Horror stories you may have heard aside, I've setup PayPal's website payments pro for many clients, with tremendous success. Never had any trouble with them, and my PayPal rep has always been reachable by phone and very helpful.
Additionally, I've used their recurring payments product (extra $30/month tacked on to Website Payments Pro). Its also really easy. You just send the transaction ID from a previous payment instead of the CC data , and PayPal looks it up in their vault.
Only shitty part with PayPal is you have to offer payment via paypal.com as an option ("Express Checkout"), which means you get to code an extra checkout flow! But maybe you were going to offer PayPal as an option anyway, so that's moot.
Authorize.net is great too, especially if you already have a merchant account setup with your bank. Their API is also super easy, and supported out of the box by most shopping carts.
I've chosen not to use Recurly or Spreedly. Handling money is a bitch, I want a partner with deep domain knowledge who lives and breathes payments. Keep in mind if you store your billing data with one of these guys, and they close up shop - you're fucked. Do you want to depend that heavily on a business with no 800 number and < 10 staff?
At the end of the day though, you'll have to make the call yourself. You've got no reason to believe me, the blog posts you've read, or anyone else you don't know personally. This is your business, your life - you can't just punt this one to the crowd.
Only shitty part with PayPal is you have to offer payment via paypal.com as an option ("Express Checkout"), which means you get to code an extra checkout flow! But maybe you were going to offer PayPal as an option anyway, so that's moot.
As I remember it, you also have to have a direct Paypal link on your cart page (if you have one) - that bypasses any checkout process you might have (though you can redirect them back for address etc after). A bit of a pain all told!
Additionally, I've used their recurring payments product (extra $30/month tacked on to Website Payments Pro). Its also really easy. You just send the transaction ID from a previous payment instead of the CC data , and PayPal looks it up in their vault.
Only shitty part with PayPal is you have to offer payment via paypal.com as an option ("Express Checkout"), which means you get to code an extra checkout flow! But maybe you were going to offer PayPal as an option anyway, so that's moot.
Authorize.net is great too, especially if you already have a merchant account setup with your bank. Their API is also super easy, and supported out of the box by most shopping carts.
I've chosen not to use Recurly or Spreedly. Handling money is a bitch, I want a partner with deep domain knowledge who lives and breathes payments. Keep in mind if you store your billing data with one of these guys, and they close up shop - you're fucked. Do you want to depend that heavily on a business with no 800 number and < 10 staff?
At the end of the day though, you'll have to make the call yourself. You've got no reason to believe me, the blog posts you've read, or anyone else you don't know personally. This is your business, your life - you can't just punt this one to the crowd.