How to Accept Payments on a Joomla Website?

There are many reasons why someone would want to accept a payment on his website, including:

– He might be selling a product
– He might be selling a service
– He might be accepting donation

But if that someone happens to run a Joomla website, how an he accept payments?

Like everything in life, there are two ways to do this: the easy way and the hard way.

The easy way to accept money on your Joomla website is to install a full extension that will handle everything from A to Z. Such extensions include Virtuemart, which can easily turn into the hard way, because, we know from our customers, that Virtuemart is not the easiest extension out there. However, the nice thing about Virtuemart is that once it’s installed and customized according to your needs, it works like a charm, you’ll be able to sell virtually anything on your website, and accept payments for the services/products you’re offering. Payments can be processed using PayPal or other payment processors.

The hard way to accept money on your Joomla website is to procure a custom solution to fit your needs and only your needs. The custom solution will include:

– Displaying your items/services
– A shopping cart (optional: if you’re running a subscription based website you usually don’t want this)
– A payout form
– A connection to the payment gateway (which can be PayPal or a real payment gateway such as Moneris or OptimalPayments)

Of course, both ways have their advantages and disadvantages, the first way is not that hard (not easy, but not hard) to install, but it is very hard to customize to fit your own needs (especially if you’re selling something like magazine subscriptions, and you need to have recurring monthly payments).

The second way is hard to implement and install, but it is very easy to install and to use because the solution was made to fit your needs and your needs only.

Now how much do we charge for implementing the functionality to sell items and accept payments on your Joomla website?

– If it’s the first way, then we charge 3 days of work, or $1,800 (as per our current rates). The fees include setup of Virtuemart, phone tutorial on how to use Virtuemart, as well as minor customizations that have to be done within the three days.

– If it’s the second way, then we charge a full week of work (7 days), or $4,200. The fees include collecting the requirements from you (our client), implementing the requirements, installing the extension, and explaining to you how to use it. In this case we require half the payment upfront.

Interested? Then contact us!