Recurring Billing/Auto ship module

[Nocturnaloner]

It'd be a shame if this faded, but it may already be too late for me. It's a church client on a small budget who would like to have recurring monthly donations, mostly through Paypal.

[One Pac]

This should be at the core of any eCommerce business that wants to survive long term.

Imagine having a guaranteed income from consumable products that are automatically billed to the customer (If they opt in) and added to your orders to fulfill.

I would like to have recurring billing working for the Securepay payment module and PayPal and compatible with guest checkout plugins like Fast and Easy Checkout, COWAA or COWOA.

I don't know why there is not more interest in this.

[carlwhat]

This should be at the core of any eCommerce business that wants to survive long term.

Imagine having a guaranteed income from consumable products that are automatically billed to the customer (If they opt in) and added to your orders to fulfill.

I would like to have recurring billing working for the Securepay payment module and PayPal and compatible with guest checkout plugins like Fast and Easy Checkout, COWAA or COWOA.

I don't know why there is not more interest in this.

i guess because people do not believe your statement, that this should be the core of any eCommerce business.

in addition, i'm not sure having a recurring billing option with a customer who checks out WITHOUT an account is a good idea.

[One Pac]

I guess its ok for people to believe what they want to, I'm merely supporting the idea. Just means they have to start from 0 sales every month.

They could easily phone or email to have you remove the recurring billing option or there could be a link on the monthly order confirmation email to opt out, something built in to the module.

[Curtis N]

Sorry for bumping an old thread but I have a client looking to add this functionality to her site.

Have any of you found a solution that will add the ability to auto ship and auto bill on a recurring basis?

Ideally the recurring interval would be client defined in some way.

Thanks for any help or insight anyone can offer.

[One Pac]

econcepts has a working module.

[HeleneWallis]

Anything new on this? I have set up a more or less working system for my customers through Paypal's subscription service, but it's not integrated into Zencart in any way. I just provide a pathway to Paypal from my Zencart product pages. My Paypal mobile app alerts me any time someone places an order, and we keep track of subscriptions manually as well. But it's a temporary and hokey solution. It should be a core part of Zencart.

[Curtis N]

@HeleneWallis,
While I do not have a direct answer/solution for Zen, I did ultimately find a solution for my client.

After months of searching, reading, and going back and forth with different programmers looking at solutions for this, in the end the client and I decided they were better off moving to a different platform. I like Zen but this was a functionality this client really needed and every solution I found either did not meet their needs or was poorly maintained causing compatibility and potential maintenance issues.

I am a programmer so we did explore creating a plugin to add the needed functionalities but the time investment in creating the plugin and then supporting it long-term was outweighed by the time investment to migrate to a new platform that had ready support for the needed functionalities.

All that said, it has been a couple of years since I looked into a solution for this for Zen. There may be something more viable now but I doubt it. Based on everything I found it seemed to me at the time that there simply was not enough desire for this functionality in the Zen community to support the time required to create and maintain a plugin for this functionality.

If you have any interest in the specifics of what I did for this client feel free to PM me and we can go from there.

[HeleneWallis]

Thanks. I've looked at moving to a different platform, but as aggravating as Zencart can be sometimes, it does allow me to make changes. I'm a long time programmer, though my skill with PHP is only at a beginner's level. Looks like I'm going to have to improve that. I will PM you though.

I did find a merchant online whose website says he's using Zencart, and a look at the source shows that he is using the responsive classic template. He is providing autoshipping and I've emailed him to ask for details. If you're interested in looking at the site or asking the owner about it, it's at https://inteligentvitaminc.com/

I haven't heard back from him yet. I suspect he may be storing credit card info in his system, and I don't want to do that. So his solution may not work for me anyway.

[badarac]

I made this work on a client site several years ago. IIRC it was based on the authorize.net arb plugin. It's still working on 1.5.7b. I can try and root out what it took to make it work if it will help.