Four Roads Commerce is for people who want to generate revenue by selling subscriptions to some or all of their community's content or by selling merchandise to the community members.

Four Roads Commerce is designed for and seamlessly integrates with Community Server, the premier platform for building online communities. If you're familiar with Community Server, it'll be easy for you to get started with Commerce.

The Professional edition is for communities where up to 100 products and/or subscriptions are being sold.

Some ways that people can and are using Four Roads Commerce

• Sell online guides and videos created by publishers specifically for the community
  
• Sell access to research reports made available via the Community Server file gallery
  
• Sell subscriptions to an investor newsletter blog and discussion forums

Frequently Asked Questions

Fits into your community

Four Roads Commerce includes a canned theme that implements a basic storefront, shopping cart, order summary, and check out pages. You can use the theme as is or customize it to your heart's content.

If you need to change how the store looks or if you need to put calls to action into other areas of your community, Four Roads Commerce includes a complete set of ASP.NET controls built upon Community Server's Chameleon framework. If you're a Community Server developer, you'll have the flexibility to which you're accustomed.

The items and subscriptions you sell can be tagged, rated, and commented upon. If you tag items, they will show up in the community tag clouds and the tag clouds on your store pages. Items will also show up in community search results.

Comprehensive administrative interface

You can configure and administer your online store using screens built into the Community Server Control Panel.

• Set up one, two, three, or more online stores!
  
• Configure your subscriptions and merchandise using a familiar post-like interface.
  
• Tag the items you're selling. Your items will show up in search results and tag clouds.
  
• Associate images with the items in your store.
  
• Manage orders.
  
• Define shipping and tax rules.
  
• Add users who can perform store-specific functions such as fulfilling orders.

Four Roads Commerce currently supports the following payment gateways:

• Authorize.Net
  
• CyberSource
  
• PayPal Express Checkout
  
• PayPal Website Payments Pro - includes Express Checkout and Direct Payment
  
• DPS Payment Express - for Australia and New Zealand

We're adding support for more payment gateways in the coming weeks.

The checkout process for each payment gateway tends to be different from the others, in one way or another. Instead of hard-coding support for specific gateways, we put together a payment engine that is flexible and adaptable. Commerce allows each payment gateway to lead your customers through a process that is specific and correct for that gateway. Each gateway has its own set of theme pages that suit the gateway. You can customize them as you see fit.

You can choose a primary payment gateway and one or more secondary gateways. For example, you could allow people to pay through either PayPal Express Checkout or PayPal Direct Payment. Once we release providers for Google Checkout and Authorize.NET, you'll be able to let people choose via Google Checkout and PayPal, for example.

Licensing

You must have one Four Roads Commerce license per community. A license for the Professional edition allows you to sell up to 100 subscriptions and items within that community.