Forum Moderators: buckworks
I was looking for a third party processor - recurring payment solution for my web site selling subscription based services. I have heard of:
1) PayPal
2) 2CO
3) IBill
4) CCBill
Do you have any other recommendations to add to that list? CCAvenue doesn't support recurring transactions yet. I have heard lot about 2CO (their support, etc.) - any feedback regarding IBill or CCBill?
PayPal is much better, but unfortunately they have had a lot of downtime lately. Our clients haven't been able to cancel subscriptions, we haven't gotten notifications when people signed up etc. Hopefully its temporary...
Please let us know who you end up going for.
You might want to check out Verotel. If only ccavenue supported subscriptions, we would go for them.
ESS.
E-commerce works better if it involves reliability.
I forgot whether they sent nothing back or another irrelevant email, but all I know is that they never answered my questions.
That being said, no other experience w/ 2checkout.
I sent 2checkout some pre-sales questions a week ago, and haven't gotten a thing back except the automatic form mail.
They haven't even convinced me to become a customer yet and already I'm being ignored. How's that for a reason to skip them =P
A sale occurs and your customer gets whatever you sold them. But at 2CO, the actual funding is "Pending" for a couple days until "Approved." In that time between, 2CO does their own form of "fraud review" and sends an email advising you on their opinion of the fraud potential or not. (But they say it is only their own reviewed opinion.) If it passes their "fraud review," it gets "deposited," which means the Visa/MC processing itself. It is then held in your 2CO account until the next bi-monthly ACH payment made to you of all your accumulated "deposited" sales (less refunds, chargebacks, etc.). The ACH payments occur on the 1st and 16th of every month, or on the next business day if those dates are on the weekend. However, even if one had a sale one or two days before that next ACH, if it was not "deposited" more than 48 hours before that cut-off date, it will be held until the following ACH payment date. While they say it could then be 4 days later before the funds are actually in your bank account after any ACH is made, it is often only a day or two.
One frustrating challenge with recurring sales is in regard to recurring sales dates. In a monthly-recurring sale situation, for example, one would think the recurring-billing should always be on the same date number every month. That is not always the case - especially if the sale was originally on a weekend. The next monthly recurring date might then be 2 to 4 days after the actual monthly date-number. And even then, VISA/MC might take longer to allow the new "Pending" recurring-sale to become actually "Deposited." That becomes even more frustrating with sales made near the bi-monthly cut-off dates, because that could then delay getting those recurred-sale funds yet another 15 days later instead.
In the past year, 2CO appears to have been upgrading to some new system from a previous system. It has led to numerous challenging issues, and the customer service in dealing with it has been sometimes infuriating. When really big problems occur, forget about using the "Help Ticket" methods for help; go straight to their telephone and keep calling until you reach someone by phone. Once you get a person, you might even be able to get their extension number and ask for them personally at other times whenever you need help again. (They don't say that's allowed, but I know this firsthand, after dealing with too many issues.)
Sitewise, the 2CO account management section is not as user-friendly as one gets used to with PayPal.
While their system does, at times, seem to be more than they can currently handle with customer service at times, the product iself is pretty good and is not that badly priced. While it is more expensive than PayPal, it beats Verotel's over-inflated pricing and obnoxious "Ticketsclub" ideas (where they require access to spam your customers). But Verotel is another discussion altogether. At 2CO, it also costs a small start-up fee of something like $49. Once you have one domain using 2CO, if you want another domain (and thus, another 2CO account), you pay another start-up fee for each new domain/account. But they refund $19 of each additional start-up fee(s).
While sales through PayPal can be made as "cash" in the bank within 4 days after the sale, that is not the case with sales made through 2CO (which could be a couple weeks). So, one can make the customer pay for the "convenience" of using 2CO by charging an extra start-up fee if they order through 2CO instead of PayPal. (This start-up fee is one's way of being compensated for having to wait that extra time before being able to actually use the funds.) Yes, 2CO makes it completely possible to set up a recurring sale and add a one-time start-up fee too!
While they are certainly not as good as they could be just yet, the 2checkout.com system does have amazing potential for when they do eventually get their system down completely.
To 2CO's credit, they did answer the questions fairly extensively. However, that's 11 days too long - screams to me "Our management cut costs by not hiring enough support personal."
I'm going to setup Paypal payments for the time being and probably end up going to my local bank for a merchant account when business picks up.
Thanks for the information guys, this thread was quite helpful.
