As a newbie looking to start a small e-commerce site I wonder what people think is the way to go for a shopping cart?
I see info on Miva merchant in a number of places but I'm wondering if it's best to get ones one Miva Merchant license in which case can any site with PHP and MySql work with Miva?
Is it possible to just make one's own shopping cart with PHP?
My next question is what are to the recommendations to get credit card purchasing integrated into the shopping cart?
And/or are there forums like this one for people who are newbie to e-commerce/shopping cart design?

but the addons for extra modules can get very expensive.

There are excellent carts out there for free. The ones I have dealt with and host on a regular basis are Interchange, Agoria.cgi, osCommerce and City Shop all 4 are very good carts and offer the full range of what most will need to open a store on the web, each has it's own weaknesses and strengths so you kind of need to know how you will be handling payments what you will be selling ie: downloadable content or real shipping, countires you will be selling to how many products you plan to sell etc. Once you decide that then which cart to use is pretty straight foreward. Alos how much customizing you are willing to do yourself will play a part in there.

As far as payments go I always recomend for new people just opening that they do offline processing to start or use something like paypal. Save on the payment gateway fees until business picks up to a point of needing and justifing the cost.

Monte Roberts

As far as payments go I always recomend for new people just opening that they do offline processing to start or use something like paypal. Save on the payment gateway fees until business picks up to a point of needing and justifing the cost.


Great advice! And it comes just when I need it!

What exactly does OFFLINE PROCESSING mean and how is it difference from PAYPAL?

you get a merchant account from your bank or one of the credit card company's then you take the order the customer gives you the credit card number you process it manually and deposit it to your bank account.

Saves on the gateway and you can get lower fees than paypal or most 3rd parties offer.

Monte Roberts

Hi Jim777 :)

Originally posted by Jim777
[B] I see info on Miva merchant in a number of places but I'm wondering if it's best to get ones one Miva Merchant license in which case can any site with PHP and MySql work with Miva?

To run Miva Merchant (which for one domain costs $595) your host has to be running Miva Empresa, in addtion to supporting PHP and mySQL.


Originally posted by Jim777
Is it possible to just make one's own shopping cart with PHP?

It is entirely prossible, with a very good knowledge of PHP and mySQL, to write your own shopping cart. But as there are some great shopping carts already out there it would probably be a better use of your time to just purchase one. Miva would not be one I would recommend thought. The one we use is called Better Basket Pro (http://www.imediasoftware.com/products/bbpro/) , it just requires that you have a cgi-bin and it has a set-up control panel where you can customize the look of the cart along with most other aspects of how it functions (note that it is not database driven, it uses HTML forms for product creation and submission to the cart). It is definatley the best CGI based cart out there.

Originally posted by Jim777 My next question is what are to the recommendations to get credit card purchasing integrated into the shopping cart?

Pay Pal (http://www.paypal.com) is a pretty good way to go, but if do decide to get your own Merchant Account, in my expereince using a provider that uses AuthorizeNet (http://www.authorize.net/) as their gateway software is a good way to go.

I hope this has been helpful :)

Just to let you know when you open a merchant account with a credit card authorizing company they sometimes offer a free shopping cart with there product.

but most of them are offering a modified version of Salena Sols Web store which is what Agoria.cgi is based off of. It is a decent store but needs lots of hand holding and you better know a bit about cgi to modify it.

I used it for years back when it was the only real shopping cart out there that didn't cost thousands of dollars. Come to think of it most cgi carts these days have their roots in Web Store.

The problem with the ones the mechants offer is it is modified to use only their payment gateway and service. So if you want to offer payment options like Paypal or worldpay you can't.

Monte Roberts

Great thread this has become for us newbies!

May I ask how much investment is necessary to open a merchant account with an american bank in the USA?

How do most non-american hosting companies deal with this issue? Do they mostly open accounts with american banks in the USA and then transfer their revenues/profits to their home country?

I hope that this thread throws a little light on this issue too.

Thanks so much.

Chang,

The adverage I noticed is $10 per month for the bank statement, $10 - $25 per month for the gateway fee, 2.xx % plus $0.30 per transaction. Most of the merchants offer no setup fee's. Then you have to buy or lease your credit processing program. Like Authorize.NET or Linkpoint that can cost from $95 - $295.

Originally posted by Chang Lee
Great thread this has become for us newbies!

May I ask how much investment is necessary to open a merchant account with an american bank in the USA?

How do most non-american hosting companies deal with this issue? Do they mostly open accounts with american banks in the USA and then transfer their revenues/profits to their home country?

I hope that this thread throws a little light on this issue too.

Thanks so much.

Originally posted by Chang Lee
Great thread this has become for us newbies!

May I ask how much investment is necessary to open a merchant account with an american bank in the USA?

