If you’re looking to set up web hosting for an ecommerce site, you need to be aware of some of the considerations that come into play when making that choice. It’s not as simple as merely throwing up a site or a blog and hoping that not only will customers flock to it, but you also need to be aware of things like shopping carts, server security, bandwidth considerations, and more. Let’s take a quick look into some of things you’ll want to be aware of as you go through this process.
First of all you need to look into where you’d like to host your ecommerce site. There are many ways to go here. You can host it on your own server, or on a colocated server. This means merely that you have your own server on another company’s data facility. They provide the power and support, and you manage the data.
You also need to make a considered choice about whether to go with shared or dedicated web hosting. Shared means exactly that: you are on a server that also has other clients. Sometimes many other clients. How this can affect you is that you will be constrained by what others do on the server. This can be particularly troubling of they happen to use the email program in their package to send out a bunch of spam, which will taint you also, making you guilty by association when Google blacklists your IP address. Not a fun scenario.
Having your own dedicated server, whether you host it yourself or purchase a managed solution, is a far better idea. You have the ultimate control, you are not lumped with a batch of sites you know nothing about and have no control over, and your site’s security profile will be much easier to manage. This is of utmost importance when you’re asking people to give you their credit card numbers through your shopping cart. One mistake here could really gum up the works.
Speaking of shopping carts, make sure you try out several, and see not only which fits your site best, but also which plan fits your budget. You may find your needs change over time.
You are also able to install and run any scripts that you might want to, a definite advantage over a shared account.
You, or people on your staff, need to be extremely proficient at server administration, security, backups and more to manage your server. You can purchase help if you have a dedicated plan, but it’s not cheap. The bottom line is that if you are not extremely able to manage your own server, opt for a managed solution.
The best way to go when finding web hosting for your ecommerce site is to put yourself in your customers shoes: what is their experience like, and how can you ensure it will not only be a good one, but an ongoing one!
