Tips for web hosting business : Forget Paypal and 2Checkout!

Over the past 2 years I had experiences with Paypal, 2Checkout and Worldpay. Everytime I changed our payment system it had a big impact on our business. I want to share with you my personal experience.

Paypal

1 - They will accept anyone to have an account with them. They do not check your background. Your visitors know it .

2 - Most hosts will start with Paypal but I don't think there is any serious hosts on earth using Paypal as their primary payment system.

3 - You cannot adjust your recurring payment when you use Paypal. You have to cancel your old subscription and start a new one when you wish to upgrade an account. If a client need a fast upgrade you can forget it. He needs to send you a request to upgrade his account then you need to send him a link to start a new subscription. Finally your client start a new subscription and he needs to wait for you to upgrade his account.

4 - Don't try to contact Paypal if you have a problem, their support is terrible.


2Checkout

1 - They do not offer a good support. Sometime you need to wait 3 days before they answer your emails which is not acceptable. As for Paypal you cannot upgrade an account, you need to cancel your old subscription and start a new one.

My favorite payment system: Worldpay

They answer all your emails within a few hours.

You can adjust your client's subscriptions at anytime!


Business tips :

If you are starting a new web hosting business start with a professional merchant account system like Worldpay. Yes it is expensive and you will have a lot of paper work to do before you start but it worth the investment. The day we changed our payment system to a merchant account we boost our sales by 200%.

I hope this article will help you to improve your sales!

Good luck!!

We have our own merchant account. However we do accept payments from Paypal and Ikobo. In the 2-3 years we have been using PayPal I have found their tech support to be decent and certainly better than terrible. They have always responded to our emails and are always available via telephone when we need a faster response. Perhaps you should give them a call ... 888.221.1161

Northtrex,

Why is it that I get the distinct feeling that you are a Worldpay partner (http://www.northtrex.com/order.html) and that you get a $100 Canadian for every referal that becomes a Worldpay partner (http://www.worldpay.com/usa_en/partners ... =ps_bronze)

Nice try -- but we see right through you here.

//edit -- also could you , please reduce your signature to three lines to comply with our posting rules...I've been meaning to ask you.

http://www.ozzu.com/announcements-rules/ozzu-rules-and-regulations-t697.html (section2)

I've had no problems with PayPal. WorldPay is good, that is granted, my boyfriend has used them a number of times for various projects.

Actually you can change a paypal subscription. The following is paypals instuctions for changing a subscription entries details.

I think Northrex might be just a WorldPay customer (just like me). I doubt Northrex actually earns any referral commission based on the fact that i don't find any affiliate links or sign up pages for worldpay on their site.

Just for the record: I am not getting commission for saying this! We have been using WorldPay for the past few years and we are more than happy. We started off in 2000 with another company (I would rather not mention their name). One day they simply phoned us to say they were no longer accepting recurring charges.

That very nearly ruined us. Getting more than a thousand clients to sign up for new accounts through WorldPay was a nightmare. Especially since many of them did not update their email addresses...


Lesson: Start with a professional company right from the start. I am not saying Paypal or 2CheckOut are not, I simply don`t know them.
John.

SAY No, NO, NO to Paypal......They have the worst service I have ever seen. I have used them for 5 years now and have had enough of them. Now that eBay took them over it has all gone down hill. I think eBay just wants to accept payments for eBay auctions and nothing else. They want really gone down hill. I have used 2Checkout for about 2 years and they have been great. And I just started using ikobo because it is like Paypal but way better. They have live help operators everyday, not like Paypals 30 day email reply service and you can withdraw your funds on a ikard visa equivalent to Paypals mastercard.

Just my opinion. Those are the owns I have dealt with in the past and present.

Check these decals out http://www.decalboyz.com/calvinpaypal.htm This is on Paypalsucks

The problem that paypal (and other 3rd party processors) represent have absolutely nothing to do with their service, support, etc...

In my opinion, Paypal is the great evil of the hosting industry (along with CPanel - but, thats a discussion for another day). When Paypal is used properly, it is a very effective tool for webhosts. There are many many great hosting companies that accept paypal. However, Paypal also offers hosts an opportunity to take advantage of their clients - Since they are a 3rd party processor, they do not allow disputes for services purchased. This means hosting companies can advertise the heck out of these yearly specials, then simply disappear 3 months in with everyones money. This cannot and will not happen when purchasing a service utilizing a credit card directly (and not through a 3rd party like paypal), as Visa, MC and Amex would refund this money immediately via a chargeback. For this reason alone, I always recommend reputable hosting companies pick up a legitimate merchant account vs using paypal - if nothing else, it adds 1 level of separation between you and the "suspicious" hosts.



H-Sphere & Plesk (maybe others as well) automate this if a host wishes to use Paypal.

Heads up to the noobs who might be fooled. The following has been going around emails of late. On the surface it looks legit from paypal, even the paypal privacy policy link is a good one. However, the link to login is bogus and leads elsewhere. Just your standard paypal scam to steal your login info. If you see something like this in your email it did not come from Paypal. (Not to mention I've been getting these at an address that Paypal doesn't even have on record for me)



Although in the copy and paste above that paypal link looks OK, in the email when you mouseover you'll see the link leads here:
http://65.75.140.150/~secure/

Over the years, I've used an integrated merchant account on one site, and PayPal on another. My experience with both has led me to the following.

If you are selling a small number of low priced items, PayPal is convenient, easy, and widely accepted by consumers as a standard form of payment. I wouldn't jump up and down about it, but it's fine for that basic purpose.

If instead you are selling high priced items, or a lot of items, or to other businesses, a real merchant account will normally fit you better. I would start by checking into which ones your hosting service makes available. Often, your store can be managed right from your control panel, which for me was a substantial benefit (time saver).