Links
These are the companies and services that keep my business running. I only link to sites that I personally use and recommend.
Merchant Accounts for Accepting Credit Cards Online
I’ve been with CDG Commerce since 2004 and LoudCommerce since 2008. I highly recommend both companies for great rates, service, and especially CDG for a risk management team that understands selling digital downloads and services on the web. CDG Commerce’s Quantum Gateway can emulate Authorizenet making it compatible with virtually every shopping cart out there, but also supports many more fraud protection tools, and is absolutely free.
Web Hosting & Domain Registration
Most of my websites run in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud where I can scale capacity up and down dynamically. For traditional dedicated server rental, I still use SoftLayer. You won’t find a better designed network and customer panel, or more experienced staff on call 24/7, for these prices anywhere else. I register domains exclusively at GoDaddy.
Source Code Version Control
The source code of my websites, past and present, is backed up and under version control by Springloops. I used CVSDude for several years, but they recently changed the price of my plan from $29/month to $69.99/month. I now pay $9/month at Springloops for the same usage.
Keeping In Touch
All my e-mail marketing to customers and newsletter subscribers goes through MailChimp. They handle list management, delivery, statistics, and automatic followup mails.
Customers mainly contact me through my Zendesk, a customizable hosted help desk and ticket system. This also powers the “Feedback” and “Ask Us” buttons on W3Counter and W3ROI which pop up a contact form to quickly get in touch.
I also keep an 888 number at Kall8, which costs only $2 per month (before per-minute fees). Kall8 records my voice mail and sends it to me by e-mail, and can also be used to set up rule-based call forwarding. If you sign up, enter 888-304-5864 in the referral box to give my account a $5 referral credit. That’s two months of usage if nobody calls!
