Kagi or Esellerate?

[mnajera]

Very soon I plan on selling registration keys for $10 through one of these services (or another, if any are recommended), and I would like to know if anyone has an opinion about either of these.

I've looked into the shareware that some of the members of this forum sell, and I've seen both being used. Is any a clearcut winner? Who will let me keep more of my money? Which is the easiest to deal with?

Any help would be appreciated.

[DaFalcon]

A quick search of the forum for esellerate and kagi returns this thread:

http://www.idevgames.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1178&highlight=esellerate+kagi

Did you take a look at that already?

[FCCovett]

I've been using eSellerate and I like it. Very good support.

Now, some people have switched from eSellerate to BMTMicro. I don't know much about Kagi.

[Zachary]

I'm also thinking of an online payment service to use in the nearish future. I plan to sell the games for around $5 and I live in the UK, so using Esellerate would cost me more than what I would make on the games! ($5 + 10% fee), and Kagi would take a whopping $2.50, and leave me with only half of the total cost of the game. Is there any other method (besides setting up my own payment service, I don't have a clue how to do that)? Should I risk using PayPal?

[KenD]

Kagi is well known and has been along almost as long as shareware (well, a long time anyway). eSellerate looks very nice too. More intuitive to use than Kagi's system.

The drawback with eSellerate is that they charge 50% more than Kagi if you are selling a decent amount.

Their serial number scheme is not entirely to my liking either. With Kagi you can have your own code generator but from what I uderstand eSellerate has their own and there's not much you can do about it. This also means you can't sell your software via any other services. Well, you can if you support two different sets of serial numbers. One set that eSellerate gives customers and another you use with another sales service. This is a bit of a hassle though.

At this time eSellerate is not the right choice for me anyway. I'd say it depends on your needs which service you should go for.

KenD

[FCCovett]

The $5 +10% is not accurate. eSellerate charges 10% over the sales, but there's no minimum fee. They estipulate a minimum price of $5 for your products, that's all.

So, even if your game is priced at $5, you would pay eSellerate just 50¢ per sale.

Also, they have a $10/month write-off on your bandwidth usage, what translates into a total 1 Gb per month of free downloads, be those demo or sold units.

[aegidian]

Originally posted by Zachary
Should I risk using PayPal?

I recently used PayPal (and some gnarly Python cgi code :ninja:) for online registrations to a UK national conference.

The experience was smooth and free of glitches. PayPal sting you on charges (20c + about 3.3% for credit card processing and a further charge to transfer funds to ones bank account), but they're by-and-large in-line with what other merchant services charge.

I used to use Kagi to sell meQanno registrations, the biggest deal there was waiting for enough money to come in for it to be worthwhile them sending me a cheque!

[KenD]

Originally posted by FCCovett
The $5 +10% is not accurate. eSellerate charges 10% over the sales, but there's no minimum fee. They estipulate a minimum price of $5 for your products, that's all.


If you expect to sell for less than $15000 in a years period then it's 10% but if it goes over $15000 the fee goes up to 15%. With Kagi it's 10% or less. You get a volume discount when you sell for a certain amount in a month.

But like I said. It depends on what kind of sales volume you are expecting and also the price of your software. If the software only costs $5 then Kagi is not the best option.

KenD

[morgant]

If you've got php/mysql hosting, or your own server, check out eShox (http://www.eshox.com/)! You can have it use a PayPal account if you'd like, and it allows you to sell registration keys (you can input the algorithm directly from the admin tools!). Also, you'll be up and running in less than 5 minutes (atleast I was) and can add other items other than software later (i.e. clothing, accessories, boxed copies, etc.). They offer a special discount to shareware developers!

Very flexible, very powerful, and tons of room to grow!

[Zwilnik]

There's also www.bitpass.com which someone pointed me at today. They look pretty good for micropayments.

[Najdorf]

I guess nobody here makes more than 15000 $ per year selling games

[Jake]

I guess nobody here makes more than 15000 $ per year selling games

I think MonteBoyd did with Slope Rider, Didn't he?

[monteboyd]

I think MonteBoyd did with Slope Rider, Didn't he?

I don't have the exact figure with me (seeing as I'm in an Internet cafe somewhere in Najdorf's home town of Venice!) but yes, it was somewhere in that vicinity. Totally unexpected I must say.

OT - Hi Najdorf! Your city is beautiful and my girlfriend and I are very much enjoying taking it easy and wandering around. I'll be sorry to leave tomorrow!

[Jason Colman]

Any votes for swreg (http://www.swreg.org) ? I haven't used them, so this isn't a recommendation, but I thought their terms looked relatively good.

[patrox]

I would recommend plimus or bmt micro

pat.

[FreakSoftware]

Having used both, eSellerate is basically the only option you have. Kagi really sucks. It's expensive and offers little customization (and full customization for $20 a month!) while eSellerate's sales fees are cheap, looks 100x better, and customization is absolutely free.

eSellerate.

[funkboy]

Freak, how much are they paying you? ;)

I'm a happy Kagi customer, but I don't have anything bad to say about eSellerate, either. They both seem like decent companies... which is the reason you started this thread, I suppose.

Kagi has always been easy to work with for me... I guess I'm kind of lazy to switch to another service, honestly. I investigated into setting up my own account by signing up for a thing with MasterCard - that just got me spam and junk phone calls. Blech. Moral of the story: go through a place like Kagi or eSellerate, don't try to do it yourself, I think, unless you're already familiar with the business.

[FCCovett]

...don't try to do it yourself, I think, unless you're already familiar with the business.

Mastercard can charge you some outrageously high fees for subscribing to their service in some locations. Unless you are selling very well, the administrative costs are not worth the effort of doing everything by yourself.

[tijurka]

PayPal is probably one of the better of the services for shareware. I've tried eSellerate, and liked it-- but more people trust PayPal. It's one of the most common systems used.

- tijurka

[GoodDoug]

PayPal is probably one of the better of the services for shareware. I've tried eSellerate, and liked it-- but more people trust PayPal. It's one of the most common systems used.

- tijurka
You're kidding, right? I don't know of anyone that trusts PayPal more than eSellerate. Bottom line, if I'm forced to use PayPal to buy something, I won't buy it. I knew people who worked at PayPal, and security is a non-entity for them. I've also known two different people that have had their credit card snarfed from PayPal