Hello All,

First let me say that this is a great board!

Now this is the scenario...
I am currently a customer of Hostway...never had a problem with them, service is excellent,etc.
However, recently, I want to open an E-commerence store...they sent me to a few mercahnt account services in the USA, but because I am a Canadian, and because I will be selling my products overseas, none of the US merchant companies will give me an account(mainly b/c I do not have a permnant US mailing address)
so, I found a Canadian Merchant account company that is offering me an International Merchant Account...the website is:

http://www.merchant-accounts.ca/

they use an authoritzing gateway (secure 128bit) called worldpay.com

The reason I am a bit fustrated with Hostway is that if I was to upgrade to their E-Com package, I will have access to their secure server, MIVA sw, auth. gateways, etc...well, all I need is the MIVA sw. I have a secure server gateway via worldpay.

I would like to know if any of you out their can please help me out.
Changing hosting companies is not a problem, will do it, if the price is better or at least matches hostway...some further requirements that I require:

at least 300mb disk space
cgi-bin
php
msql
50 pop3 accounts
unlimited email alais
realaudio/video
volano chat

can anyone help me?
thanks in advance

donato

Well, I'm a Canadian doing business online (hosting, development, advertising, consulting, etc). Are you requiring your own merchant account, or do you simply want to do E-Commerce online?

If all you require is to do business online then there is no need to even switch hosts. Companies like 2Checkout and Paysystems will deal with you and do the processing for you.

What is it exactly you are looking for so we can work to satisfy your requirements.

Hello
We have a free basic cart that works with Worldpay.
Download a copy at http://shop.hostroute.com/
and you can e-mail me for the integration file free
and the cgi callback to make it work

Warning: its very basic.

Gordon

Hi Jeremy,
thanks for responding...

What I want...is this.

gonna sell sportswear...most of the customers will be overseas.
want my own webstore, that can access a secure server, and processing credit cards auth/etc realtime.
have gone to the bank, registered my business, etc
i was always told that i need a merchant account in order to do business online...
getting confused right now...what is the difference between merchant and companies like 2checkout.com?

what do you recommend?

as well, because most of the sales will be overseas, I was told that MIVA can intergarte shipping fees, into the bill...currently in talks with Fedex and Ups...any further ideas here?

thanks again for any help!

Hostway is a fine host, but I strongly advise against any cart that you don't own and limits you to certain hosts. One might say that Miva Merchant is safe because so many hosts offer it. However, they would have once said the same about Alabanza's Ala Carte and with Miva's more recent pricing to hosts, I already see a decrease in Miva hosts.

There are excellent free carts such as agora, oscommerce, and interchange as well as carts offered for free by merchant card providers. If you chose 2checkout.com, they offer free downloads of perlcart. You can find others at hotscripts.com, phpresources.com and cgi-resources.com.

That said, my personal preference is a cart you own and can work with on your own personal pc, then upload your site. A couple of the less expensive of these are Shop Factory and Web Genie. I personally use Shop Factory. It integrates with all major providers including Worldpay, 2 checkout, paypal and dozens more.

I strongly recommend you osCommerce.

It's free (GPL), stable, feature rich, and very flexible.
Besides that it has a huge community, lots of users contributions, payment and shipping modules.
The only downside is the lack of documentation, but with the forums you have all the information you need.

I'm a happy user. There are thousands of stores working worldwide without any complaint.

Try it: www.oscommerce.com