Ecommerce Site Hosting When setting up an e-commerce business, choosing your e-commerce site hosting provider is perhaps the most crucial step in the process. This includes not only its price tag but, more importantly, its importance to the success of your e-commerce business. Your online store must attract and keep a customer’s attention and confidence, not confuse, annoy, or worry them. Security issues should be paramount for you and your customer, and a reliable, secure shopping cart and customer service are imperative. Of course, hosting your own website would be ideal, but the cost of running and maintaining a web development and data center in the house is beyond a small company’s means or justification. Hence, the need for e-commerce site hosting companies.
Shared or Dedicated Hosting
Shared e-commerce site hosting is invariably less costly than dedicated hosting and, consequently, the most common hosting solution for small e-commerce businesses and start-ups. Shared hosting is less expensive because the host’s costs are split between large numbers of users, and the e-commerce site hosting provider can take advantage of the lower costs arising from a larger scale. At these lower prices, shared hosting offers more limited options than its dedicated counterpart but can provide enough bandwidth (power) and storage space (size) for a smaller business website. Security can be an issue with shared hosting; however, if Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certification is available, this should not be a killer concern for a small business site. Although it requires a larger initial investment, dedicated e-commerce site hosting gives your business the power and size to grow. Unlike shared hosting, where overload is a potential problem with multiple users, a dedicated server is not forced to allocate resources between clients’ multitudes continuously. Moreover, hosting packages for dedicated hosting will provide enough power and space to maintain even large e-commerce site hosting. Finally, most of the “optional” shared features needed for most business sites are included with the most dedicated server packages.
However, regardless of cost, do not choose a web host without some basic features for any site hosting and a few specific to e-commerce site hosting.
Linux or Windows Server
Server type, either a Windows or Linux based system, is often an issue to be decided when choosing an e-commerce site hosting provider. The operating system choice is largely irrelevant; however, as the additional features you must have or desire for your e-commerce site growth, the operating system may require a conscious choice. As the first OS to be used in web hosting, Linux probably remains the choice system for hosting companies, but Windows based hosts are now numerous.
Linux and Windows have their pros and cons, but one major difference is perhaps most important: Linux is open source, while Windows software must be licensed for each use, a cost which the host passes on to the client. One possible determining factor may be applications you desire that are specific to an operating system and will have been ported to a different OS to be used, and most often, these applications work less effectively outside their native environment; for example, Apache, MySQL, or PHP on Linux and.ASP, MsSQL, or .NET on Windows. Therefore, your choice of Linux or Windows may have already been made.
If you are using Windows in your business but a Linux hosting option seems a better choice, do not be put off by the fear of a steep learning curve. Web-based applications are used to access either site, and these applications are essentially the same for either operating system. If not forced to choose between Linux and Windows, either one is a good choice, provided it fulfills your needs and budget.
Disk space
The disk space needed is defined by the “size” of your site. A majority of even inexpensive, shared hosts will claim to supply unlimited space, but this is somewhat deceptive. However, unless your site will be populated with a disproportionate amount of graphics such as videos for product demonstrations or rotating views and similar memory hogs, the amount of disk space needed for a single domain site should not be an issue. It is somewhat deceptive because space is there, but in many cases, if you need large amounts of space for databases such as MySQL or MsSQL, it is available at a fee.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth needs depend on how often your website will be accessed each day. Very simply, the larger the bandwidth available, the more power there is available to provide the information on your site to a browser/consumer. Many small online businesses with a limited product or consumer base will not need a bandwidth larger than that provided in any basic package. However, if you are planning an e-commerce site with a large inventory dependent on sales volume, bandwidth can be a serious bottleneck, and part of your e-commerce site hosting choice should include as large bandwidth as needed. Ecommerce Store. In general, when one is discussing e-commerce websites, the major focus must be on the shopping cart and its accouterments. Today many e-commerce site hosting companies supply either as an option or part of an overall “business” or “e-commerce” plan the ability to design and launch an online store. In some cases, this almost “plug-and-play” technology can be coupled with a dedicated IP address for check out and merchant account for credit card processing and deposits.
Finally, anything less than a 24/7 customer service line is unacceptable for e-commerce site hosting.