

Hard to find something with reoccurring billing, I know.

Ahh ok I see. Well looks like they may have to do for a while unless someone has a better suggestion? My bank won't touch 'internet' stuff at all yet and an online merch account is a dead idea till I get a company name (In Australia that runs at over $900 apparently just for the paperwork). Bit of a catch 22 - you can get it all once you have money, but need it all to get the money in the first place... Noticed the odd post from Oz here so if any of the locals have any suggestions especially they would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the update by the way. I'll probably still go for them, as check/money order takes 1 to 2 weeks from the states to here so even a 24 hour credit pending isn't a big issue for me (well considering the options anyway *lol*). Sadly I'm not even looking locally as a source of income. Having been a website designer for a while now, getting money out of an Australian for internet related *anything* is like pulling teeth.

In fact I have a friend with a client right now who firmly believes he can save a bit of money on design by converting a Word document into html and uploading it to a server *and* feel it'll look professional, with all the functions he'll ever need - and yeah he's looking at sites with cgi, ASP etc.

Hard to find something with reoccurring billing, I know.[/B]

Chicken,

The ccslide faq says they do recurring billing. I also have a PayPal business account, but I'm looking into ccslide as well.

Originally posted by being:
i use ccslide.com

Anyone else use them? Are they any better with the check send out than Chicken's dealings with Instabill? I looked at ccslide but their website looked a bit 'dodgy' with it's poor design etc. Didn't impress me as a pro outfit.

Well, I signed up with InstaBill this morning to try them out. So far they're batting zero: no response all day from either my early morning email or voice message with tech support. (Their Web site talks about 24/7 support.) Good thing I don't have money tied up in this yet!



[This message has been edited by alchiba (edited 08-25-2000).]

Originally posted by alchiba:
Chicken,

The ccslide faq says they do recurring billing. I also have a PayPal business account, but I'm looking into ccslide as well.



Heh, we seem to have all been in the same circles. I have accounts with both of those mentioned. Paypal doesn't offer reoccurring billing, otherwise it sounds much better.

Ccslide, kept sending me "we're sorry for this or that" emails even before I ever got a chance to use them. Email support was slow to non-existant. They were having a terrible time with something (I can't remember), and all I could get was an autoresponder that didn't address my concern, no did I ever get a reply back that did.

They've had problems, from 1 (or it might have been 2) week processing downtimes, to server cracks, etc.

Things that ccslide doesn't (at least when I checked last) have, that instabill has are:

No ability to add a setup fee to the initial price (order) for the first month. Instabill has this.

Ccslide doesn't have the option of adding anything to their forms (which instabill does - you can add a few input boxes, which was very hepful. The downside of this is that when the form comes back to you, unfortuantely the fields were NOT labeled, but it should be fairly obvious as to what the input was for).

No easy way to refund a charge. Instabill has a place to input this. With ccslide, you just email them (which amounts to the same thing as a form, but it is a nicer setup).

Shopping cart. Last I checked ccslide didn't have this, or instabill's was better (I can't recall).

Maybe there was something else, but ccslide seem to be a smaller, barely run company, whereas instabill had a better base.

Neither is bad for a shortterm solution, but I like instabill better for these reasons.

Hi All,

New to this forum, and wanting to start a web hosting company, I've been sourcing for a while for good turn key web hosting provider and a reliable CC processor.

I came across http://www.planetpayment.com, which is a Autorised.net international arm, which focus on international market, provide merchant account as well as CC gateway, cost is quite high, not sure if it process reoccurring payment take a look yourself. I wonder any Alabanza host use it ?looks convincing to me,


regards,

Foong

Well, instabill woke up suddenly. Surprisingly, they tried to reach me by phone me on a Sunday! (Seems whoever does tech support apologized saying he was out of town.) I have also received several timely email responses to my questions. Perhaps I was too quick to judgment.

It took days upon days to get a response back from ccslide when I signed up. Their system isn't as thoughtful as instabill's by a long shot. ccslide does NOT do international transactions (I'm in the U.S.). Their web site says they do recurring billing but I didn't see that capability mentioned on the product setup forms.

