Web hosting makes websites and applications available online for individuals or businesses. Web hosting providers provide the infrastructure and services that make this possible.
Choosing the right web hosting provider is critical to the success of your online business. A poor hosting provider can result in slow website speed, security vulnerabilities, and frequent downtime, which can negatively impact your sales and customer experience. For an e-commerce website, this can make or break your business.
This guide will help you know what to look out for when choosing a web host for your ecommerce store.
Key Features of Web Hosting for Ecommerce Websites
First, let’s take a look at some of the key features of ecommerce hosting.
Uptime guarantee
Uptime is the amount of time the infrastructure is online, available and operating normally, usually expressed as a percentage of the year. Most hosting providers offer service level agreements with guaranteed uptime. This feature means that your environment will remain online for a specified period of time. Otherwise, downtime will be compensated.
Providers universally indicate uptime and availability. Number of 9 Web hosts achieve this because they want 9 over 5 to guarantee reliable infrastructure performance and uptime (e.g. 99.999% uptime). An uptime guarantee gives you peace of mind that his web hosting for your ecommerce website won’t fail when you need it most.
safety
Security is important when choosing a web host because e-commerce websites handle sensitive customer information such as credit card numbers and personal information. Unfortunately, this information makes it an attractive target for cybercriminals.
Security-focused web hosting providers prevent data breaches at the network and hardware level, protecting customer information from theft and unauthorized access. Look for providers that offer SSL certificates, regular security updates, malware scanning, firewall options, and other features to keep your ecommerce website safe.
speed and performance
Improving website speed and performance is critical to the success of your e-commerce website. Online shoppers expect websites to load quickly and lack patience for slow sites and delayed purchases. Additionally, a slow website leads to higher bounce rates (users leaving her website and choosing another her website), lower search engine rankings, and lower customer satisfaction. increase. All of this means lost revenue.
Ecommerce sites need to load fast and perform well. Therefore, web hosting providers must offer fast server and network speeds with adequate bandwidth and optimization features such as caching and content delivery networks (CDNs). These and other tools can mean the difference between a successful e-commerce company and a failed one.
Scalability
Scalability is an industry term for adding resources when needed. Cloud or purpose-built solutions can scale or grow with your business, but they differ in how they accomplish this task. Regardless of the environment, a web hosting provider should be able to meet her website’s demands and accommodate growth.
A scalable web host for e-commerce retailers offers competitive pricing, easy upgrade paths (depending on your needs and available options), and cost savings to minimize downtime and performance issues. Provides a solution for sudden traffic spikes. It’s up to you and your hosting provider to ensure that your site can meet the increasing demand and provide a positive customer experience.
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Web hosting solutions for e-commerce websites
There are many hosting solutions available, depending on your website and its architecture. Here are some environmental options when choosing a web host for your e-commerce site.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a cloud computing service model in which computing resources are provided by cloud service providers. It takes the pressure off you and your team to acquire, configure, and maintain a hosting infrastructure. Instead, your hosting provider of choice provides servers and components, network connectivity, physical security, and power to your environment.
Many options fall into this category, some of which are described in other solution categories. Here are some of those options.
VPS hosting
VPS hosting is a great option for e-commerce companies that need more control over their servers than shared hosting. Most providers offer root-level access and dedicated resources such as RAM, CPU cores, and storage. In addition, there are customization options such as operating system (OS), control panel option selection, and the ability to install third-party software even with limited management.
dedicated server
For e-commerce sites that require more resource configurations, dedicated servers offer the necessary upgrade from VPS. Instead of virtual server instances with allocated resources, dedicated servers take full advantage of physical server hardware and low-level administrative access. It also gives you control over every aspect of your server configuration, improving performance and security.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution method where apps are hosted by cloud providers and made available to end users over the Internet. Service providers host software on remote servers, maintain and update software, and provide services using apps, browsers, and application programming interfaces (APIs).
There are plenty of SaaS products for all uses including e-commerce. Here are his two most popular options.
shopify
Shopify is an e-commerce platform for online stores and retail POS systems. The Shopify platform provides online shops with a variety of services such as payments, marketing, shipping, and customer engagement features.
big commerce
BigCommerce is a listed SaaS e-commerce platform for retailers. The company’s services cover online store design, search engine optimization (SEO), hosting, marketing and security for small businesses to large corporations.
managed application
Managed Applications is a hosting environment for leading content management systems (CMS) and e-commerce platforms. These environments are typically fully managed and provide hardware, networking, power, and partial software support.
Managed WooCommerce
Need is one of the main Managed WooCommerce available solutions. Available plans range from Starter to Enterprise and everything in between. The goal is to quit my hosting job so I can focus on my business.
enterprise e-commerce
Enterprise e-commerce systems facilitate a wide range of trade and commerce operations. Companies want a single solution for inventory and order management, accounting, customer relationship management, resource planning, marketing, reporting and analytics, and more.
The possibilities are many, but there are a limited number of e-commerce platforms that companies can meet their business needs. A good solution has broader than commercial features and should support many near-commercial features in a single platform.
server cluster
Server clusters are multiple servers that work together to distribute web traffic and provide redundancy in the event of a server failure. These are good options for corporate e-commerce websites that require high availability and reliability. This feature ensures that your e-commerce website is always available and can handle high volumes of traffic.
Additionally, server clusters offer more customization options and scalability than single-server web hosting, making them a good choice for growing enterprise e-commerce businesses.
VMware
VMware is a virtualization technology useful for corporate e-commerce websites. Businesses can create virtual machines (VMs) to test and deploy e-commerce applications. This feature allows businesses to test new features and updates before deploying them in production, reducing downtime and improving website performance.
final thoughts
Choosing the right web hosting provider is critical to the success of your e-commerce website. With that in mind, this guide covers key features such as guaranteed uptime, security, speed and performance, and scalability. We also review several web hosting solutions for e-commerce websites, from IaaS to managed applications to VMware.
When choosing a web host, it’s important to consider your website’s architecture and needs. Choosing the right web hosting provider can improve the performance of your e-commerce business, but choosing the wrong web hosting provider can lead to lost revenue and poor customer experience. Use this post to guide you on how to find the right web host for your ecommerce website.