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Online Shopping Carts Made Easy, Affordable

written by Michael Kwan on May 30th, 2008

Whether you are trying to sell e-books or computer software, one of the costlier expenses that you may have to endure is paying for some shopping cart software. There are certainly a lot of options out there, but very few are quite as affordable as SWPal. This shopping cart service starts at just five bucks a month, but as you will find out through this review, it seems to have everything that you need to get started with your online store.

Sell Software and Digital Products

If you are looking to manage inventory and sell physical products, SWPal is not the service for you. Instead, this comprehensive shopping cart service has been designed specifically for vendors of software and other digital products. SWPal can be used to sell e-books, shareware, telephone cards, web templates, and just about anything else that can be delivered digitally via download or email.

The SWPal e-commerce solution not only handles the payment process, but the system also “automates and secures the electronic delivery of files and codes.” All uploads are stored in a secure folder. When customers make a purchase, they are sent a special link where they are able to download the digital product. You can specify the link expiration details based on number of days and number of downloads.

Compatible with Google Checkout and PayPal

No money from the customer ever passes through the hands of SWPal. This is only the shopping cart side of things. All payment is still being processed by your choice of either Google Checkout or PayPal. The money is deposited directly into your account.

The buying process consists of three main steps. First, the customer clicks to make a purchase on your website (link provided by SWPal). Second, they are directed to the payment page on either Google Checkout or PayPal. Third, they are sent to SWPal to complete the purchase and receive their special download link.

SWPal is able to handle both single purchase and subscription modes. There are options to customize shopping cart pages, create bundle discount offers, and offer coupon discount codes. The SWPal system can also be used to automatically calculate VAT and sales taxes as needed. When you upload your digital product, you can apply a tax to selected countries.

How Much Does it Cost?

While other shopping cart services may have fees involved for setting up an account, posting individual digital products, and processing individual payments, SWPal keeps things simple with a very straightforward flat fee pricing schedule.

There are no commissions charged on each transaction made. There are no bandwidth fees and no setup fee. The monthly rate is meant to be all-inclusive and is based solely on the number of products that you would like to sell and the relative size of these products. Plans start at $5 a month, getting you 10 product slots and 50MB of secure storage. The biggest plan is $100 a month and that gets you 1000 product slots and 1000 MB of storage space.

SWPal offers a 15-day free trial, so you can give them a whirl without paying a penny.

Integrated Affiliate Program Too

When you list a digital product through the SWPal e-commerce system, you also have the opportunity to integrate an affiliate program as well. You are ultimately responsible for paying your affiliates. The system is able to generate a tab delimiter file, which can then be used in the PayPal Mass Payment function. You use this to pay your affiliates.

Even the SWPal shopping cart software has an affiliate program of its own. You receive 100% of the first monthly fee paid by any new vendor that you refer. If you cater to the higher end of the market, you can get up to $100 for each referral. That sounds pretty lucrative to me.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR SWPAL SHOPPING CART SERVICE

Thiago Prado said on May 30th, 2008 at 12:13 pm

It seems to be very good. do they have a trial period?

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Nicholas James said on May 30th, 2008 at 12:28 pm

SWPal offers a 15-day free trial, so you can give them a whirl without paying a penny.

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Terry Tay said on May 30th, 2008 at 10:54 pm

Somebody didn’t read the review or even go to the site to see it right on their main page in bold hey Prado :lol:
~Terry

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Codrut Turcanu - AdSenseProfitTips.com said on May 30th, 2008 at 12:49 pm

Michael thanks for sharing useful information.

It seems that it is very simple and straightforward shopping cart.

Cheers,
Codrut Turcanu - “Succeeding Against All Odds!”

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Start Blogging said on May 30th, 2008 at 12:52 pm

Definitely seems a lot simpler (in terms of setting up and pricing) than most Shopping Cart sites.

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Tyler @ Dividend Money said on May 30th, 2008 at 2:50 pm

Hmmm…
It looks a lot like e-junkie.com to me.
I guess I’ll have to take a closer tlook to compare the services.
Thanks for the review JC!
-Tyler

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Stak Loaded: How to make money doing nothing! said on May 30th, 2008 at 2:57 pm

Looks pretty good and definitely affordable.

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wisdom said on May 30th, 2008 at 5:47 pm

Thanks for the review. Looks pretty useful.

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bcxs - Vancouver BC said on May 30th, 2008 at 6:47 pm

Thanks, I’m signing up and giving the trial a try for a site of mine…

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$ Secret Money Blog $ said on May 30th, 2008 at 9:39 pm

Looks nice , good review john!! :grin:

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Mayank Rocks said on May 31st, 2008 at 7:16 am

I agree with you fully.

