E-Commerce and Subscriptions

E-Commerce is big business on the web with more and more software as a service options cropping up daily in a multitude of offerings and points of integration. It seems flexibility to integrate is core to business functionality and speed to delivery. Restful services are making strides towards building a more resourceful and accessible web. However, the web is still a very disenchanted place with a lot to be done in terms of linking and connecting concepts and things in a meaningful way. GoodRelations is a vocabulary that takes ontologies for E-Commerce a step further towards knowledge discovery and metarepresentation. 

Online subscription services are starting to make inroads towards a more barrier free integration for E-Commerce businesses with more flexible options for billing and transaction processing. One key aspect to note towards deciding on a integration provider is to always try to check their security policies and how PCI compliant are their services. A few key players that have sprung up with interesting options are below:

Stripe - very simple pricing model with no added fees making it cost-effective and easy to use
Zuora - providing added support for taxation, metrics, currencies and salesforce integration
Chargify - added benefits for coupons, free-trial periods, recurring/one-time transactions and refunds
Spreedly - payments platform with comprehensive services also provided with heroku add-on
Recurly - providing a full subscription commerce with analytics and a fast integration process
Braintree - easy to manage API with reasonable pricing with international payments support