Comments on: A survey of ecommerce providers for software vendors

By: Norman Clark

Norman Clark — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 05:02:32 +0000

Hi Andy,

I have included a comment regarding PayPal, and I understand the danger applies to Google Checkout as well, although I have never used this other than as a purchaser.

Your article is absolutely brilliant and I thank you for it, as I know many others do.

You might be surprised to know that we visited our local bank here in France – which is one of the top three, and asked their advice and were stunned to hear that they had never even heard of PayPal or Google Checkout or even Merchant Accounts!

I think we need not only to change our payments system but also our bank – and maybe even country of operation!

Cheers, and thanks again for the info.

Norm

By: Norman Clark

Norman Clark — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 04:54:15 +0000

I was not surprised to see PayPal so low on the ‘support’ listing. They don’t provide ANY support or answers. Check out their websites and try the ‘contact us’ routine.
I have had an account with them ‘personal’ for over 7 years and was a staunch advocate of the service – and I still believe the operational system is good.
However using them with a Merchant Account is different as without warning they have blocked our business account for ‘going over the limits’. OK, we understand moneylaundering and all that, and have been/were happy enough to re-affirm who we are, where we are, bank details etc., but after FOUR tries plus sending the details by Recorded Mail to their Dublin Merchant Account address the account is still blocked and all you get are automated responses.
We currently have over €2500 locked away, but PayPal kindly inform us that we – i.e.’They’ will still accept payments from our Customers.
Oh really? What happened to the money laundering?
PayPal is excellent when it is working but a disaster when they choose to arbitrarily close you down. Be warned!

By: Andy Brice

Andy Brice — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 09:21:31 +0000

If I saved one vendor from the clutches RegNow it was worth it! ;0)

BTW I make plenty of sales to people with free emails, such as hotmail, gmail and yahoo.

By: Nareshprasad

Nareshprasad — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 06:08:09 +0000

We were actually looking for an alternative e-commerce site to Share-it. Because they require a company mail-id from customers/clients buying the software. There is no straight forward buy for a normal user(using normal mail-id i.e gmail or yahoo or msn). By searching we thought regnow is best in this service as Pad file submits in download.com and famous shareware listing sites asks for regnow id of the product. On researching in this got this article luckily to know this market and the real leaders in it.
Thanks for this nice survey and article Andy.

By: Stephan

Stephan — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 08:46:10 +0000

Wow, great work!
Exactly what I search for.
Thank you so much!

Stephan

By: emma

emma — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 06:01:20 +0000

nice

By: Petko

Petko — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 10:23:26 +0000

@Robin, I am looking for exactly the same thing. Both Fastspirng and Avangate are offering it. I am still not sure which provider will I choose (I am with ShareIt now).

By: Robin

Robin — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 12:33:18 +0000

Hello,
When I began to search for an e-commerce provider 6 months ago, I looked at Digital River solutions. They seemed to be rather good at some points (marketing, coupons, ….) but in fact I was simply looking for *one* technical solutions: how to call a specific php file after a customer has purchased? I found this solution in PayPal with the IPN (Instant Payment Notification): in your PayPal business account, you specify the URL of a php file hosted on your site that has to be called as soon as a purchase is confirmed (ie: money is received on your PayPal account). In my case, this php file updates my customers database, prepares a new license (waiting to be activated from within my software). And that’s all.
I’m aware that PayPal is not as specialized in software distribution as other e-commerce providers but their prices are fairly low, refunds are free of charges and they just offer *the feature* I really need.

By: AddaxSoft

AddaxSoft — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 03:27:51 +0000

Thank you so much. This is exactly what I was looking for around the web.

I was confused between BMT micro and avangate.
I loved the way you presented your data. Thanks a million.

Regards,

By: Rosanne

Rosanne — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:52:58 +0000

Many, many thanks Andy!!! Your survey helped me enormously in my search for a suitable provider.

I’ve released freeware but am a complete novice to publishing ebooks and shareware using e-commerce providers. I’ve written to Avangate and Fastspring asking for guidance. Avangate was very helpful but unfortunately, Fastspring was not at all. I would like to publish two “know-how” ebooks, after having conducted thorough and in depth research into their subject matters, but am unable to do so without having answers to my queries. I even asked a member of the family who has PhD in computer science and a very successful company but he could not answer my questions as he has never released shareware. I think e-commerce companies should have a tab on their sites dedicated to providing full information to novice authors and developers like myself. Below is my email to them:

“I’m thinking about creating the books in ePub format using the Mac application Sigil and that users would be able to read them on their computers and ebook reader devices. I’m in the dark regarding a few issues and I would be very grateful if you could explain them to me in detail.

1. I’ve released freeware in the past but don’t have any idea about releasing shareware. To be more precise – what is the licensing mechanism? What are the licensing options? Do I have to do something with an ebook, for example, add a script in order to make it ask for and deal with the license key or just upload it as it is and you do the rest? Does your website automatically generate random keys based on the name of the product and the customer’s details? Do you keep a list of customers and their respective license keys? How it is possible to make a refund to a customer who wants to “return” the book if he has already been issued with a key?

2. My biggest concern is that people would be able to copy from or convert the format of the books – for example, using Calibre application – and then redistribute them, thus circumventing the licensing mechanism. Does this mechanism prevent them from doing this? Do I need a DRM system? If I do, what is the type of DRM, its mechanism and its cost? I understand that DRM is not supported by many ebook reader devices and freeware computer applications, is this the case?

3. Apart from people being able to find the ebooks on my website, how can I promote them? What is the difference between resellers and affiliates and what is the mechanism for employing them? Is it possible to use a company like Amazon as a reseller?

Many thanks in advance for your time and advice.”