What is ecommerce hosting?
Simply put, hosting provides your website a server to reside on, which then allows your website to be live and accessible on the internet. It’s your home on the internet! Ecommerce hosting is a hosting package specially designed for ecommerce websites. It supports all the necessary features and requirements to run an ecommerce website. The package might include necessary features like payment gateways and security, an SSL certificate and the ability to scale during a traffic surge. There are different types of hosting plans. You could choose hosting based on the technical server specs like Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, or Dedicated Hosting. The other option is to choose hosting packages specially designed for ecommerce websites like WooCommerce Hosting and WordPress Hosting. However, while the type of hosting you choose for your ecommerce website is important, what’s even more important is the ecommerce hosting provider you choose to partner with.Ecommerce Hosting Provider: 7 Key Factors to Consider
Some things are negotiable like the hosting price being slightly above your budget or the kind of security addons you get with your hosting package. But some things are absolutely non-negotiable and you must absolutely get when you pick an ecommerce hosting plan. We’ll discuss these non-negotiables below: 1. 99.99% Uptime Your ecommerce website needs to be fast and up all the time. The ecommerce hosting provider you choose must guarantee a fast and quick load time – 99.99% uptime is the minimum we’re talking about! Most customers leave, never to return, if a website takes too long to load or is sluggish. Some hosting types, like Shared Hosting, are not recommended for ecommerce websites as there could be frequent downtime and thus a loss in business. A CDN, a network of servers spread across a wide area, is crucial to maintain a fast website and must be included in your ecommerce hosting package. You must look for a plan that comes with uptime monitoring so you can be notified in case there’s an issue with the server. 2. Easy Scalability For an ecommerce website, scalable hosting is an absolute must. Holiday periods, sales and promotions and other factors may bring in a surge of traffic to the website. At such times your ecommerce hosting plan must allow you to scale the resources to accommodate this surge. CPU, RAM, Storage and all other necessary resources must be easily scalable so your customers don’t have to face a negative shopping experience. 3. Unlimited Storage and Bandwidth Ecommerce websites are heavy; which means that product images, videos and other website files take up a lot of space. Additionally, ecommerce websites tend to receive high traffic, thus requiring even more storage, space and bandwidth. You must choose an ecommerce hosting provider that offers unlimited bandwidth and storage or you’ll end up paying a lot more than you budgeted for in overage fees. 4. Advanced Security On an ecommerce website, you expect customers to share their personal and financial information to be able to do business with you and so you can continue providing them personalized services. Your customers in return expect that you’ll keep this information secure and protected. Ecommerce websites are a goldmine for hackers to collect bank information, credit card numbers, personal information etc. As an e-commerce store owner, you need to ensure your website is highly secure to protect your business, customers and reputation. Your e-commerce hosting provider must provide advanced security features like Firewalls, SSL certificates, Malware and DDoS attacks detection, monitoring etc. 5. 24/7 Support Even if you choose the best ecommerce hosting provider and have all the necessary tools and plugins in place, chances are there will be times your website may suffer some issues. Your hosting provider must be easily reachable to help you in such times and offer the right resolution. Whether your website speed is affected, you need to scale resources to accommodate traffic, there’s been an attack or any other help you need – your ecommerce hosting provider must offer 24/7 support to help you get back and continue doing business. 6. Payment Integration Your ecommerce hosting provider must allow you to easily integrate all the payment methods that your target audience requires. Today most people look for multiple and easy payment options on an ecommerce website and this could be the make-or-break point in a customer’s buying journey. Debit and Credit Cards, UPI, Cash on Delivery, Bank Transfers – your e-commerce hosting provider must allow you to integrate all and any payment integration you need. For example, with the growing popularity of Razorpay in India, Bluehost now allows its customers to easily integrate Razorpay with their Bluehost online store. Additionally, make sure your ecommerce hosting provider is compliant with PCI (Payment Card Industry). These are a set of security standards that keep user data safe and secure. 7. Automatic Backups Data backups are crucial for ecommerce websites. Automatic backups keep your ecommerce store data and files protected. Your database can easily get corrupted especially if you change some crucial settings and this could lead to big losses. If you do not have the most recent backup, it might be impossible or extremely time and effort consuming to get everything up and running again. Your e-commerce hosting plan must come with automatic backups to further boost your website security. With Bluehost’s WooCommerce hosting you get all this, and more! Build your WooCommerce Online store, with all the features you need to power an ecommerce website.
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