My buddy and I are starting a web design hosting account driven by mediatemple.com.

What is the best way that we can accept monthly payments from customers for monthly hosting?

Please help! Kind of a newby in this area!
:confused:

My buddy and I are starting a web design hosting account driven by mediatemple.com.

What is the best way that we can accept monthly payments from customers for monthly hosting?

Please help! Kind of a newby in this area!
:confused:

If you are from US, i would say to go with Google Checkout.

Rest of the world, its better if you opt for paypal or 2Checkout. They are reasonable.

Intially it is better and later on if you have a increase in customers you can look for alternatives like having a merchant account which would better to reduce some costs.:agree:

Is Google Checkout Free??

a web design hosting company...as in you do web design and web hosting....or you just host web designers??

are you talking about so you can take payments over the internet like credit cards? you will need a merchant account for that.. ours costs us 6k ..just to give you a idea...were a web design firm which also does web hosting and dedicated hosting...
(you can always just go by E check or bank transfer payments)

Accepting PayPal should be quite easy. I believe it's probably the easiest form of payment. Next would probably be merchant account so you can accept CC

I seconded using Paypal, actually yesterday was the first time I setup a subscription using Paypal, it works like a breeze and automatically charge your clients accounts monthly with an end date that can be specified. I am quite a dinosaur in this area but my first impression was it was very convenient compared to the rest I have seen.

Accepting PayPal should be quite easy. I believe it's probably the easiest form of payment. Next would probably be merchant account so you can accept CC

Yes, if you're starting out, go with Paypal (and the monthly subscription feature). Google Checkout's nice, too, but starting next month will no longer be free.

If your UK, NoChex is an alternative that may suit you, although PayPal may suit your customers better.
Your bank may be able to set up 'BACS' for you, but that would best suit business customers, not 'the general public'.

As the people below have said : PayPal rocks your socks.

Sometimes though, you'll get some chargebacks so that's sort of a bummer but PayPal overall is quick, efficient, automated, and easy.

you can setup authorize.net recurring billing
then you can bill your customer in a period of time

Google Checkout is my recommendation

My buddy and I are starting a web design hosting account driven by mediatemple.com.

What is the best way that we can accept monthly payments from customers for monthly hosting?

Please help! Kind of a newby in this area!
:confused:

i would recommend setup paypal api for monthly subscription. and that is for free.

is there a way to interface with the paypal api to determine if a user's paypal subscription is still active?

like, I know I can set up the paypal and have it bill the customer automatically and that takes care of that, but what if the payment is for access to a website or a section of a website? how can I determine that their subscription is valid from the page?

what about from other merchant accoutns like authorize.net or 2checkout, can this be done? is it simpler than paypal?

thanks!

I'd recommend PayPal!

But I would recommend you NOT to go for monthly payments if you are going to offer cheap hosting or spammers will kill you before you start!

another vote for paypal

2-checkout, paypal, though the former will authorize orders before you process, so less chances of fraud.

Now I'll get shot down in flames here, but...

For some reason I see businesses/sites/companies that *only* accept Paypal or Google check out for payment methods as a bit slap-dash and risky?

That's my honest opinion. I think its just due to the fact that every man and his dog can have a Paypal account setup in less than 5mins?

Seeing a site that has a proper merchant account and payment provider makes me feel that little be more confident when buying from them.

Cheers,

Matt

well remember that paypal can also accept credit cards without the need of customers having a paypal account. I have started to use paypal for a client and it is a BREEZE to use, I absolutely recommend it before anything else, especially if you're a small business just starting out.