I need to find an e-commerce package. Free or not, doesn't matter.

Basically, the site will be offering no more than 50 products total, ever, but each product needs to have customization options (color choice, material selection, etc) which have cost differences.

Need to be able to integrate with major gateways (opinions on which gateway to go with are also welcome, as it's been a while since I looked at them), and I'd like to have Google Checkout and Paypal support, though definitely not necessary.

3/19/2007 11:53:16 AM

PayPal gave us the best deal we could find with a 1.9% discounted rate and 0.3% transaction fee but we're doing about $1m in volume in a few months. we had to call/fax them to get this special rate - usually it's about 2.3% or so

they were the best we found without a rolling reserve, initial deposit, frozen assets, and especially no monthly fee. they had the easiest system for refunds through their web-based control panel as well.

integration into the site was fairly easy - we didn't want to store any CC information on our end because of server security and liability issues that would result so we forward users to PayPal and the PayPal page is easily customizable and will return them to your site with whatever variables you need to pass to and from PayPal.

although they are really strict for security reasons like you can only use the credit card once to make a purchase within a short amount of time. if you want to make multiple purchases with the same card, you have to either get them in the same order, or wait. they have also been picky about their "investigations" and locked up some of our funds for 2 weeks while they investigate certain transactions. they're all cleared and released but it's sort of a pain in the ass. if you want to use an eCheck, you have to sign up for a PayPal account first - that was somewhat of a downside.


but we didn't use an e-commerce package - we developed the site from scratch so couldn't help you there.

[Edited on March 19, 2007 at 1:09 PM. Reason : .]

3/19/2007 1:02:16 PM

again not answering your question about packages, but just ran across this on design meltdown--

http://www.designmeltdown.com/chapters/ecommerce/
http://www.designmeltdown.com/chapters/eCommerce/Part2.aspx

3/19/2007 5:54:53 PM

^that's an awesome link,thanks man!

Yea luckily we have the design worked out, just a matter of connecting everything together.

I'm giving cubecart a go, as it's free up front and uses smarty templates, plus it's extremely simple.

Next question:

So I've dealt with merchant accounts many times in the past for clients, so I'm pretty aware of the basics ($20-30c per transaction, 1.5-2.5% rate per sale), but for us, we are going to be selling relatively high-ticket items, not small purchases.

Anyone had any luck in getting the banks to budge on the discount rate? I'd be happy to get under 1.75%, but that seems pretty impossible for online accounts.

3/19/2007 7:40:17 PM

nope, i haven't been able to find that kind of rate online
and even if it did come out, i would try to negotiate with paypal to get that rate so i could keep their easy to use UI with good money managing features

[Edited on March 19, 2007 at 8:09 PM. Reason : .]

3/19/2007 8:08:23 PM

I know Costco's merchant account can drop as low as 1.79% with volume, it's 1.99% by default

http://www.novainfo.com/costco/index.asp

Probably going to end up going with them (.27 cents and 1.99%) because they use NOVA and I can get a free gateway through authorize.net not to mention the costco membership bundled with the whole thing.

3/19/2007 11:38:27 PM

oscommerce and zencart are two very popular php+mysql e-commerce packages. zencart is a fork off of oscommerce.

i think you may have trouble convicing users you are a legitimate store if your only payment method is through paypal. if you get your own merchant account it will not include american express, you have to get setup with them separately. it sucks, my rate now with amex is around 4%.

3/20/2007 5:30:38 PM

not paypal, paypal merchant accounts.

http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_merchant-outside

and yeah, we decided to fuck amex. not worth the hassle.

[Edited on March 20, 2007 at 5:38 PM. Reason : .]

3/20/2007 5:38:25 PM

^^I've used OScommerce in the past and it's the biggest turd ever. Kind of like phpnuke and postnuke, originally they were good ideas, but have grown way to large and unruly for their own good.

So far I REALLY like cubecart. The codebase is extremely clean, the templates are well organized, and it's so far got every feature I need.

3/20/2007 11:20:50 PM