I’ve been researching web shopping cart options for selling products and services online. Here are a few of the providers geared toward small business, and that don’t require an expert programmer to set up.

All of these providers require that you also have a credit card merchant provider, also known as a payment processor or payment gateway. This is the company that actually charges the customer’s credit card and puts the money into your bank account. And all of them have over 40 different payment processors they work with, including PayPal, Google Shopping Cart, and Authorize.net.

Last, all of these options are PCI compliant, which is required by your credit card merchant provider to avoid fraud and data theft.

1ShoppingCart is the only one of the providers below that can do recurring billing, also known as subscription services billing (setting up someone to purchase an item or service that gets re-billed at that same amount each month).

Each one has slightly different options for functionality and design, so check out all of them before making a decision.

1ShoppingCart.com

• $34/month plus 1.5% transaction fee for 500 items
• $99/month plus 1% transaction fee for unlimited items
• $249/month plus 0.75% transaction fee for unlimited items, plus an SSL certificate

Shopify

• $29/month plus 2% transaction fee for 100 items and 1 GB storage
• $59/month plus 1% transaction fee for 2500 items and 5 GB storage
• $99/month plus 1% transaction fee for 10,000 items and 10 GB storage

CoreCommerce

• $20/month plus no transaction fee for 150 items and 500 MB storage
• $35/month plus no transaction fee for 500 items and 750 MB storage
• $60/month plus no transaction fee for 1500 items and 1 GB storage
• $100/month plus no transaction fee for 5500 items and 2 GB storage

Ashop Commerce

• $25/month plus no transaction fee for 500 items and 1 GB storage
• $70/month plus no transaction fee for 2000 items and 2 GB storage
• $100/month plus no transaction fee for 10,000 items and 5 GB storage

BigCommerce

• $25/month plus no transaction fee for 100 items and 200 MB storage
• $40/month plus no transaction fee for 500 items and 300 MB storage
• $80/month plus no transaction fee for 1000 items and 500 MB storage

For WordPress users, there are a number of plugins to add shopping cart functionality. The one I’ve read the best things about is WP e-commerce.

It’s free. Works with a smaller list of payment gateways (including PayPal). Pay a one-time $40 fee for the Gold Cart version which includes additional payment gateways, additional product images, and additional views.

SaveSave