E-commerce has become one of the most common and convenient methods of purchasing goods and services in today’s world. As a result, many business owners have decided to venture into the ever dynamic world of e-commerce, ensuring that prospective customer needs are met online, and offline.
With new innovations come new requirements, and e-commerce is no exception. Owing largely to the growth of the aforementioned industry, new pathways have opened up, giving rise to an industry that depends solely on the prospects of e-commerce.
While the growth of e-commerce is dependent on so many factors, your choice of e-commerce website hosts is one of them.
Making your choices of e-commerce website hosts as an online entrepreneur is one of the biggest decisions you’d ever have to make. Because you are an online entrepreneur, the majority of your clientele would consist of users who would never have to visit you physically and can only form an impression of your brand based on your website and how functional it is.
This is to say that customer experience is key to the growth of your e-commerce business and what determines how functional your site is – your hosting service. A large part of your success as an e-commerce business owner depends on how good your hosting service is. You can’t afford to partner with the wrong e-commerce website hosts in a bid to avoid downtimes and the likes.
Types of hosting for your online shop
The rave of today’s global marketplace requires that every product or service has an online representation. This has become especially paramount in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Post Covid-19, even more businesses and customers are most likely to share a preference for online business transactions. This is especially highlighted by the seamless shift in paradigm experienced by the global community in the wake of the pandemic.
Yet another factor which has seen a rise in online transactions is more of a social one. Many speakers have coined the term “millennials” to refer to a certain generation who in many ways continue to exhibit characteristics, unlike traditionally acceptable practices. For instance, there’s a surge in the number of individualistic views, ensuring that online businesses thrive more.
A typical example would be a young millennial who would rather order food, order clothes online, and even get a cleaning service to come to clean out the house. The resultant effect, an individualistic community that depends solely on non-human interactions to meet as many needs as possible.
From schools to stores. Many industries have come to understand that even the most unique offerings can be offered virtually. One of the widely accepted e-commerce niches is online stores.
When there is a mention of e-commerce as an index of economics, online stores tend to come to mind. In fact, most individuals believe e-commerce to be synonymous with online stores, and for good reason. After all, the fundamental meaning of e-commerce refers to business transactions online.
If you own an online shop, there are some types of hosting you could choose from:
- shared Hosting;
Shared hosting is much like living in the same apartment with your siblings where you’d be required to share all the amenities available with them. With shared hosting, you’re sharing a server with multiple users and as such, server resources are shared among you all.
Shared hosting is cheap and easy to manage. On the flip side, it’s not the best hosting option if high-performance, high SEO rankings, security and privacy are your topmost priority. Shared hosting may be an option for startups with little financial backing, but is not a recommendation. This is especially true if your online store entertains big numbers in traffic.
Also, it can be detrimental on surge days such as during the Christmas holiday shopping, or on black Friday.
- VPS Hosting;
E-commerce website hosts sometimes offer VPS hosting services that share some features of shared hosting and dedicated hosting.
In fact, some e-commerce website hosts mistake VPS hosting for dedicated hosting and offer one as the other.
With VPS hosting, you still share a server with other users, but each partition works independently on a virtual machine. In layman terms, this means that a physical server is being shared, however, it is logically partitioned between users virtually.
This can take a toll on the physical properties of the server except in cases where memory and speed allocations are set accordingly.
E-commerce website hosts usually offer VPS hosting services with the option of choosing managed or unmanaged hosting.
- dedicated Hosting.
With dedicated hosting, your e-commerce website hosts offer you a dedicated server that is used by you alone. Although much more expensive than other hosting methods, dedicated hosting is worth the extra bucks and is perfect for online shops that large traffic influx per time.
The perks of dedicated hosting are numerous. One perk that stands out above all others has to do with security. If your business requires additional safety measures, you are better off getting a dedicated server than a shared one. This may be attributed to the fact that for starters, there are no is room for incursions, at least not physically. Also, the speed and performance of the server is solely utilized by the user.
As a result, most e-commerce businesses are advised to get a dedicated server to ensure security, and quality of service (QoS).
Why you shouldn’t choose free hosting
Free hosting may sound like an enticing idea, but it’s not. e-commerce website hosts don’t operate charity organizations and expend resources into ensuring that they run an efficient hosting service with high ROI.
Just like you, your e-commerce website hosts want to make a profit. e-commerce website hosts that offer free hosting usually don’t have anything laudable to offer and can be real time-wasters.
Free hosting is in truth a really bad idea! In most cases, these packages tend to serve as bait for prospective clients. As a result, they do not offer basic services thanks to the word “free” associated with these packages.
It is especially an issue if a free package of the sorts is being used by an online vendor for an e-commerce business. Such businesses may be subject to security threats, increased risks, loss of customers due to poor quality of service, and inefficient handling of traffic, organic, or otherwise.
The very use of the word “free” should keep you far away from such packages.
Rather than use a free hosting package, contact dedicated server providers such as GTHost. They offer plans for as low as $five (5), plus you get to switch configurations until you meet your needs.
Is specific hosting necessary for my CMS?
To find out if specific hosting is good for your CMS, analyze your needs and your personal understanding of CMS to know if the extra hosting services specific hosting offers is good enough for you.
Tech Support
The best e-commerce website hosts offer technical support to their clients to ensure that you can always get back on track when you experience technical emergencies.
It is indeed a nightmarish situation to be in when your website is broken and you can truly do nothing about it.
Always ensure to make use of dedicated server providers who ensure the very best technical support.
Conclusions
In a nutshell, the best online shops partner the best e-commerce website, hosts. Be deliberate in making your choice of web hosts as they greatly influence the progress of your business.