Longtime CCBill webmaster thinking of switching to Epoch - thoughts?
 

So I've used CCBill as my main paysite processor for years. Their issues are well-documented - dated design, slow as molasses backend that *never* gets fixed, slow-loading signup forms, stats issues, etc. Pretty sure most of us can agree they seem to be doing the bare minimum to keep things running.

However, in my experience they *always* pay promptly - out of countless payments have never had an issue with this nor incorrect amounts, etc. And they recently launched a new stats system, customer service is fairly responsive (to answer if not resolve), supposedly they're even updating their stock signup forms in the near future.

Then I look at Epoch - their design is reasonably current, they seem to be proactive about improving services (PayPal pilot and such), most webmasters here speak highly of them, you get a sense across the board they put forth the outward effort that CCBill lacks.

I'm leaning towards switching. Would really prefer to avoid it due to the initial costs in an anemic market, not to mention the general pain in the ass involved. But I'm looking to hear from webmasters who've used both companies, hear the pros & cons of each. Are there any solid reasons *not* to switch to Epoch as primary? Are there any non-obvious flaws that might become apparent after the change?

If you have a reasonable turn over then you can get your own merchant account and basically bypass both ccbill and epoch. You'll save a fortune on charges.

You won't regret it.

Bare minimum you should have both and cascade.

I would go in the following order:
merchant account
(if volume allows, another merchant account)
Epoch
CCBill

With a merchant account and a good gateway as your primary, your secondary will not get a whole lot of action. And that's fine, more money for you!

Sign up for Epoch and use them in an internal CCBill cascade. Best way to get an idea how it might work out without changing too much.

http://www.ccbill.com/cs/manuals/CCB...e_Ft_Epoch.pdf

They both have drawbacks...
IMHO The worst about CCbill is their F**** stats (even if they're adding flex, I hope it's gonna be way better)...
The worst about Epoch is "Credits", when a surfer complains about not being able to login, Epoch just credit the sale, they don't look any further, CCbill sends you an email stating this issue, so you can resolve it and keep the sale, Epoch does not...

I'd rather have "the bare minimum to keep things running" and get paid properly and timely, and have a very easy to run affiliate program, that my affiliates can be sure to be paid, than to switch in mid-stream...

Good advice :2 cents:

Absolutely! You will have ultimate control ( even down to how customer service handles your members, scrubbing, money saving etc.
We can show you the differences and even if your volume is low or you are a startup, we can assist.

Also, with your own merchant account, you only pay the Visa and Mastercard registrations fee once, regardless of if you use the same merchant account with another gateway as a backup.

Please contact NETbilling sales for more information or post questions here.

P.s. if you Are in the US, you also get paid DAILY. Like that?

Mitch

I recommend switching over to epoch from ccbill. The support is leaps and bounds better. Almost every time i've had to speak to ccbill's support lately (at least the last 3 or 4 experiences with them) they've been for the most part very unhelpful. I often feel like they are trying to get rid of me rather then help me. It might be different with clients that do large volumes on there - who knows - but i'm just a developer trying to get my client's sites working and if they are doing large volumes or not is not up to me...

Thank you to those with good words for us here.

Deltav, if you have any questions about our services, feel free to contact me anytime.

I highly recommend doing your own A-B testing. Certainly if your paysite does any volume the fees can be justified to have a solid 2nd processor to run a cascade.

Why not run epoch for a month and then on month 2 switch back to ccbill. You can prove the answer to yourself. Of course there are always other factors like drop in traffic and or where that traffic comes from. But I have talked to a lot of sites about this and no one has told me that it wasn't worth doing. I can tell you from nats emails that say which processor is being used you should give it a try.

If your looking for better stats then check out the guy I quoted here. He has a nice system with some great options.

:2 cents::2 cents:

I know I have been hard on webmasters about religiously using CCbill, but I am not critical so much of CCbill as I am of webmasters that think using them is the best and only way to do biz. CCbill is a good company run by solid people, and Epoch is a good company run by solid people.

I agree with Sly, the best call is to have your own merch account. However, we use Epoch and CCbill too; however, I would still agree that I would take Epoch over CCbill for a number of reasons.

Regarding their quick trigger on cancels/credits, I think that works way more to your favor than to your disadvantage so I don't see that as a drawback. People come back to sites that earn their trust.

Epoch has the one-click feature which I think is very competitive with CCbills cross selling features.

Most importantly, I think Epoch continues to evolve and stay cutting edge whereas if CCbill changes anything then everyone complains so imo they are locked into what worked yesterday instead of what will make things better tomorrow. I think that is a risky approach to remaining current. :2 cents:

Thanks all.

Yeah, I may give Epoch a trial run. Just wanted to get as much feedback as possible. My paysite is a smallish-in-the-grand-scheme site run by a single person, and in this tight market in 2013 I've been trying to be veerrry conservative with the budget. The initial $1250 or whatever VISA/MC fees are doable if annoying, but I want to make sure to not throw that money at a lateral move or even a step back if anything unforseen arises. A year ago I would've made the move without blinking, now am being far more cautious.

