Comparing Payment Processing Controls

If you’re considering using a control (class library) to process payments on your ecommerce site, this article will help you compare the Authorize.Net components available. If you’re still trying to decide whether to use a control or use Authorize.Net’s direct web access, see our article on Why Use an Ecommerce Component?

You can categorize payment processing controls by their source:

• Open-source components
• By-products
• Developer-designed components

The following sections describe the three types of components available. For a summary, see our table comparing the payment processing controls available for Authorize.Net.

Open Source Components

Open-source components are what you’d expect: controls developed by open-source entities. (These controls are usually also spin-offs, so see the By-Product Component section below for relevant information.) Open source components are usually free. They also benefit from the contributions of multiple individual developers and may have a very active community around them.

They suffer from the usual problems with open-source software, namely a lack of adequate support and documentation, and greatly varying levels of quality. When considering an open-source component, it pays to do thorough research: review the documentation (if any) carefully, look for reviews and comments from developers who have used the component, and assess what kind of support you can expect from the community.

By-Product Components

By-product components are ones which were originally built as part of a larger package, typically a shopping cart or similar system, or were built by a consulting firm as part of client systems. The main problem with By-Products components is that they were designed for use by the vendor and its developer(s) as part of their products. These components are usually simplistic, limited, and poorly documented. For example, they may provide only one object chocked full of properties or fail to provide stateless objects, requiring your code to check what state the object is in prior to accessing it. The main advantage of spin-off controls is that they are cheap, typically under thirty dollars.

Developer Designed Components

Unlike by-products, developer-designed components are designed from the ground-up for their purpose and are designed to be used by a wide range of developers. As such, they are generally of higher-quality and have the kind of functionality and design quality that programmers expect.

Developer-designed components usually have good error-handling and may have added functionality beyond that provided by the payment gateway’s API. Vendors of developer-designed components have the incentive to provide good quality documentation, sample code and support. Their sales may depend upon it. Of course, developer-designed components are typically more expensive than by-products, ranging anywhere from $100-$200.

Compare Controls for Authorize.Net

The following table shows a feature comparison of some of the components available for Authorize.Net. This side-by-side comparison will help you evaluate the controls available to you.

* Certified by Authorize.Net

+ Recurring Billing