Do You Plan to Launch an Online Store? Learn How to Find the Best Web Hosting for e-commerce Website!
Opening Thoughts
When it comes to launching your own online store, it’s always important to do a research in order to find the best web hosting for e-commerce. Our post can draw you a map about what to look for when you are looking for a website hosting provider to place your e-commerce site at. You shouldn’t pick the first web hosting that offers Magento support, for example, check what else could you use, and what the other companies offer. In the following post, we are going to go through the most important matters you have to consider when you try to pick the best web hosting for your e-commerce needs.
Speed and Uptime
Well, we are quite sure you expected that we will start with the prices. However, if you are a real businessman or businesswoman, you know that price is only secondary compared to the actual service. For a website, especially for an e-commerce website which makes money for the owner, speed and availability are important. Some think that speed depends only on the server, but the right template, using the most up-to-date plugins and apps is also very important. A few seconds difference in favor of that ‘other’ site could lead to losses, however, it’s usually really easy to optimize the performance and loading times. Nowadays, even the shared website hosting plans can offer great speed, and you can further decrease loading times if you choose a data center that’s nearest to your target market. As for the uptime, the industry standard is about 99.80%, and those hosting providers that don’t meet this time, aren’t the best choices for e-commerce.
Storage Capacity and Traffic/Bandwidth Limits
It’s usually the most important factor when you run a site with videos and photo galleries. The shared plans often boast to offer unlimited traffic and bandwidth, which seems great at first. But consider this: there are dozens of other fully-loaded resources-burning site on the same server – your site will experience slow loading times and even outages. To make sure your site doesn’t suffer disadvantages from other sites, you should consider at least a low-level VPS plan to have your site sealed away from others. The storage capacity is varied in most cases, and when you choose, keep in mind what you are going to do: will you have videos? Or your e-commerce site will be based on text and pictures? Think about it and choose in accordance with the answer.
For simple stores, high storage isn’t important. What’s more important than the storage is the traffic you can have. The so-called unlimited plans are not unlimited, but they have so high limits, you won’t even notice the difference. But, as always, with shared plans, your e-commerce site might suffer because of all the other sites and their excessive usage of resources. The traffic isn’t just the visitors you get, but also the amount of data downloaded with a page load. You have to optimize the site, so you don’t use up all the allowed data transfer in the month. There is hardly anything worse than seeing our favorite store or other e-commerce site rendered unavailable because of bandwidth limit reached!
Security
One of the utterly important things. You have to make sure that your site is easy to access of course, but you also have to make it sure that it has the top security measures in effect. At an e-commerce site, the visitors usually buy something and make payments online. And for this very reason, the security measures have to be top of the line. Apart from the password and other authentication measures, it is necessary to opt in for the SSL protection. This will protect your clients’ payment info (e.g. credit card info, web-wallet or banking info) just as it would protect their account info too. Some website hosts offer shared SSL protection, but it’s not a problem if it doesn’t because you can opt-in and install certificates from third parties like VeriSign.
Supported e-commerce Solutions
Whether you are looking to launch a new web shop, or you would like to migrate the one you already have, you should check if the website host or the actual plan you chose supports the e-commerce platform you use. Magento, PrestaShop and many others are usually supported, so if you use one of these popular software, you will find it really easy to launch and manage your site. You should check (or ask the support agents) if payment gateways are supported, and if yes, then which ones.
Customer Support
When you run an online store, you have to be ready to face problems. They happen, and though they are not common, you should be ready for them. To avoid any problems, you should always have the contact info of the website hosting provider at hand, so you can call, write or chat with them as soon as any problem arises. The best web hosting services offer 24/7 support on-site or on phone, and they are available on holidays and weekends too. There are many companies which offer you expert support agents, and some even have dedicated e-commerce experts, who can help you more effectively than regular support agents.
Overall Reputation
To make sure your e-commerce site is hosted by a company that you can trust, find out what others say about it. Customer and partner reviews are good sources of information, and though some might be biased or subjective personal impressions, you should trust the wisdom of the crowd. On the other hand, while you are here, you should check our reviews too!
Conclusion
Launching a website is very easy. However, finding the proper web hosting provider is not a step you should skip or rush, because that’s the most important thing in the whole business. With a great provider that supports all the needed e-commerce solutions and offers top security and support, you can plan for the long run without any fear. The fields we mentioned above are important, but careful planning and clear thinking are also important for success. Also, whenever you feel you are not sure about something, you should ask for help from the hosting company’s support agents.