Other Commerce SolutionsTransaction ProcessingThere are companies who will handle the whole transaction process for you, from calculating the order to processing the credit card transaction. If you don't have a merchant account, you might want to look into this type of process. Out of all of the ecommerce solutions, complete transaction service has the highest cost. For simplicity's sake, we'll refer to the process of taking an order and tabulating the cost as a shopping cart service, and credit card processing with shopping cart service a complete transaction service.As a starting point, we highly recommend Selling Online Isn't As Easy As We Thought It Would Be, an article by Internet World. Charges vary greatly between ecommerce solutions, so get out your calculator and notepad to compare: CCNow - Charges 8% per transaction for complete transaction service. FreeMerchant.Com - I'm still looking for the catch on this one. This service claims free credit card processing and secure account handling. It looks as though you end up with banners on your site in exchange for using this service. Merchant Planet - This is part of LinkExchange. Their setup fee is $150 for the shopping cart setup, $150 to process an application for a merchant credit card account. Thereafter, the transaction fee is $35 or 2% of your monthly transactions, and the credit card processing is Cardservice will bill you for 2.3% of each order total + $.40 per transaction ($25 monthly minimum) + a $10 monthly customer service fee + a $35 monthly CyberCash gateway access fee. Sales Gate - Has a $99 setup fee, then charges between 7% and 15% per item sold. Shopping Cart Only - No Merchant Account IncludedYahoo has its own brand of ecommerce solution called Yahoo Stores. We highly recommend Internet.com's review of Yahoo Stores. Pricing starts at $100 per month. ICat is another shopping cart solution. You can read Internet.com's review. Americart, $249 per year, need to understand HTML but do not need to know programming.
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