I was wondering what the community at Digital Point thought is the best merchant service provider with the cheapest rates to use (for example Authorize.net)? Also, what are your thoughts on third party shopping carts? Is it better to get one custom made? If not, what shopping cart do you recommend and why? Keep in mind that I've never used shopping cart before, so I'm leaning towards the third party. Thanks for the input!
You can find good articles about merchant services at http://www.merchant-account-services.org/ Very good web site. If you are just starting ecommerce I'd recommend to use third party shopping carts. You can find both free and paid. If you are running big business with special requirements it will be better to use custom made shopping carts. You may start from PayPal shopping cart or oscommerce. Personally I like Avactis shopping cart. They have very nice backend and it's very easy to customize. You can find a lot of shopping carts (both free and paid) at http://www.hotscripts.com and http://php.resourceindex.com.
I second avactis. You can design your site any way that you want and integrate avactis into it. Much better than the full-featured ecommerce packages like oscommerce, zencart, etc., because you have better control over the design and flow. Authorize.net is a great payment gateway and as long as you get setup with a good merchant service provider it will be at the lower end of what you would expect to pay.
Yeah both oscommerce and zencart are pretty nice shopping cart that's widely used. For payment gateways you can have look for few payment service providers such as 2checkout, authorize.net, chronopay, worldpay, protx depending on your location and need, have a look on their charges however all seems reputed one.
Well Authorize.net/Cybersource (whatever they are going to call themselves) and Protx are only electronic payment gateways. You still need a merchant account as well. Try to at least get a reseller that is able to give you 250 transactions for free. The electronic payment gateway connects to a transaction processor (First Data, Nova, Paymentech) to help facilitate the transaction. LinkPoint, for example, does not charge for any transaction costs. They rely on the merchant account provider. Payflow will give you about 1,000 free transactions but charge about $50.00 a month for their gateway
Our rates are low. Actually we guarantee the lowest rates. We also support authorize.net and offer a secure shopping cart if needed.