If you are sending an important message to anyone via the Internet, you can no longer rely on them receiving it. It is as simple as that.

This is the result of spam and the many methods people have invented to try to rid themselves of it. Today an e-mail can get lost anywere on the way from your shop to your computer - or even on your own computer.

Your ISP, which gives you access to the Internet, may delete orders thinking they are Spam. Your computer's anti-virus and antispam software may do so, and even your e-mail program may simply file an order away as Spam - never to be seen again.

Unfortunately these days the risk of e-mails getting lost in transfer have become from a business point of view unacceptably high. If you want to be 100% sure that a recipient receives a message, e-mail is not an option.

The same applies to orders generated by your shopping cart software. If you sell online, you should not rely on order forms filled in by customers during the shopping cart check out process and emailed to you. To safeguard the orders, you should use e-commerce services which can store your orders and customer details for you online.

While this will often result in monthly charges, the upside is, that you will not lose orders and should not have to deal with irate customers whose orders you never received. Even one lost order might make more than up for the tax deductible fees of such a service.

Order processing gateways such as GlobeCharge can store the orders for you online - removing the need to use email. And as added benefit many of these services also often offer fraud protection services, alerting you to potentially fraudulent orders. This can often save you far more money than you would save by going down the e-mail route.