[disco_stu]

OK, so I'm thinking about selling a couple of shareware apps that I've made, and I'd like to get some feedback from fellow developers on which service is best. I've read the shareware do's and don'ts articles on O'Reilly's www.macdevcenter.com, but would like some real-world opinions on the matter.

Is it better to just roll your own secure custom store and accept credit card payments? How much does that cost compared to going with companies such as Kagi and eSellerate? What other options are there?

I'm thinking that my apps will cost no more than $20 and that the user will have to enter a dynamically generated registration code (based on the person's name or something similar) to unlock certain features.

Any opinions on the matter, or horror stories, or suggestions, etc. would be greatly appreciated.

[Angus_D]

I use eSellerate at the moment, they're quite good (and for $20 might be cheaper than Kagi, I forget). However, I might end up moving to PayPal in the near future, for various reasons (eSellerate sat on my money for a month for no good reason, during which the $ slipped against the £ quite a lot, which I found relatively annoying).

[macvillage.net]

I always thought Kagi was really good. Never an issue.

[Camelot]

FWIW, last time I checked, SSL certificates were $600 a pop, per year.

Unless you expect to sell a lot of $20 apps, this probably isn't the way to go, and is half the reason why Kagi, eSellerate et al. exist.

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by Camelot:
FWIW, last time I checked, SSL certificates were $600 a pop, per year.

Some people will let you host php scripts and things on their ssl certified servers. Like what IntelliInnovations does (forwards on to ssl22.pair.com for payment).

[disco_stu]

Originally posted by Camelot:
FWIW, last time I checked, SSL certificates were $600 a pop, per year.

Unless you expect to sell a lot of $20 apps, this probably isn't the way to go, and is half the reason why Kagi, eSellerate et al. exist.

Wow, that's good to know. Well, that narrows the decision!

[Brass]

I've found Kagi to be good, except that they too sit on the money for a month (presumably so they can collect another months worth of interest). Being that they pay monthly (minimum time) some of your money will actually have been there for nearly two months by the time they send it to you.

However, apart from that, I've found their service to be excellent. You can customise your shopfront at Kagi to make it look like your own webpages, etc.

I also use PayPal, as they provide some payment options that some clients seem to prefer. However, I'm a bit cautious about PayPal as I've heard some nasty fraud stories about them. I always make sure I transfer PayPal money before the balance gets very large.

[alex_kac]

I love eSellerate. They pay you once a month at very low rates.

You have to remember - its not just the getting an SSL cert and hosting a site. You're paying for them to handle all downloads/bandwidth, site improvments, taxes (this is a biggie), and so much more.

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by alex_kac:
I love eSellerate. They pay you once a month at very low rates.

Well... I don't think 10% (15% if you make more than $10K in a year) is all that low, actually.

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by Camelot:
FWIW, last time I checked, SSL certificates were $600 a pop, per year.

Not anymore. You can get a signed certificate from a recognized authority for as little as $50.

With that said, I use Kagi. They take a big cut of small-dollar programs (I get about $3.75 out of a $5 application), but for $15 or $20 programs it's a pretty good deal. The best thing about Kagi is they accept all kinds of foreign currency, cash, and checks. Setting up your own SSL store won't get you that.

I've never used eSellerate, so I can't comment on it. The reason I chose Kagi is that if you don't sell anything, it doesn't cost you anything. I generally sell between $5 and $50 a month, so it's perfect for me.

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by Arkham_c:
I've never used eSellerate, so I can't comment on it. The reason I chose Kagi is that if you don't sell anything, it doesn't cost you anything. I generally sell between $5 and $50 a month, so it's perfect for me.

Same with eSellerate, PayPal, DigiBuy...

[Trygve]

I have used Kagi for nearly 5 years and they have been good. Lately however, they seem to have had some growing pains and I also set up an account with SWREG as a backup. (if your payment processor has a server down, you can't make sales). Sales between the two are about even but SWREG costs me a bit less.

Kagi has never missed a payment, but they still don't do direct deposit - just checks (though they will do international wires for a fee).

SWREG's site is pretty ugly - it discouraged me in the first place, but you can really customize your order pages much easier than with Kagi. (SWREG lets you upload your order templates yourself whereas with Kagi you have to e-mail them in).

Setting up a "Buy Now" button is easier with SWREG.

Setting up new products on SWREG is very involved with so many options to set, but once configured is very nice. Their sale notification e-mails are easier to automatically parse than the ones from Kagi (which put city, state and zip on one line - difficult for non US/UK/Canada addresses).

I think SWREG is more responsive to support issues, but in the Mac community, Kagi has much higher name recognition.

I would have to say my trust in Kagi is VERY high - SWREG is probably fine, but it will take a while to build that kind of trust - I have only been with them a short while.

I am happy with both. You can take a look at my site to see the different implementations of SWREG & Kagi.

Trygve H. Inda
http://www.timepalette.com

[alex_kac]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
Well... I don't think 10% (15% if you make more than $10K in a year) is all that low, actually.

It is if you consider bandwidth, having to keep up with taxes, etc...

I could either run my own store (I've written a few enterprise level eCommerce packages selling in the many $k before) - but then I'd have to either spend my time setting it up, keeping it maintained, paying sales taxes, paying for bandwidth - etc...or I could hire somebody to do it. In this case, its cheaper for me to hire eSellerate

That's the point, I think. Plus they handle any possible fraud, chargebacks if any, etc...

So you have to determine if its worth it for you.

[mahrz]

There's a german service called share-it which has many features. It's available in different languages (english/german/french...). I don't know how interesting it is for people outside germany but I think they have a branch office in the us.

www.share-it.com

Malte

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by alex_kac:
It is if you consider bandwidth,

Bandwidth is cheap, especially considering the shareware utilities I sell are pretty small.

having to keep up with taxes, etc...

Yes, of course, they charge a fair price for what they do, but hardly cheap