general question about zencart

I am trying to add something to a camp website where the user can pay for their camp fees (they can choose from two or three different fee amounts) over the internet, say with a Credit Card or with Paypal. Is Zen Cart right for me? Or should I just use Paypal to accept credit cards as well? If I were to use Zen Cart, I still would have to sign up with a credit card gateway service, right?

You can use Paypal with Zen Cart. It comes preinstalled with ZC and you just turn it on in the admin if you want to use it. If you're in the US, Paypal will allow people to pay using a CC without having a Paypal account. I'm not sure they've instituted that outside the US yet.

Zen Cart may be overkill for what you want to do just now, but if the camp starts selling other products (say camp shirts and hats), expanding the cart will be a snap. ZC should be able to do what you want with the fees.

I only use paypal and google checkout on my zen cart. It works great!

Google checkout requires an ssl, but paypal dosn't.

Correction, paypal IPN doesn't require SSL, but Paypal Express may require SSl.

And google checkout isn't charging for the service until next January 1st.

...if you sign up for PayPal's promotion you may be "fee free" too ...

thanks everyone! i think i will stick with paypal until zen cart is absolutely necessary for me...

Why don't you consider playing around with ZC in the meantime? You may discover it makes your life easier. Integrating Paypal to accept payments is a snap and you won't have to create all those "add to cart" buttons. Been there... done that.