4 shopping carts compared... any expriences?

Hello,

I'm new at Warrior Forum. I think I accidentally hit "preview post" instead of "submit new thread". So I'm retyping it. Sorry if I accidentally type the same message twice.

I've been researching shopping carts. The goal is to have the cart software/script generate the "add to cart" and "view cart" button functionality, and then place this code into an already-written website. This will be for digital downloads only, so inventory-management capabilities are irrelevant features. I am definitely NOT looking for an all-in-one site generation environment. I only want the coded shopping cart buttons, which I will place into an already-written site.

I've narrowed it down to these four. They all allow you to skip the code-bloat-wizard stuff, and get straight at the cart buttons. They all support digital download features. They all have built-in security to guard against unauthorized downloads of your products. They all integrate with the payment gateways, etc. They all have some sort of site operator dashboard to create and manage your shopping cart buttons:

1) Shopsite Pro
2) 1shoppingcart
3) e-junkie
4) dlGuard

Here are my initial observations on each:

Shopsite Pro: Seems to like to be included within hosting provider structures. The script installs directly onto your domain servers. I believe this means you can keep the checkout URL within your domain structure, rather than having to bounce the shopper out to some site URL that is not yours. The Shopsite website seems to emphasize that your hosting provider will provide the tech support. But then the hosting provider says it's Shopsite's responsibility. It's the weekend, so I'm not able to call Shopsite and get clarification on this.

1shoppingcart: the most expensive of the four. But it does have one advantage over all the others: the option to pay about $39/month to get a dedicated rep you can call during normal business hours. That is a huge plus, and some people will willingly pay money to be able to pick up the phone and get immediate answers to pressing questions. Live phone support I find particularly helpful when I am learning a new digital environment/process. This could be well worth it. A downside is that the script is hosted not on your site, so the shopper has to get bumped out to their mcssl URL during checkout. This is a minus. If you shop at Amazon, for example, you don't get flipped to another domain during checkout. Some people may not have issue with this. I find it cheezy to have to bump a customer like that.

e-junkie: They seem to be more focused on digital downloads than the above two. They have a "pdf stamping" feature to discourage illegal filesharing. If you want, the product will be striped with the buyer's email, name, and transaction number on the upper left corner of every page when they download their product. Then, if you find your file "out in the wild" in an unauthorized location, you can trace whose file this is. This can help encourage honesty on the part of the buyer. e-junkie has some phone support it appears (if you're site is malfunctioning). But they do not appear to offer any live support for getting started, etc (even if you wanted to pay for it). It would be great if you could pay $50 or 100 to have phone access while you are getting started. Also, the script is hosted on their site, which means your shoppers get bumped to something like ww-dot-e-junkie.com/cart.. during checkout. This is a minus.

dlGuard: This one seems the most focused of the four on digital downloads. dlGuard promotes its file-security features prominantly on its website. However I have not been able to conclude how their file protection is any more robust than the other three. All four purport to mask the URL of the file(s) location, and allow the site operator to set time limits and quantity limits for the download. Since dlGuard does not have a recurring revenue model, support may be the most limited of the four. I certainly did not see any ability to call the company live, even if I wanted to do so as a paid upgrade. The dlGuard script gets installed directly onto your server. It requires your web host to be able to install something like "ion cubes" and have PHP 4.3.1 or higher (approx). Some hosting providers deliberately don't install the latest version of PHP, because they don't want their existing customers' sites to crash due to core-code updates. This is a concern in shared-hosting environments. It's less of a concern in dedicated and virtual server cases. But since dlGuard is installed on your server, I believe this allows you to keep the shopper within your domain URL structure all the way through checkout. This is a plus, because it presents a more professional appearance to the shopper.

So those are my observations so far. I was hoping people could add to, or clarify, what I've managed to deduce so far. Also, not meaning to offend anyone, but I am only interested in these four above (and not at all interested in any of the other 500+ solutions that are out there). I believe I can reach an effective solution using one of the four above.

Thanks!