How to choose the best eCommerce Hosting Provider

RESOURCES by Guest Post | February 6, 2013 | 2 Comments »

So you have decided you want to open a store and sell some stuff. Maybe you are selling your own products or you are going to open a storefront for other people’s products, you are now searching for the best eCommerce hosting for your store. What should you look for? What features should it have? How much should it cost? Here are a few things you should look for when choosing your host.

How Many Plans does the Host offer?

It may only matter to you that they have the right plan for you now. However, you want to choose a host that has the capability to scale and grow along with you. The more plans they offer (especially if they offer a custom plan at the top) the more flexibility you will have when you need something bigger. Remember that it is almost always easier to upgrade from within a host than to switch to someone else.

How much Storage and Bandwidth do you Get?

You want to choose a host that has the plan that will fit the size of store you plan on creating. You will need space to store a lot of images for your products as well as the ability to create as many pages as you need. You will also want to choose a host that gives you enough bandwidth for your store to use when you become popular. You need to be prepared if one of your product all of a sudden goes viral. Bandwidth overages can bankrupt a startup.

Tools

How many options does the host give you? Do you get email support like auto-response? Are you able to get multiple email addresses? Multiple sub-domains? You want as many tools and options with your host as possible.

SSL

Secure Socket Layer or SSL is a security protocol that ensures the security of visitors to your pages. You want to choose a host that not only offers this but also doesn’t charge extra for it (at least not a lot extra). You will need it especially on any page that the customer enters information on, like payment pages or subscription pages.

Do They Have an Uptime Guarantee?

You want to choose a host that guarantees that your site remains up even if they are having problems or your site becomes uber-popular. You can usually find reviews of hosts online so check and see that there are reviews of the host telling of unusual amounts of downtime.

Price

This may be the most important factor when choosing a host. Most startups do not have a lot of money so you cannot afford the best host right away. It is for this reason you want to choose a host that has a lot of plans so that when you can afford a bigger plan, you can stay with the host instead of switching.