As software publishers, one of the challenges we face is determining the best way to bring our products to our customers after they have decided to buy. So over the years, we have looked at many different options for doing this including bringing it in-house.  Having recently gone through this decision process yet again, we thought it would be good to share our findings with our fellow ISV’s who are currently looking at their options.Although other assessments might place cost as the first priority, our criteria for choosing has always been prioritized as follows.

Which option provides the:

1. Best customer experience leading to more sales
2. Best customer service for phone orders and resolving customer problems
3. Best control panel making it easier to add/maintain products, obtain reports, set up promotions, etc.
4. Lowest processing cost.

As of today, we use three service providers: Avangate (4 mos), RegNow (3+ yrs), and Plimus (1+yr) which we review in the following paragraphs.

RegNow - One of the Digital River companies. One of the cleanest order forms for the customer, decent cross-sell capabilities that are a pain to set up, US-based vendor support but very slow and usually not helpful, slightly more expensive fees, US-based (but horrible) phone support for customers, outdated control panel (nothing significant has changed in years), support for Adwords but not Analytics (which is ludicrous), large established affiliate network (that never orders anything ;-)), support for CD fulfilment (but on plain white CDs with a printed product name), order form default for extended download service that cannot be turned off.  So why do we keep using it?  Seems to be more trusted by customers and we keep hoping the reseller network will kick in.  Sends funds twice/month right at the close of the period, which is nice.

Avangate - The up and comer but still with a way to go. Very helpful vendor support - clearly better than anyone else, extensive, productive control panel, offers upsell in addition to cross sell during checkout (others don’t have this), good support for Adwords and Analytics, slightly lower processing fees, additional services for marketing and SEO (which is why we decided to try them - seems pretty good so far), but it is HQ’d in the Netherlands with operational staff in Romania, a bit more oriented toward European business customs (e.g., longer order form, a bit too wordy, etc.), provides phone support but only with a Dutch phone number that rings in Romania (this is a problem) and very visible branding during the order process and customer emails, more than any other provider.  With this service, we noticed European orders seemed to go up, and US based orders went down.  Sends funds once/month around the 19th of the month following.

Plimus - US HQ, US based customer phone support, fairly responsive email vendor support by offshore staff (not sure where they are), robust control panel, low visibility on branding, very good support for Adwords and Analytics, poor documentation, takes a little while to learn control panel but then it is very productive, good reporting, one of the few that gives you reports on abandoned orders, can also set a popup for those who abandon, about as expensive as RegNow. Sends funds once/month around the 19th of the month following.

In summary: When Avangate gets a US presence with 800 phone support, trims back their branding and streamlines their order form, they will become the one to beat.  Right now, we have to give the advantage to Plimus with RegNow a very, very distant third.

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