What is Ecommerce Hosting?

If you are running ecommerce then you must give importance to the hosting services you are currently using. It is highly responsible for the overall performance of your site, its working, speed, security, and many other things. But how to find a good & reliable hosting partner? What are the benefits of a reliable hosting provider, and many other things to know? In this article, we will discuss all these things. Let’s begin by knowing the meaning of eCommerce hosting.

What is Ecommerce Hosting?

Ecommerce hosting is a service where a hosting provider serves an ecommerce website to end customers. The web host offers a server where the site’s files are stored and maintained for ecommerce web hosting. You can rent or buy servers via ecommerce web hosts. The web host offers ecommerce hosting services to secure and optimize the server. It differs from standard web hosting. Ecommerce hosting has features that help manage a commercial website.

Some of the unique aspects of ecommerce hosting include shopping cart software, payment processing, managing traffic spikes, shipping, tracking, database support, and security for customer data and your ecommerce store.

Key features of E-commerce Hosting

E-commerce hosting, as the name suggests, is tailored for online businesses. It provides specialized features to meet the unique needs of e-commerce websites:

• High-Performance Infrastructure: E-commerce hosting offers robust and high-performance server configurations, often including solid-state drives (SSDs) and advanced caching mechanisms. These features are crucial for ensuring fast loading times, which can reduce bounce rates and improve user satisfaction.
• Scalability: Online stores frequently experience fluctuations in traffic, especially during sales, promotions, or seasonal peaks. E-commerce hosting solutions are designed to handle sudden spikes in traffic by offering scalability options. This ensures that your website remains operational even during periods of high demand.
• Enhanced Security: Security is a top priority for e-commerce websites, as they handle sensitive customer data, such as personal information and payment details. E-commerce hosting typically includes robust security features, including SSL certificates, DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) protection, regular security audits, and compliance with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) requirements. These measures safeguard customer information and transactions.
• E-commerce Features and Tools: E-commerce hosting often comes with pre-installed e-commerce platforms like WooCommerce, Magento, Shopify, or others. These platforms are equipped with features tailored to online businesses, such as inventory management, product catalogs, shopping carts, and payment gateways. Additionally, there may be integrations with popular e-commerce plugins and extensions, streamlining the process of setting up and managing an online store.

What types of hosting work best for Ecommerce?

All hosting works, but some work better than others. Get to know what the demands and needs of your website are, considering cost efficiency, performance and resources required. Then match those needs with the type of hosting package best suited for you.

• Shared Ecommerce hosting – The cheapest option. Here your site and store will be on a server with dozens of other businesses. You’ll each be given a portion of the server space, but in some instances, you could experience speed interruptions. This could occur as your neighbors compete with you for resources; especially during high-traffic times
• Dedicated servers for Ecommerce Hosting – Here you’ll get your own private server. This is ideal for large businesses that expect a lot of traffic. Being on a private server means no resource sharing, and bandwidth is dedicated to running an efficient site
• VPS Ecommerce hosting – Similar to shared hosting, your site will be housed in servers with other businesses, but here, your neighbors can’t muscle in on your resources
• Cloud-Based Ecommerce Hosting – A good choice for businesses that outgrow the limits of shared hosting. Here you’ll have access to resources across a whole data center with on-demand usage of power

Tips to find the best eCommerce hosting plan for your website

• Double-check uptime: Many hosting companies claim to have a high uptime percentage of more than 99.98% but it is not always the case. You should check reviews of their actual uptime by googling “[hosting company name] uptime review”.
• Check if the SSL certificate is free because not all companies offer a free one.
• Ask about the extra fee: in case you exceed the bandwidth limits
• Find a reputable company first. Well, we know it seems obvious. But we know that all eCommerce companies aspire to grow big, and you need to prepare for further success at the very first step. As your store grows, you will have to upgrade to a more capable hosting plan. At that point, migrating to other providers is a hassle. Therefore, it’s best to try and find the hosting company you trust from the beginning, and let them grow with you in the long term.

Conclusion

The choice of hosting for your ecommerce store will have strong repercussions throughout the lifetime of the store. Hosting can impact the ecommerce store in many different ways such as by its performance, security, quality support, etc.