Run to Paycom, don't walk. You are losing money every day you don't. Paycom (epoch) has better through put, better products and billing support.

Unless you get your own merch account Paycom is the way to go

Epoch is a really helpful company but so is CCBill if you go through your rep there.

If you're looking for minimal disruption I would go with Epoch in the CCBill cascade. You always have the option of swapping out who's Primary tho you will be using CCBill's system.

I would also take into consideration the % of European sales you do, what with Epoch's new PayPal pilot program in place. But ultimately why make the switch? You just want a differant set of issues to fret over? LOL Both companies are fine and good partners. :)

From an affiliate perspective (I've also owned a pay site with Globill before but that was long ago) I have seen many smaller programs switch (either to Epoch or full on Nats or MPA3) and then go back or have money problems and close. But I've also seen some who stuck with it and claimed less denials.

If I were you I'd be careful about some of the advice you get. Many have an agenda. I would use the search feature for a day or two to find others somewhat like you in size who made this choice and then follow their posts and records of them for a while to see how it all worked out for them. Were they happy and still in business a year later or did they go bust shortly thereafter?

Exactly. This was why I wrote a post on it - hoping some webmasters would chime in with their experiences, rather than having to play detective with old threads. I know there are plenty on here who are selling you something, or have a personal axe to grind or get their ego wrapped up on taking some position, just trying to sift thru that bullshit and get a clearer picture.

I wouldn't expect to go "bust" after the switch, just trying to see if the ROI justifies the initial cost outlay and the work of switching over. Or if anyone's got mixed feelings after using Epoch, etc.

In the very past I had a few people who mailed asking ccbill form since "I trust putting my credit card only in ccbill", but since a few years no more; I would say Epoch is known as much or more. Perhaps as the biller for mfc and few other cam sites who outperformed the member area sites with ccbill.

Unless you are very small volume, why would you not get your own merchant account?

I have come to the conclusion most think ccbill, or epoch, or any other third party biller are a merchant account. People also don't seem to think that it is possible to track their affiliates, themselves, unless they pay a lot of money.

The mpa3-powered epochstats is light years beyond the ccbill affiliate system. Problem is there is always going to be that big chunk of webmasters that prefer to push ccbill-only programs.

Cutting your own checks? No reason to use ccbill at all :2 cents:

If you don't need the affiliate program, Segpay is also amazing to work with :thumbsup

I hear ya. We have so many merchants using NATS and MPA, Affiliatetracking etc and cut their own checks or use Webmasterchecks and save thousands in fees every month.

Mitch

That's a good advice. See what converts better choose as first in the cascade. More money should make up for any "old design" trouble.

I never heard anyone say what is the minimal volume... "very small volume" is very abstract... give us an idea... interesting.

Am I the only one seeing bears on the road here? What if... epoch converts better for him so he chooses to put epoch first in cascade. BUT all his affiliates are registered at ccbill because that was his initial processor. All money comes in at Epoch (except only a few denials that are redirected to 2nd processor)... how do the ccbillprogram affiliates get paid? Since there is hardly no money coming in at his ccbill-account anymore...

Sliiing.com handles that issue.

But who pays sliiing then?

(Damn... you need to be a fckng graduate master engineer in todays bizz).

Yeah, then you add another company, another system, another product to deal with. There's something to be said for minimizing the # of external companies you rely on to do something as essential as processing payments.

I want to say something positive, but I 100% disagree with that.

You are relying on CCBill for everything. You lose all control over your scrub, denials, even your surfer. You are sending your surfer off your site, the second you do that, you lost all control. You are paying them likely 15.5% so you can lose control.

Does your site use a script for members area? How about the tour, was that a script? Did that cause any loss of control?

What is happening is for years people have been telling you how to process and I simply think the majority of people in adult DON'T THINK an alternative exists.
And the alternative is NOT using Epoch in lieu of CCBill or vice versa. The alternative is NOT to pay (4) third party billers 1K each year and then cascade all over the place.

Anybody that makes anything in adult and has these questions, feel free to email me.

You pay your affilliates. You also pay sliiing.
Or you can pay sliiing to pay your affiliates.

I'm talking $50 per month to track all your sales and affiliate sales. I want to be very clear about this next point:

If you have control over tracking your sales... I.e. a postback location which will work for ANY billing method, you are no longer tied down to anyone. You have the ability to process sales with anyone and no longer have to worry about contacting your affiliates and asking to swap out links.

To answer your question about money to get a real merchant account, price can be from 100k/month to being a startup. It is all about who you know which will set that price.

