2Checkout closing hosting companies down

[yggdrasil]

There is a topic about this on Web Hosting Talk.

 

Long story short, 2Checkout is closing my account down after more than 10 years. They send me an mail last week saying Cyberlockers account are not allowed. I never sold anything similar to that. We use WHMCS and all we sell is hosting account for websites.

 

I tried to email, I contacted them on phone, the lied several times. When I busted them, they send another email saying the previous email contained wrong information since at first they said it was Visa and Mastercard policies which we know is a big fat lie. In their email they suggested an UK merchant company which after Googling I found has a long history of very fraudulent activities online so I will surely not go with them. Not to mention they don't work with WHMCS and their websites does not give me any trust either.

 

The fact is 2CO is shutting hosting accounts down without a valid logical reason. Some person they told is because he was selling cloud services. Another because he was selling backup services and another one they told him its because he had streaming. There is no point to argue, they will just classify your account as cyberlocker if you happen to sell hosting (they now updated their website and added that term to the forbidden list). Not everyone is target. How or why I don't know. No warning either. Just an email saying o 15 September your account will be closed.

 

For the record, I had 3 or 4 chargebacks in 10 years, my volume while not big (mostly PayPal took their business away) was not minimal either. So its not for having a bad history with them. I don't know why or how they are deciding some specific hosting companies are not welcome. We use WHMCS, we have a EV SSL, we have PCI scan, the company is real, with great support, etc. Its not a fly night business. Our reputation with 2CO was basically perfect and so is in the hosting industry.

 

The only reason I can think is because the website was not in English. This could make sense. Most people I see on Twitter or in other sites complaining are from outside the US. Some are in the UK, some in Germany, some in Italy, some in other countries. This is the only thing that matches so far. All they accounts they are closing down, none seems to be a US hosting business which is ironic since if you are a US based business, 2CO is the worse option available, you have tons of better merchant accounts in the US, cheaper and with better support and integration. 2CO is a third party account, so you can't do things like a real merchant in terms of recurring charges.

 

So based on this I assume, that they are closing hosting companies in other countries. I told them WHMCS is listed on their partner page, I talked on the phone for an 30 minutes. They just decided they don't want my business anymore. I consider their decision to be unfair, in particular after sending false information by email before last week. They never replied to my emails either.

 

This is a BIG RED warning for anyone considering using 2Checkout with WHMCS. They gave me basically a few days to find another merchant account, since I'm not American its not like I can just sign up with Stripe or something that requires social security number. I would very much appreciate if someone here can suggest me an alternative where I can move my business, otherwise I will have to close down since not having the option to accept credit cards and only accepting PayPal is going to kill my business that relies mostly on foreign orders.

 

I honestly need someones help here to get one approved fast. The reason I post this here, is because I need one that works nicely with WHMCS. If I can't automated this with WHMCS, there is no point to sign up. I also need one that allows most countries. This means, while I do accept PayPal, PayPal is not open in all countries in the world, reason why some people paid with 2checkout. My customers are mostly foreign (if you are in the US).

 

I have read many horrors stories from 2Checkout.com and I actually always defended them. I always suspected it was because people where selling fishy things or had disputes or chargebacks. Now they are closing me down, and all I did was sell cPanel hosting accounts, never a complain, almost 0 fraud, I always cached them first, and if any when trough 2CO (maybe one a year) I cancelled and refunded it immediately and like I said I had maybe 4 chargeback in 10 years. I was a PERFECT 2Checkout customer with a great billing history, I never asked them for support or even send my customers to them, so I hardly was costing them anything. They where making nice money out of my account. Maybe they want people with chargeback so they can charge them expensive dispute fees, maybe the reason is that I didn't had ones so they made only money from the transactions fees. I don't know the WHY, but I feel destroyed to be honest.

 

Since WHMCS is still giving 2CO accounts to new customers, I would seriously advise them to find another partner. And yes, they are closing mostly UK cloud companies as well.

 

If someone can point me out somewhere I will be eternally grateful for this.

[yggdrasil]

Checking the payment gateways page in WHMCS, things don't look great for me or anyone else for that matter using third party merchants.