How do most non-american hosting companies deal with this issue? Do they mostly open accounts with american banks in the USA and then transfer their revenues/profits to their home country?

I hope that this thread throws a little light on this issue too.

Thanks so much.

Hi Chang Lee :wavey:

You could check out Planet Payment (http://www.planetpayment.com/) they offer merchant accounts and gateway services to non US companies. Their fees vary, but I you will pay a per transaction fee (like 25 cents), a discount rate (like 2.9%), and a monthly fee (like $15 - 35 ). There are also set-up fees.

:) Thanks guys! Your input may soon be useful to me.

Can anybody else also suggest more of such similar payment services for the benefit of non-american web hosting companies?

Originally posted by Chang Lee
:) Thanks guys! Your input may soon be useful to me.

Can anybody else also suggest more of such similar payment services for the benefit of non-american web hosting companies?

2Checkout and RevEcom are both providers which accept international customers.

In terms of shopping carts, I recommend osCommerce. It's a free download from www.oscommerce.com :)

Originally posted by avara


2Checkout and RevEcom are both providers which accept international customers.

In terms of shopping carts, I recommend osCommerce. It's a free download from www.oscommerce.com :)

oscommerce is great script and powered by PHP and MySQL.

Take a look on my online store (http://www.sanguo-online.com/catalog/default.php) for a demo of the scripts.


I had also installed the RedHat Interchange shopping cart script that comes with my new web host Availhosting...

Looks great but like many option to choose from..

Originally posted by Chang Lee
:) Thanks guys! Your input may soon be useful to me.

Can anybody else also suggest more of such similar payment services for the benefit of non-american web hosting companies?

Are u from Asia?? My site is currently based in Singapore...

Thanks everybody for the great info. I would definitely rather use a freeware or lowcost shopping cart and will check out the ones you suggested.
You make a good point to start out with a lower cost payment option like maybe an 800# and my own merchant account.
But I was wondering if at some point I go for the online credit card processing - one question I had is if I use a shared web host arrangement from a web host - if for example I would be storing customer's credit card numbers in a MySql database - what about security? I mean the web host no doubt has access to my directories and what do I do password protect them from others?
Or if you use an online processing credit card service do they keep all the credit card info and just give me a transaction number for reference?
Thanks for the info.

I have just stop dropped and rolled after jumping through the flaming hoops needed to get a merchant account for http://www.steelz.com. I found a guy I can trust for my processor and account. He helped me a great deal and was upfront about everything.

This is what I paid for the account.

• Application Fee: NONE
• Fixed Discount Rate: 2.04%
Non-Swipe Mail/Phone/Internet Rate
• Network Transaction Fee: 20¢
Including AVS at No Extra Charge
• Holdback: $0 + 0 Days
Funds Available at your bank in 48 Hours
• Monthly Volume: No Limit
• Monthly Technical/Support Fee: $5.00
24/7 800 Toll Free Support & itemized Statement
• Monthly Minimum Processing Fee: $15.00
Example - $736x2.04%=$15.01
• Processing: VeriSign PayFlow Link
Online Real-time Processing & Virtual Terminal
• Total Cost: $295
• Gateway Fee: $10/Month (Flat Fee)
• Transaction Fee: 0¢ (No transaction fees

Worldpay and Authorize.net both handle international currencies.
I will give you his number if you want to write me, It would be innappropriate to post it here.

I believe he has a free shopping cart with services, I use a proprietary system on my server.

Hope this helps.

Thanks talionis -
looking at your figures it looks like your minimum monthly cost would be $30/mo with the $295 up front to start.
I'd almost rather pay a higher transaction % and avoid the minimum fees as I don't know if I'll be able to see that much initially.

Miva is great but a bit expensive while you can use other shopping carts free. Most hosting accounts now come with shopping cart feature or you can download some php or perl cart scripts from http://hotscript.com or http://resourceindex.com.

Can anybody else also suggest more of such similar payment services for the benefit of non-american web hosting companies?
For creditcard processing, 2checkout and revecom are good companies. We use 2checkout and are happy with them, quick approval, easy to set up and intergrate into our current website. If you want to see how it is, come to our order pages, you can place a fake order but remember to indicate that (don't make us confuse:D ). You may check out HostCharge, I heard some good things about them.
But I was wondering if at some point I go for the online credit card processing - one question I had is if I use a shared web host arrangement from a web host - if for example I would be storing customer's credit card numbers in a MySql database - what about security? I mean the web host no doubt has access to my directories and what do I do password protect them from others?
I don't think it is a good idea. It's so risk to store your customers' credit card online.
Or if you use an online processing credit card service do they keep all the credit card info and just give me a transaction number for reference?
Right.
Hope this helps