Both of these providers have many features that are common.  Most importantly, both these services are compatible with every major web hosting company and shopping cart software.  Both of these providers have been developed using internet-protocol platform and provide browser-based solutions. Last thing is that it is easy to integrate both of these payment gateways. However, they do differ from each other in certain aspects.

DowCommerce is considered to be the most powerful payment gateway service provider that is currently available in the market. On the contrary, Authorize.net has been in operation since 1996 and boasts of a network of more than 200,000 internet business owners. In this regard, Authorize.net is more reliable in terms of ensuring data security. One aspect that separates Authorize.net from other payment gateway service providers is that it offers a prompt and valuable technical support to customers 24×7. Customers also have access to online support documentation.

Another major difference between DowCommerce and Authorize.net is in terms of costs. One can save hundreds of dollars through a DowCommerce account. This is because a DowCommerce account costs less than $20 per month. In case of DowCommerce, the merchant doesn’t need to pay any setup costs. Even the transaction costs seem to be lower. DowCommerce charges customers with a transaction fee of 10¢ per each transaction and a discount rate of 2.14% on the purchase price.

Both Authorize.net and DowCommerce offer a variety of features to their customers. Some of these include recurring billing module, integrated shopping cart, QuickBooks integration and Multi-User Access. Anyone, who opens a DowCommerce account, can avail these features free of cost. In case of Authorize.net, customer needs to pay certain charges so as to utilize some of these features.

Both of these payment gateway service providers offer advanced fraud processing measures to prevent the occurrence of identity thefts and credit card frauds. Dow Commerce uses state-of-the-art fraud prevention technology, a service that is provided to users at a minimum monthly charge of $10. On the other hand, Authorize.net employs a variety of security features such as 128-bit SSL Encryption, Address Verification Service (AVS) and Card Code Verification (CCV) plus Fraud Detection Suite.

As far as your business side is concerned, you will likely receive daily reports about your transactions, and receive daily or weekly payments based on the transactions processed. This is much faster than merchant accounts, and also saves you time on order fulfillment. Instead of waiting to see if payment clears before shipping, you need only worry about shipping to customers who completed the entire check out process. Even if you don’t have their money yet, you are guaranteed to receive it if the processing bank approved the transaction.

The first part of establishing yourself as an online retailer is to design your Estore. They have templates that you can use to design your store, but if you would rather leave it up to the professionals, that is okay too. For a fee, you can hire a professional web designer and developer. If you have a product that you want to sell, and you don’t mind spending a few dollars, using a Yahoo store is a pretty foolproof way to go.

For a small fee, they will guide you through the process of setting up an Ecommerce business, and the resources necessary to make it happen. There is no need for you to hire a costly web designer, because Yahoo Store provides a ready-made template. This means that your website is easy to navigate, which will translate into more customers. You are more likely to attract customers if they can easily figure out how to navigate the website. Once your business is up and running, Yahoo Store provides continuous support, and makes it easy to add on certain promotional tools. For example, Yahoo Store has a built in mailing list manager, making it easy for you to manage multiple mailing lists and ensure that your customers are sent periodical newsletters, or promotional notifications. With the coupon manager, they make it easy for you to create promotional coupons with an expiry date, and also track the coupons performance, giving you an idea of how successful your coupon has been and how many sales it has generated.

Yahoo Store seems to have thought of everything. They even provide you with tips on how to run a successful online store. They give advice on managing accounts, such as voiding orders and processing exchanges and refunds. They also have programs that help make this a lot easier. If you start your ecommerce business with YahooStore, they immediately submit your store to Yahoo search and to Google, guaranteeing that your site will show up in the search results. It is up to you to develop a marketing plan, of course, but Yahoo will take care of almost everything else.

When you use Yahoo Store for your ecommerce business, you can be assured that your customers’ transactions will be secure, as Yahoo provides secure transmission of information between the site, the credit card bank and the merchant account provider. The public knows this, and customers feel safe shopping on a Yahoo Store, knowing that their information is protected. A big part of any online retailer is the product that they sell, and your Yahoo store is no different. If you want to have a successful ecommerce business, it is imperative that you fill your customers orders and ship them in a timely fashion. Yahoo makes this easy, providing your customers with automatic email updates when their order is shipped. This is a great system, and it lets your customers know that you are working for them, even before they receive their product.

Speaking of shipping, Yahoo makes this incredibly easy also. They have a tool that allows you to enter what you charge for shipping, whether by weight, order amount, location etc, and the tool will automatically calculate the shipping charges when the customer completes their transaction. And if you have any problems, Yahoo’s website states that they provide 24-7 support. From the looks of things, what could be easier? When you use a Yahoo store, you can concentrate on selling your product and growing your business, which is what is most important. They make it easy to maintain your estore and ensure that your customers stay happy and keep buying. So if you have thought about an ecommerce business but haven’t known where to start, you may want to try Yahoo store. It is easy to start your business small and manage your products and accounts with their user friendly programs and foolproof tools.