Hosted shopping cart, what if they go bankrupt!

Pretend you have an ecommerce and for some reason...

[Sebastien]

Pretend you have an ecommerce and for some reason the company that you have taken the hosted shopping cart goes bankrupt, that would really put you into an aweful situation specially if your site would have a pr 6. What do you think?

[Conard]

First plan:
Have back copies of everything on your server, shopping cart and all.
If you have to do a quick move for what ever reason you wont have to start from scratch.

[Marcia]

Conard is so right, having backups is crucial. There are different setups, but it's also a good idea to have the domain name easily transferable, just in case.

There was such a case not too long ago, with over 200 sites hosted, using a shopping cart, and using the provider to process credit card orders. Many of the people involved were at a loss to know what to do, since their sites had also been designed through the service, and their domain names also registered by that site operator.

That's unusual, but moving a site wouldn't hurt if the timing was right with the move and main pages stayed functional, even if it took a little bit to get the ordering back to normal with another provider.

It isn't easy to re-do everything in a hurry, but it's a good idea to have everything set up with enough mobility to be able to make a change as quickly as possible if necessary.

[Crazy_Fool]

you will also be in trouble if the card processor suddenly increases fees - doesn't have to be bankruptcy that ruins things.

simple answer is to use a shopping cart on your site and integrate it with any card processor you choose.