You're right, Chicken: this solution is only good for the short term. Paying what amounts to 20% off the top is less than ideal, but instabill seems to be the better of the two choices.

Yep, not good not bad. I was a bit astonished with the over 24 hour authorization time. Really, that is my biggest beef with them. I need realtime and this type of setup simply doesn't offer that. Great for small biz that doesn't want to deal with merch. route though.

Kepp us informed as to your likes and dislikes as it may help someone else in the same situation.

Did you not receive your password via e-mail Chicken?

Perhaps your anonymous, which is cool :cool:

Get in touch with me admin@webhostlink.com if you want to continue to use your old account, send old password too for verification.

Best Regards,

Matt

Well I sent out my first Instabill bill tonight. I tried the link on my fiance' first and she got to the page so it seems at least they are handy for emailing invoices so far. I've been playing with the admin section for a while now and while it's a bit unwieldy it seems to do anything I want it too. Of the weeks of looking around it seems to be the best for what I (and a lot of people here) are looking for. I also looked at ibill but they seem to make it harder for much the same service. ccslide just looked like a 15 year olds attempt at a website so I didn't even try them.

The 10%/10% hit is pretty big but I'm thinking until I get the hosting thing off the ground and get some constant income from that it's better than the setup/monthly fee/transaction fee/statement fee etc of the merchant accounts (not to mention company registration etc).

Mostly I like the idea that they seem to be actively pursuing fraud from their end making it easier from a startup's point of view, not having to go broke because of losers. Figure once I'm to big for Instabill, I can afford the additional setup of a merch. account etc.

In short, I started looking at this thread for advise and to see if I was the only one doing this, but the longer it gets the more I see that others have done it this way, are making money, and find it a real alternative, if not a perfect one.

Then again, in a perfect world everyone would pay in cash, be able to post it without fear of it being stolen in the mail, never try to rip anyone off, and accept prices 4 times what the market dictates. *lol*

Yeah Matt, I actually emailed you a couple of days ago, but didn't include my old password. Then again, last check of the box didn't have a message from you either. Hmmm.

I think the email address I signed up with, had a NOSPAM part that would have to be removed.

In short, I started looking at this thread for advise and to see if I was the only one doing this, but the longer it gets the more I see that others have done it this way, are making money, and find it a real alternative, if not a perfect one.


Take comfort in the fact that you are definitely not alone on this one. It's pricey, but it's easy for start-ups.

If PayPal offered recurring billing with their business account, they'd win all the marbles.

Originally posted by alchiba
If PayPal offered recurring billing with their business account, they'd win all the marbles. PayPal also should treat their business accounts like business accounts. I checked out the "Request Money" feature, and the letter that goes out to the customer says something like "you can pay your friend by clicking this link."

Yeah, my web host is my friend.

Originally posted by JayC
[QUOTE]Yeah, my web host is my friend.


LOL. You mean s/he's not? Hmmm. . . I feel a promotional message coming on! :-)

Heh, I noticed that as well. I also share the view that if they offered automatic billing, they'd be a strong contender. The friend thing seems to fit with the whole "pal" thing. Pay"pal" uhhhh, I had to ignore the name to consider them.

Anyone wanna start up pay"buddy", pay"chum", or pay"hommie"?

ROFL How 'bout "check chum", "fiscal friend", "payboy"?

I mean it's fine if they want to sound all cute and cuddly -- and after all, their original "x.com" doesn't encourage trust; who wants to do business with some company that sounds like it wants to be anonymous: "billing company X" -- but if I'm going to send the invoices they generate to my customers, I'd like to at least create the impression of being a serious business!

P.S. Like I always say: why use two or three sentences when just one will do! :)

That is very funny! PayPal is doing some interesting things. In a Hand Held computing magazine, I recently read about some new Palm Pilate software from PayPal that lets you “beam money” over the IR port. It sounds very interesting, but I could not find any info on their web site.

I would tell everyone to use the same company we use for billing, but they are not a good deal for most people. Their service is designed for shareware offers and we are working on proprietary terms with the company.

Best regards,
Frank Rietta