Review of Secure Delivery by Portal Labs – Part 1
December 13, 2006 – 7:35 pmI mentioned in a previous posting that I would be reviewing Secure Delivery in the coming days and without further delay here is Part One of my review of Secure Delivery.
Well after doing some signing up and logging in I am an official Secure Delivery user and member. Thanks to Jason Chance and his crew over at PortalLabs.com I am able to create my own digital products for sale and download. I’ve been testing and paying with the system a bit and I’ve got to say its real simple and easy to use. It’s so easy that even an internet novice could use this service. Can navigating it you can feel the ease of use and having tested and worked with my fair share of internet based applications I can tell you that this one is a dream to work with (No I am NOT being paid to write this) 
So what is Secure Delivery and why should I care?
Secure Delivery is created by Portal Labs (A creation of Jason Chance and company), a Vendor out of Greensboro, North Carolina. Secure Delivery was created to aid people in not only tracking but managing downloadable goods such as eBooks, Music, Photos (Blush), Games, Icons, and more. It allows the business owner not only to sell using payment gateways like PayPal and ClickBank but it also allows you to track sales and downloads of products. It is a pretty complete solution for the digital goods producers and sellers out there on the web and best of all its secure. After talking to Jason it’s clear that he has plans to develop add-on components to Secure Delivery’s base operating platform.
Payment Model for Secure Delivery
The creators decided on using the subscription model in selling the use of Secure Delivery and it’s very affordable for many small business owners to use this. There are 4 different sizes of account currently including a FREE 7 day trial account.
Secure Delivery Basic – Currently this supports 5 Products at a cost of $17.00 USD per month
Secure Delivery Advanced - Currently supports 15 Products at a cost of $29.00 USD per month
Secure Delivery Pro – Currently supports 50 Products at a cost of $54.00 USD per month
As more people (Large and Small business owners alike) create digital products for download I think we’ll continue to see a growth a need for services such as the one offered by Jason Chance and Portal Labs. Stay tuned for my next article in which I delve into Secure Delivery’s features and explain them a bit more. Till then,
Lucas
7 Responses to “Review of Secure Delivery by Portal Labs – Part 1”
Hi Lucas,
Many thanks for publishing this interesting report on Secure Delivery. As you know we are looking for a system that allows us to manage and sell our PDF files. Secure Delivery sounds like an option but we will have about 30 different products which means we will have to pay quite a high monthly fee. Also, Secure Delivery doesn’t seem to support 2Checkout and other payment options which is another drawback. I’m really only at the beginning of the learning process when it comes to e-commerce and any information you share with me is deeply appreciated.
Could you please compare Cubecart with Secure Delivery for me? As I understand, I purchase Cubecart once and can then use it as often as I want. With Secure Delivery, I have to pay a monthly fee regardless how many products I’m selling.
Please let me know with you think.
Reards,
Torsten
By Torsten Daerr on Dec 15, 2006
Hello Torsten,
Secure Delivery is a good option from the standpoint of being able to securely manage sales of digital goods that is why its a great option. Secure Delivery is also very well coded. I am sure that they will be adding more payment gateways in as the system takes hold but it doesn’t currently work with 2Checkout just yet… perhaps Jason can shed a little light on that point though.
CubeCart is not a bad option as far shopping carts go. It personally wouldn’t be my first choice in a shopping cart but beggars can’t be choosers. I would probably add an SSL to secure things and prevent theft of digital goods. How are you currently managing Digital Theft, Torsten?
CubeCart will give you a way and a place to sell your digital goods and Secure Delivery will allow you to ensure the “Secure Delivery” of those goods to your customers which is something that CubeCart could not do. Naturally price is always a factor but then again i am sure you do not want to lose sales because someone found a way to pirate from buying your PDFs. If this isn’t really a concern for you then thats okay but personally its one that i would have selling a digital good.
Jason if you’d like to step in a little to expand on what i’ve said or anything i’ve missed please do.
Talk soon Torsten,
Lucas
By lucas on Dec 15, 2006
Torsten-
To be honest, if you have the experience and willingness to run your own shopping cart script, install SSL, update processor routines, apply security updates, patches, etc. then that may be the better solution for you and I would be lying if I told you otherwise.
However, if you want to focus more on running your business and not your order fulfillment and website administration, Secure Delivery is a managed solution that handles 100% of the technical stuff for you. We update SD when a processor changes their routines (which both processors did, even while SD was in development!), handle relay and response IPN scripts with payment processors, manage SSL, and provide a high-reliability solution that is professionally managed by experienced engineers.
Where shopping carts require scripting experience, databases, PHP, etc. Secure Delivery will work on any hosting plan, even free web hosts. To sell something through Secure Delivery all you have to do is cut-and-paste a checkout button into your web page wherever you would like; its that easy.
As for supporting 2CheckOut, ask and ye shall receive
Secure Delivery is a new service and we supported the most commonly used payment processors out of the gate. Our system is modular and we can add more payment processors as they are requested by our users. If you have a specific payment processor you would like to use, just tell us- We’ll do our best to impliment it in a timely fashion.
By Jason on Dec 15, 2006
Hi Jason and Lucas,
Many thanks for your detailed responses. When it comes to making decisions, it’s important to look at the facts and examine the situation at hand. Here are the factors and questions that influence our decision:
- Do we want to pay a monthly fee or a one time fee for our distribution system?
- How important is the ’security’ issue for us really? In other words: How likely is it that somebody will copy our PDF’s and how exactly can we prevent somebody from buying our files and uploading them onto a file sharing server? Also, if somebody in a third world country puts our files online for free download, a true professional will find out that the files are stolen. We are offering handouts/worksheets for teachers. If they walk into their classroom with stolen materials, they hurt themselves much more than they would hurt us.
- We are currently using 2Checkout and PayPal. What happens if we stop using them as payment options?
There are a number of other questions for us to consider and I understand that SecureDelivery is a great system. We have to find out whether it fits our current situation…
By Torsten Daerr on Dec 18, 2006