There are a multitude of e-commerce options available to you. It all depends on your needs and most importantly, your budget.

 

We can set you up with a basic shopping cart, hard-coded into the pages, and all you need to do is have a merchant account to hand process the credit card. We use Mals-e.com for this cart, and the nicest thing outside of the basic service being free, is that the secure part is not on your server, therefore you do not need a security certificate or a secure server license. Best for small stores offering under 50 items, although we have set this up for stores with hundreds of items.

 

Initially this is a good option, but if your product line changes often, such as items not in stock, price changes etc, you do wholesale, or you have a large inventory of various products, it is wiser to get a slightly more robust option. For this we offer a "catalog" database back-end, where you can add and remove items yourself, change prices, colors, and even keep a running inventory. All the items are dynamically placed on the pages. It costs more initially, but the maintenance of the store you can learn to do yourself. Of course we will still update for you if you wish. Both options can also be set up with either Mal's regular free account or their premium account, which will do real-time processing for you of the credit card, and he has a very nice arrangement worked out for a payment gateway and merchant account at a very good price. We have set up his cart many times, both the regular and the premium cart, and find it to be a very good option for many people. If you have a complicated shipping scheme, it may not be the best, but for most people it works great.

 

Other options for carts depend on your needs. We can set up MonsterCommerce, ZenCart, or one of our own PHP cart solutions to either interface with your payment gateway and merchant account, or for hand processing of the cards. What is required is that your host server have a secure server license and certificate for secure acquisition of credit cards. Many hosts offer a shared server certificate.

 

If you need a merchant account for real-time processing of credit cards, please take a look at e-OnlineData. Their merchant account works with Authorize.net which is our primary reommendation for a payment gateway. You can easily apply for your merchant account and get the gateway at the same time, and our favorite shopping cart interfaces seamlessly with Authorize.net and their AIM or SIM accounts.

 

Need more info? email me to get in touch, and we'll answer your questions.