There’s a really good chance, this won’t be a decision you have to make – good for you. Most marketers I know, sell their digital content via a third party system like 1ShoppingCart, eJunkie or Clickbank. If you ever wished you could drop that monthly payment, perhaps you might reconsider after reading this post. With that said, I’m writing this not to convince people to stay nor switch to a third party system, merely to pose the question to all – a question that we have perhaps never worried too much about until now.

Why now? Because, in the last 6 months (and I predict going on into the future), we’ve seen more hacking and site breaches. These are beyond the normal defacing and uploading of malicious content. Those are bad enough but this is even more scary, ranging from domain hijacking to outright stealing of customer databases.

These types of attacks, rob us of our brand, business, credibility and trust. Things that are much tougher to fix than cleaning up a site and getting it back on into the search engines. They also leave small businesses very vulnerable to law suits. Just one case could end our business and perhaps leave us in financial ruin which is why it’s important to set your company up with the right structure. That however is another huge topic for another day.

Given this scenario, I’m actually re-considering a 3rd party shopping cart.

True, it is another monthly expense but having customer information stolen from them vs. stolen from you is a huge difference. You may not be off the hook completely but depending how the breach occurs, customers could even be sympathetic. Have information stolen from you and there is absolutely no room for any excuses. Zero. At this point, we are only talking about data like name, email address and perhaps a telephone number. Not about storing credit card data and other more sensitive information. Few people I know actually store that kind of data. Yet, name, address, emails and phone is still plenty depending who you talk to.

What do you use? Does this post make you look at your monthly shopping cart payments in a different light? Does it make you want to switch to a 3rd party system if you use a self hosted cart – this by the way includes WordPress carts and membership systems. I’d love to hear your thoughts.