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Terry Tay said on May 30th, 2008 at 10:56 pm

It definitely is affordable and it is perfect if all you’re dealing in is digital products. I’m going to save the link and check it out further when I have a bit more time. Thanks!
~Terry

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Sha said on May 30th, 2008 at 11:29 pm

Looks like Mals-e, but for digital products only. Mals-e already does this AND you can sell physical products with it, so I wonder how SWPal will do.

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Pradeep said on May 31st, 2008 at 1:56 am

this services looks good and promising but i cant use it though i have a ecom site which deals in Indian ethnic garments and SWpal doesn’t support physical products but m thinking of joining their affiliate program

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Apoorv said on May 31st, 2008 at 3:40 am

Affordable for me :twisted: :shock:

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Make Money Talks said on May 31st, 2008 at 7:33 am

Looks nice for 5$ a month, but i would like to see custom plans offer for bigger sellers!

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Noobpreneur said on May 31st, 2008 at 8:30 am

John,

All looks promising - any drawbacks heard on them? I mean, security holes, inconsistency, etc. - because those things really matter for a shopping cart.

Cheers!

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Bambang W said on May 31st, 2008 at 9:38 am

Looks nice , good review john!! :grin:

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make150aday.com said on May 31st, 2008 at 12:08 pm

Another alternative…

Just buy a shopping cart–there will be one time investment–no month fee nothing of that sort–unlimited products…
yes –$5/month seems good but if you are looking for a long run and want to expand your business its better to have your own shopping cart built (customize as well). If you can not find via Google then you can even hire some coders (guru.com,getafreelancer.com, etc) for affordable rate and have a shopping cart made.
—if you are lazy and happy selling fewer products then you can simply stick with paypal or google checkout–no monthly fee.

Its My view–Someone can disagree with me and I would lilke to see your response–

Thanks.

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Jason said on May 31st, 2008 at 6:46 pm

Then you have to have some programming skills, otherwise even installing the cart will be an issue. Paying for SaaS (Service as a Software) is a good option for people do not want to be a shopping cart programmer by himself.

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make150aday said on May 31st, 2008 at 9:30 pm

yes true–that you need programming skills if you wanna do yourself…but you can even get a shopping cart for cheap if you look around sites like hotscripts.com
or you can even hire programmers for very affordable rate at sites such as guru.com, rentacoder.com, etc.
if you want something very simple then you can simply use paypal or google checkout –no monthly fee.

But if you don’t care about longterm then you can choose services like swpal..

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Online Review said on May 31st, 2008 at 10:14 pm

great review you give explanation to get easy way to shopping. made easy to shopping

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Johan Cyprich said on June 1st, 2008 at 12:07 am

While this service is good for quickly creating a simple e-commerce tool, I think your better off creating your own store using osCommerce. You don’t need any programming skills to use the software “out of the box” and it has a large community behind it supporting it.
If you know enough to install WordPress, you can install osCommerce. The advantage of using your own application is that you have complete control over it. You can select any template or add functionality through extensions.

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Sha said on June 1st, 2008 at 3:38 am

Do people ever look at who is reviewing some of these articles? This wasn’t John.

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Johan Cyprich said on June 1st, 2008 at 9:14 am

I suspect that some of the commenters never even read the review. They’re just posting to get a backlink to their own web site.

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make150aday said on June 1st, 2008 at 11:36 am

you are very right–Like you all of us are here for the same reason . LOL
But nevertheless some of us are making sense with valid points whereas some just write for the sake of it to be in the list of top commentators or for the links..But hey we can not blame them–coz this is one of the best platform to have exposure..

Anyways–just keep trying..
Good luck.

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Johan Cyprich said on June 2nd, 2008 at 7:34 am

That’s true, but I think that when you post a comment which is a good response to the post, you get people’s interest and then they check out your web site which may lead to a regular reader. I’ve got on the Top Commentators list and it never increased traffic to my site. Posting good comments do increase it, however.

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Coolingstar9 said on June 1st, 2008 at 10:49 am

John chow,
This is a programme, new to me, I believe it can work well also.
Thanks for the information.
Have a nice week.

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Thando - Website Development said on June 2nd, 2008 at 2:00 am

That’s absolutely true.

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Apoorv said on June 2nd, 2008 at 5:51 am

I had an online shop of some stuffs, I had used viart for them :)

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Abdul said on June 2nd, 2008 at 8:10 am

What makes it better than eBay?
you can do almost the same stuff at ebay and plus its more user friendly!
Never mind, this was just a review!

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Geiger said on June 4th, 2008 at 8:34 am

If you’re already an established seller, this might be much better than using a different service where you’re given up a percentage of each sale.

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Jennifer McLeod said on June 12th, 2008 at 8:34 am

thanks for these comments - really useful. i am currently exploring shopping carts with my tech support.

Jennifer

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