Hiya :)

The billing side of things seem to be confusing me the most so if my questions seem quite well not intelligent please excuse :)

What are the different methods i can accept payments? I'm guessing CC would be the most popular? or am I wrong?

If i'm only looking at a small amount of customers to start off with e.g. 10 or 20, some of the fees i've seen look too much for me e.g. startup costs etc.. so what would you recommend?

What are the methods that most customers prefer to use?

Thanks in advance,

Salsabil

Most new hosting companies are finding it worthwhile to, at least in the beginning, use third-party processors instead of regular merchant accounts. That minimizes or eliminates startup costs, while usually resulting in a higher cost per transaction.

Some third party providers are Revecom, Hostcharge, 2checkout; and of course some hosts use PayPal... in fact it seems like nearly half of the threads in this "running a web host" forum are on this topic, so if you do a search on any of those company names or just do a little reading here you'll find plenty of discussion of options, and a lot of conflicting recommendations.

Hi salsabill,
In addition to what JayC has said and to answer your other question, you can also accept personal checks and money orders and will most likely have some requests to do so.

It sounds as though you're in need of a third party provider, as most clients do seem to prefer to pay by credit card. JayC has listed several, along with some good advice to research them all, before choosing the one that's right for you.

I prefer clickbank.com. They are the best for small and medium size business.

Like JayC said, http://revecom.com is a good choice. We use them and we're very happy with their control panel, fraud prevention and settlement. Hardly any problems at all. :)

I've looked at (and used) a few of them and have found PaySystems.com (Revecom) to be excellent. As mentioned by WiredDog, accepting checks and money orders is also beneficial - about 20% of sales I get are by those.

--Josh