Alacart Silver (comes with the Professional Plan $24.95/month): A good place to start (up to 25 products) if you want to test the ecommerce/online waters. All transactions for the Silver cart are sent via email to you to be processed in what ever method you choose or have available offline, phone terminal, check pay, etc. Non-real time Credit Card Processing is the most affordable way of processing credit cards. You need to have the Professional Plan to use this cart.
Alacart Gold (comes with the Developer Plan $39.95/month): Here's where things get exciting... The Gold Cart (up to 100 products) is as easy to set up as the Silver Cart but with the added convenience and immediacy of RealTime processing. "RealTime" card processing is what every online business person wants: a customer orders a product or service from your online store and their card is checked and verified/authorized immediately. If their card info is valid then money is transferred from the card issuers bank to your bank account within 24-48 hours. You need to have a Developer account to use the Gold Cart.
Alacart Platinum (comes with the Commerce Plan $59.95/month): As easy to set-up as the Gold Cart but robust enough for serious inventory. If you have a lot of products (up to 1,000) and want easy set up this is a great choice. You will need to upgrade from your control panel to the Commerce Plan to take advantage of the Platinum Cart.
If you already have an account with Alacart installed and want to download our step-by-step guide or want to read more details: - Using Alacart

If you have any One World Hosting account you can enable any of the Alacart plans by clicking on the Silver, Gold, or Platinum icon in your control panel, and upgrading to the corresponding account, as necessary. Depending on which cart you choose you will need 1 or 2 more things. If you are going to be using the Silver cart you will need to be able to complete the financial transaction part of the process (non-real time) as a separate step, after orders have been mailed (ground mail) or emailed.

For Alacart Gold and Platinum, and RealTime Processing, you will need the following:

Merchant Accounts:
Merchant accounts allow/authorize you to take credit cards. You can find an enormous number of companies online that will set you up with a merchant account, prices vary. Our advice for the last couple of years... when anyone asks us about merchant accounts or credit card authorizers is, "Go to your bank first." You have an established relationship with your bank, your bank wants your continued business, and your bank can even have better prices versus online. Seems hard to believe but not everything is cheaper online, we've seen many of the heavy up front fees lowered by working with a bank (there's a first time for everything). Not only can they get you connected with the merchant account but they often have their own relationship with an online processor like Verisign, and once again they may be able get you a better deal than going directly through the companies web site.

NOTE: If you already have a merchant account for your existing business, you should be aware of the following. Depending on the type of merchant account you have, Internet transactions may not be acceptable. Internet transactions are considered "card-not-present" and you may need to obtain a merchant account specifically designed for such transactions.

Online Card Authorizers
Credit card information is sent over the Internet (securely) to your online payment processor. Your online payment processor in turn contacts the cards' issuing bank over the private financial network. Your online payment processor returns approved/declined notice to your customer who is still at your online store. Payment Processors:
Currently Alacart will only support Verisign or Authorize.net:

http://verisign.com/
http://authorize.net

Securing Your Transactions / Free SSL
With a number of other shopping cart systems you need to buy a secure certificate to enable critical transactions to occur within a secure environment. The Alacart set-up allows you to use our secure certificates instead, at no charge, saving you up to $500 (from buying your own certificate) AND saving you from the many headaches and delays associated with buying and installing a certificate yourself.
With these 4 things in place: a Gold or Platinum Shopping Cart, a Merchant Account, an Online Card Processor, and our free secure connection via SSL you will have all the tools you need to sell your products and services online in real time, and have monies due deposited directly into your bank account.