I'm opening up my own website in the near future. I will be selling specialty optics. I am in need of some way to actually get the money. I want to look professional, so I need a shopping cart system or something I can put into the site that looks good and where people can checkout right there. I know there are a couple of services like paypal, etc. Any ideas?

E-Commerce isn't something I haven't really played with yet. I have used paypal and that is very easy to incorporate, and I anyone would be fine using it (especially considering that if you set up your paypal account as a business you can accept credit card payments). The only downside really to paypal would be the fee they charge you.

I also know that a lot of hosting companies offer E-Commerce scripts that you can install and use, but alas, I haven't messed with any of them.

You could use Cube Cart, pm me if you want a qoute on a custom design!

Paypal is very easy to use. The only problem is thier $%#@@$$ fees!

Paypal is not as bad as 2 checkout

2Checkout has some of the highest fees. PayPal is alright for medium price tags (like less than $1000.) They do special things for people selling multi-thousand dollar products and stuff of the sort. A lot of GOOD e-commerce scripts let you incorporate PayPal into it so the payment is processed faster and more efficiently using PayPal's IPN and APIs.

Cube Cart is definitely trustable but it will cost you some money. You can try Agora Cart too but i seriously recommend Cube Cart with Paypal.

You have plenty of Options:


:: Paypal (Free, fast, doesnt integrate 100% perfectly without prior knowledge in design/php)


:: Cubecart (Alright, doesnt integrate well )


:: OSCommerce (Free, doesnt integrate well without prior knowledge)


:: 2Checkout (Its okay )

End result, USE Paypal.

Good luck!

PayPal has a great safe system, it works well and your customers will trust it, the only thing is that they have high fees for transactions so you lose more money per transaction.