MPA3 or NATS

[pierrefitch]

What do you guys recommend MPA3 from paycom or NATs v3

[basschick]

MPA3 from epoch has a lot to offer. but if you want complete control - including the ability to change your primiary and secondary processors in the cascade order - NATS is the way to go.

of course, if you use epoch's MPA3, you don't have to send your affiliates their payments, which is a big job. epoch does it for you.

it all depends on your needs.

[gaybucks_chip]

I recommend either MPA from Mansion, or NATS.

Going with MPA from Epoch sounds appealing at first glance, but remember that if you go that route, you're stuck with Epoch in first position, and if for some reason you want to put, say, Verotel or CCBill in first position, either because they are scrubbing less or giving you a better rate or whatever, you can't do it.

And let's not forget that Epoch STILL has said nothing to the webmaster community about their involvement in the actions that resulted in cancellation of Gay Phoenix Forum in spite of numerous invitations to do so.

Until they are willing to come forward and speak about their actions, I have a hard time recommending a company that doesn't even care enough about our community to address legitimate concerns raised by a number of people within the community.

As for NATS vs MPA, now that I've worked with TMM (makers of NATS) for 8 months, I gotta say that MPA begins to sound a little appealing. (I've never worked with MPA so can't really say, but I think the PR speak that "NATS is superior to MPA" is grossly overblown.

NATS is decent, but the software is a little buggy, Fabian, the principal author of the software, is no longer with the company, and their attitude toward customer support is still lacking. I mean, they do support their product, but they are still arrogant as hell in a marketplace where they have no place to act that way.

Executive Stats is another option worth considering, especially now that they offer a monthly lease option. I haven't used it, but I keep hearing good things about it.

[Chilihost]

Pierre, I absolutely love our new nats setup. I would recommend it any day over the built in epoch-mpa3 systems.

cheers,
Luke

[basschick]

if he's only going for the basics and is happy with having epoch as primary, there's no reason he couldn't run off the epoch MPA system. i personally don't see pierre sitting down and writing checks each week - he's got a lot going on already.

[darling]

I have never used MPA3 so I can't comment on it. We are happy so far with NATS. If you don't want to be tied to epoch then its far cheaper than Executive Stats and MPA3.

We have had some minor glitches with it, but nothing a few support tickets couldn't handle. About writing checks, then NATS offers a feature to dump the payments into quick books so its easy to mass print the checks from there.

It is also a bit of a learning curve. Unfortunately there is not a step by step tutorial of the system, other than that they give you by phone after buying it. The documentation is more like a reference. But reading all the knowledge base articles has been a great help.

Just think very carefully before you decide on a system. You will be stuck with it for a long time. If you change your mind later on then affiliates (including me) hate nothing more than to change links on hundreds of pages. Especially on submitted galleries which will be automatically delisted if changed.

$0.02

[YanksTodd]

Well, MPA3 has a full featured version as well, that is much more mature and less problematic then its NATS counterpart. I have know three people who have in the last few months worked for a program with MPA3, and one with NATS, and all three having the experience with both prefer MPA3. My two cents.

[basschick]

i found NATS to be less problems, but that was during MPA2 and the folks from NATS seemed to have more time to help back then, too.

in all seriousness, pierre, adding either NATS or the full MPA3 to your sites and program will take a lot of time, there will be a lot of frustration and you will have to pay out your affiliates - and if you're late, people will post on the boards and drop your program. since you are very busy and not that good with html, unless you have a partner or pay someone to help make all the changes in order to use NATS or MPA3, it might be better to simply use the epoch MPA3 stats for now...

[Chilihost]

of course you could still use nats and have epoch as your only biller in nats, and then use epoch's mpa3 cascade to do the secondary biller and all payouts.