 

Only 2CO, Gate2Shop and PlanetAuthorize seems to support the options recurring and refunds. I'm not sure if the page is not updated, but without recurring or at least the same options 2CO has, WHMCS will be very limited in use for billing hosting plans. Not that recurring in 2CO works great, (you can't change the amounts) but I would expect at least the same limited basic options 2checkout has from other providers...

 

[sentq]

Checking the payment gateways page in WHMCS, things don't look great for me or anyone else for that matter using third party merchants.

 

Only 2CO, Gate2Shop and PlanetAuthorize seems to support the options recurring and refunds. I'm not sure if the page is not updated, but without recurring or at least the same options 2CO has, WHMCS will be very limited in use for billing hosting plans. Not that recurring in 2CO works great, (you can't change the amounts) but I would expect at least the same limited basic options 2checkout has from other providers...

 

why don't you use PayPal or Stripe as alternative?

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

http://www.whmcs.com/partners/evo-payments/

[yggdrasil]

why don't you use PayPal or Stripe as alternative?

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

http://www.whmcs.com/partners/evo-payments/

 

Because like I said before I'm not American. None of those services lets you sign up without a social security number.

 

I do have PayPal, but for PayPal payments, not PayPal Express for credit cards which have the same requirements.

[Damo]

You don't need a Social Security Number to use Stripe. We are an Australian business and use Stripe for all payments.

[yggdrasil]

You don't need a Social Security Number to use Stripe. We are an Australian business and use Stripe for all payments.

 

Stripe works with WHMCS? Its not listed in the website. What information/documentation did they requested on sign up?

[sentq]

Stripe work with WHMCS, there is no official module/support from WHMCS until today, but many WHMCS users use it already!

 

you can find Free and paid versions of Stripe Module in WHMCS appstore and here in forum.

[yggdrasil]

Stripe work with WHMCS, there is no official module/support from WHMCS until today, but many WHMCS users use it already!

 

you can find Free and paid versions of Stripe Module in WHMCS appstore and here in forum.

 

Thank you guys, but what are their requirements for signing up?

 

I mean, I don't have much time until 15 September.

[sentq]

it's easy to signup http://www.stripe.com , the requirements is little different based on your business country (US business need to enter SSN other countries don't)

[Alex - Arvixe]

Sorry to hear about your experiences with them. In which country are you based in? Stripe is available in the US and many other EU countries (visit stripe.com and a listed of supported countries will appear at the bottom of the page).

 

I would also recommend Stripe as an alternative, the module provided by serverping.net is awesome and is free.

 

Now I could very well be wrong with this but from what I can tell, WHMCS isn't actually a partner of 2co anymore. It seems to just be an affiliate link so WHMCS will get a commission thanks to your business with them. This was different before when 2co had a $45 - $50 signup fee and the WHMCS partnership waived that fee though 2co doesn't charge this anymore.

 

If Stripe isn't available in your region then you could also look into skrill.com.

Edited August 18, 2015 by Alex - Arvixe

[yggdrasil]

Sorry to hear about your experiences with them. In which country are you based in? Stripe is available in the US and many other EU countries (visit stripe.com and a listed of supported countries will appear at the bottom of the page).

 

I would also recommend Stripe as an alternative, the module provided by serverping.net is awesome and is free.

 

Now I could very well be wrong with this but from what I can tell, WHMCS isn't actually a partner of 2co anymore. It seems to just be an affiliate link so WHMCS will get a commission thanks to your business with them. This was different before when 2co had a $45 - $50 signup fee and the WHMCS partnership waived that fee though 2co doesn't charge this anymore.

 

If Stripe isn't available in your region then you could also look into skrill.com.

 

Thank you. I will go with Stripe or Braintree. Not sure yet.

[easyhosting]

I found that you could never use 2c0 as an alternative provider as if you had no transactions in a 4 month period they would change your account to a buyer account without notice, so in effect the force you to use them as your main provider

[yggdrasil]

Does Stripe allow to update recurring subscriptions?

