# Shopping Cart for Website and Merchant Account

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shopping-cart-for-website-and-merchant-account/648754>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 29, 2013, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shopping-cart-for-website-and-merchant-account/648754 "2013-01-29T23:45:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![beyondimagination07](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9f8e36/32.png) [@beyondimagination07](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beyondimagination07)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2013, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shopping-cart-for-website-and-merchant-account/648754/1 "2013-01-29T23:45:59Z")

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I’m starting a little hobby/business website and there are a lot of things I’m learning about.

First off, I need a simple shopping cart.

I need something with

- NO limit to the number of products
- Low or NO cost
- Compatible with Paypal ?

I also need another way besides paypal to accept credit cards (I use square at vender shows, I like it, low fee, etc).

If anyone knows of a merchant account similar to square, where people can just enter their credit card info on my website, that would be great as well. There are some super high fees on merchant accounts (looked into one through BOA) and monthly fees, high per transaction fees, etc.

And lastly, shipping calculation. How in the heck do you calculate shipping on a website? Is there a post office application or something?

Thanks all!

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**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2013, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shopping-cart-for-website-and-merchant-account/648754/2 "2013-01-30T00:06:26Z")

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What software do you use on your website?

There are several free and reasonably priced online store applications that should do what you want. ZenCart and xCart are stand-alone. There are at least two good e-commerce plugins for WordPress, WP-E-Commerce and WooCommerce. I’m sure Drupal and Joomla have add-ons too but I don’t know the specifics.

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**Author:** ![beyondimagination07](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9f8e36/32.png) [@beyondimagination07](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beyondimagination07)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2013, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shopping-cart-for-website-and-merchant-account/648754/3 "2013-01-30T04:28:45Z")

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I’m building my website in Webpage-Maker. I’m not really “website builder literate” so I was looking for the easiest thing to use. I’ve made a few sites on there before, nothing spectacular but it works.

I’ll checkout the options you gave me 🙂

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**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2013, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shopping-cart-for-website-and-merchant-account/648754/4 "2013-01-30T05:20:11Z")

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This is out of GQ territory, but my advice is: stop. Spend a bit of money up front to get a template design for one of the CMS/store apps mentioned above. Any decent web host will give you several options that are in reach of a beginning business.

Save your time for the hobby/business part, not fumbling around in Webpage-Maker.

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**Author:** ![WhyWhyWhy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whywhywhy/32/7539_2.png) [@WhyWhyWhy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyWhyWhy)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2013, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shopping-cart-for-website-and-merchant-account/648754/5 "2013-01-30T05:22:17Z")

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I highly recommend [3dcart.com](http://3dcart.com). I’m very happy with the service…and I’m only paying $10 per month…which makes me feel kinda guilty.