Re: Ibill.com & Password/Billing Management

From: Carlos Pelay <latinwebguide_at_eudoramail.com>
Date: Tue 16 Apr 2002 10:50:11 -0600

I used Ibill.com up to about a year ago to handle the monthly
billing for a subscription service that i was offering at the
time.

Generally, I had no problem with the service and found it to be
a pretty good option for me at the time for a few reasons:

 - I didn't have to get my own merchant account or equipment
which can be difficult and/or expensive. Instead Ibill charged
about 15% of sales (which can go lower depending on your volume).
That included the 2-3% you would usually pay to the credit card
company.

 - They were able to do both one-time and monthly re-billing
(which some other processors don't do). This means that you can
price both a one-time option and a monthly option for your
subscription.

 - They had several options for password management. With the
option I used they sent me a preselected list of username/password
combinations which I then used to control access to my subscriber
area. Every time a new user signed up, they would be given the
next username/password from this list. The downside is that
subscribers were not able to select their own usernames.

 - They do keep a reserve for several months in case of chargebacks,
but I had not problem getting paid. Also the administrative tools
on their site are very good for generating revenue reports, etc.

 - Downsides: strict limits on the amounts that you can charge
(around $100, I think) limit their exposure to fraud but may be a
problem for you if you're selling higher priced reports, for example.

Also, users complete the transaction on their site which means you
cannot customize those pages so they are consistent with the look
of your site (in fact they were pretty ugly). Some potential
subscribers may be turned off. Also didn't take AMEX.

There may have been some recent changes in some of the above since
I used them, but generally I would recommend them.

Hope this helps,

Carlos Pelay
carlos_at_latinwebmonitor.com
http://www.LatinWebMonitor.com
http://www.HispMagMonitor.com



Received on Tue Apr 16 2002 - 11:50:11 CDT