I use stripe for my merchant account and HIGHLY recommend it. It has none of the hassles that typically come with these and it’s specifically designed for the web. I’ve used it for 3 years w/o any sort of problem at all. There are also no minimums so it’s very friendly for new businesses.
In general a merch account is a good idea if you want to accept more than PayPal.
I use FOXYCART for my shopping cart. It’s a bit different than most shopping carts in that it’s designed NOT TO BE your website, but to be dropped into whatever website you already have.
This can be useful since many shopping carts try to be an entire Content Management System but it’s hard to do this and handle orders well at the same time.
My $0.02.
If you want a full-stack shopping cart that does your whole website for you I’ve heard Shopify is a good way to go although I’ve never used it myself.
Owner of
Health Kismet .
Open to answering any and all questions.