Ye' old general discussion board. Basically, for everything that isn't covered elsewhere. Come here to shoot the breeze, shoot your mouth off, or whatever suits your fancy. This forum is not for asking programming related questions.
Most of the sites are confusing. Its hard to tell if they want you to buy a stupid terminal or software. I dont want that stuff.
Here are the features I'm looking for:
- No Equipment or Software Needed!!
- Sell Products or Services, Just about Anything!!
- Recurring Billing Supported!
- No or Low (<$50) Application Fees!
- No or Low (<$20) Monthly Fees!!
- No Statement Fees
- No Leases!!
- No or Hi Maximums
- No or Low Minimums
- Use Secure Server FREE!
I think the only options that meet your needs are the email payment gateways such as PayPal or C2IT.
Your requirements for selling products or services and recurring billing support would mean that you need to go with an IMA/CC gateway solution which would normally be ~$300 startup cost, plus enough volume to support $30/mo of service charges OR you get stuck paying the difference. (The selling services bit is the killer for several of the slightly cheaper options that I've seen.)
C2IT is practically identical to PayPal. It allows users to send money either charged to a CC or withdrawn from a checking account to any email address. No signup fee, low transaction fee, no restrictions. Yes the users will need to sign up for an accunt, which is definately a downside, but if you want free/cheap you're going to have to compromise somewhere....
Just looked over 2checkout.com, looks like it could be useful, but one big problem, to me, is that the confirmation is only done via email. Most other services do email and POST'd form back to your site in order to allow automated updating of you internal database due to the sucess/fail of teh transaction.
The other thing to watch out for, 2checkout's service charges are higher than most others $.45 + 5.5%... standard is $.35+3.5%. So you will be paying more in the long run.
That said it looks like the best choice for your needs, just be aware of the limitations/charges.
Set to Yes if you want the 2CheckOut payment routines to pass control and parameters back to a rountine on your site after a credit card is successfully processed.