If I could change one business decision I have made for SpookyCash (which still has CCBill tours for CCBill affiliates and Epoch tours for Epoch affiliates, with each cascading), I think it would be that I would never have migrated from CCBill to Epoch. If you'd like to talk to me off GFY, feel free to drop me a line spookycash [at] gothicsluts.com

CCBill is very stable, reliable, has a great team behind it, and i had the pleasure of being a part of that team for 13 years...there is a lot of smart people, resources and options ccbill has at their disposal to keep things running smoothly and to make sure the payments go out, something really devastating would have to happen for that to change

When you look back around 2005, when mpa3/nats started growing, ccbills hold on porn affiliates started to weaken and the option of 3rd party affiliate systems + check companies unfortunately didnt help matters any

whats interesting is that you never realize how different it is managing a small, lets say 10 person company vs. one that has almost 400 people until youve been there and back, and there again....back in the day, it was very cool in order to have an idea, and see it setup and released 2 weeks later, very fulfilling...once you add things like layers of management, macro priorities, internal politics, etc it gets much harder and complicated to be efficient

your motivation/productivity goes up tremendously in the former situation imo

We setup startups all the time and can get a merchant account for them if US based. I do think however, that if you are over $1000 per month in processing volume, that is a good target.

If you simply look at the savings, for a site processing $25,000 per month, the typical fees including processing and customer service using NETbilling and a merchant account will typically be $2000, as opposed to what you will pay the average 3rd party processors at $3750, thus saving $1750 per month. That doesn't even take into account how you can increase conversions by fully customizing the forms, controlling your scrubbing on a per site basis, offering cancellation upsells and many other factors, including getting paid daily!

Mitch

So you can't have your own merchant account if not US based? Or is that only for startups?

That $2000... how is that build? What amount of that is for processing fees and what amount for the NetBilling customer service and what exactly is that service and can you choose to use or not use that service?

Well... the saving of $1750 is not much if you consider you have to take care yourself of
handling nats, nats montly fee (which increases when your volume increases) paying affiliates yourself (the time it takes to do so), etc... I'm not sure if i can see the profit... Not trying to break your balls here... I'm very interested in knowing more about this... but i just don't see the big advantage yet.

Thanks a lot for your time and input informing us!

I would love to use Epoch, but I'm Canadian and they can't work with Canadians.

CCBill added support for Canadians some years ago, I hope that Epoch is also working towards a solution soon.

Does NetBilling process for companies in Canada?

Here is a chart, one of my sites. Months were from March of 2010 to January of 2012. I didn't keep the chart going because the site leveled out to this day. This was a site billing on a third party biller, switching to merchant account, using whatever techniques I thought appropriate. Notice the few months downward spiral prior to merchant account, this was a dying site.

http://www.judoporn.com/images/merchantchart.jpg

Now if you think your site might be stuck in stages 7 through 11 and want to step it up, I will certainly, at the very least, give some pointers.

I am at a stage where I have seen the power of billing, and when setup properly, it can literally change your business and your life. Please keep in mind... it is not as simple as setting up a merchant account. It is every facet of billing, re-billing, emailing, what your are selling, how you are selling, what your pages look like, where those pages are located, etc. etc.

I am focusing on everything that relates to those final steps to making the sale. Just wanted to provide a graph of what *YOUR* site sales could look like when done right.

p.s. I'm not talking directly at *YOU*... you as, in general. You are just asking the questions ;)

Thanks a lot for your sharings:thumbsup That's pretty intredesting:) Food to think about............................................. ..................................

Hi,

We have merchants with merchant accounts all over the world. However, the offshore banks that we place our merchants at typically want 6 months of processing history at least and 10k minimum.

Our customer service is completely optional. NETbilling fees are based on what you want to use that we offer.

The $1750 was just an example. As Beaner has pointed out, having control over many aspects of the processing, forms, tours, cancellation upsells and discounts, etc. can greatly increase your profit and your savings.

I urge you to call and get a walkthrough of our system and get all of your questions answered.

Mitch

Hi,

We process for many Canadian merchants, who establish and EU or US presence especially.

Mitch

Using NATS to handle the cascade and using it for reporting will help you to find inefficiency and deficiency in your program. The rolls are great for affiliates. You can have ccbill affiliates still get paid via ccbill should they choose to.

WOW! Those numbers on that graph speak volumes!

I suppose for many its hard to fathom such a *HUGE* increase in revenue simply by replacing inefficient billing with real billing suited to benefit the actual *individual* merchant.

Great stuff Beaner!

Hopefully many will be emailing you to take advantage of this opportunity!

To avoid having my Credit History destroyed if things go bad, does TMF sound familiar to anybody? Risk it too high and the record will stay with your name for LOOONG TIME! :helpme

CCBill, Epoch, Netbilling, Segpay etc are all excellent. We're lucky enough to work with all of them and the reps of each company are not only professional but have gone out of their way to help us.

Regardless of who you move to, never burn any bridges.

How would your credit history be destroyed through payment processing, I'm not totally clear on this?

The rules are the same with or without a merchant account. You can get on MATCH regardless of using 3rd party or having your own merchant account. The key is to run and honest business that doesn't rip off the surfers and have a processor behind you that gives you all of the oils you need to be successful and minimize fraud.

Thanks Mark - looking forward to seeing you in Montreal

I've run them both since 2005.

I'll change them around but try and keep them at about 50/50 each. I was around for the Globill collapse and that sucked so I don't want all my cookies in the same jar.


Dave