 

Example, a customer buys a 5$ a month plan. He has to enter the CC only once and Stripe will bill after that each month. But if the customers does an upgrade, will I have to cancel the 5$ subscription and he has to enter his CC again for the new one?

 

Or will Stripe allow me to charge a different amount each month? I ask this because for metered or usage services, the amount to charge can be different each month.

[easyhosting]

Does Stripe allow to update recurring subscriptions?

 

Example, a customer buys a 5$ a month plan. He has to enter the CC only once and Stripe will bill after that each month. But if the customers does an upgrade, will I have to cancel the 5$ subscription and he has to enter his CC again for the new one?

 

Or will Stripe allow me to charge a different amount each month? I ask this because for metered or usage services, the amount to charge can be different each month.

 

If the amounts vary each month then a recurring subscriptions should not be used as a subscription is where the payment is the same each payment cycle

[Daniel]

Does Stripe allow to update recurring subscriptions?

 

Example, a customer buys a 5$ a month plan. He has to enter the CC only once and Stripe will bill after that each month. But if the customers does an upgrade, will I have to cancel the 5$ subscription and he has to enter his CC again for the new one?

 

Or will Stripe allow me to charge a different amount each month? I ask this because for metered or usage services, the amount to charge can be different each month.

 

The stripe modules I've seen use token based charging methods so the amount can change month to month and they'd be billed normally.

[yggdrasil]

Yes, but with 2CO or PayPal, subscriptions are fixed. You cannot change them. You need to cancel them and create a new one. This is amazingly cumbersome for a customer which needs to pay again, in the case of 2CO he needs to enter this CC again and create a new subscription. This also creates troubles with late fees as you can't change the amounts.

 

I understand this is because that is how third party merchants works for security reasons, the customer has to agree to a subscription upfront for that amount only. With real merchants you actually have the CC details stored, so you can just send any amount you want to the card.

 

From what I understand Stripe is a token on (somewhere in the middle?). But I'm not sure where that falls in terms of flexibility vs using something like authorize.net. I know you are not storing the CC details but they do, this is actually good for security reasons but I don't know how they handle the subscriptions or recurring charges.

 

Do they store the CC details and you can charge a different amount for that CC/user each month or does the user have to Re-enter all this credit card details and create a new subscription?

 

If Stripe holds the CC and lets you bill a different amount each month for that user, then of course I would not need a subscription. Actually you would not need subscriptions for anything as you could just use WHMCS to bill them each month (or based on the period), recurring or not. This includes different amounts.

 

Now officially WHMCS does not support Stripe, so even if Stripe allows something in their API it would still depend on the third party module. The perfect way would not to use subscriptions at all on Stripe. Just let WHMCS charge the credit cards, which means different amounts for different customers on different dates depending on their services, products, invoices, etc.

 

Since the customers does not actually store any financial details on the local WHMCS database, I'm not sure if this will work or not.

[easyhosting]

I am sure http://forum.whmcs.com/member.php?32952-ModulesGarden has a module/addon that allows you to change subscription amounts

[countrywesterndj]

We were a 2CO customer for over 6 years and they also shut us down with only 30 days notice. We contacted them to say were not doing any sort of cyberlocking. Their attitude is terrible. They wouldn't ever listen. I now will not recommend 2CO to anybody and spread the word of their terrible service.

 

We started using STIPE and got set up within minutes. So far, so good. They have an iPhone app which sends you transactions / signups to your iPhone plus emails. They pay out after only a few days. 2CO on the other hand held the money for up to 2 weeks.

 

There are several modules that can be used to interface WHMCS with STRIPE. We have tested several and like the one from ServerPing the best. It is free. You should spend $15 and sign up for their yearly support. They answer within a day. Some of the others still haven't answered after a week. Here is a link to ServerPing's module:

https://www.serverping.net/clients/cart.php?gid=3

[woho]

You can check for paymentwall.com I'm moving my 2Co customers to them. They have a module for WHMCS and going to update soon. The best thing is that they accept over 100 payment options.

[rockhost]

Just wanted to add to the list of WHMCS users being ditched by 2Checkout. Whatever!