eCommerce Hosting

The development of the Internet and the opportunities it provides, has given rise to a fast growing trend of ecommerce websites that provide a wide variety of goods and services. This sharp increase in the number of ecommerce websites creates the need for web hosts to provide the special ecommerce hosting features and resources required for ecommerce functionality.

Ecommerce has become a very lucrative opportunity, not only from the sales of products owned by the company itself, but also from the promotion of products of other vendors. Promotion of other vendors’ products for a commission is referred to as affiliate marketing. Ecommerce sites are making a great deal of money for their owners who apply a little skill and put in the hard work to sell a wide variety of their own products as well as affiliate products online.

Web Hosting Plans Available

Ecommerce websites come in many sizes, and as a result, the hosting plans appropriate for these sites will depend on the quantity of the resources and the features required for the site.

The smaller less complex ecommerce websites can be adequately served by shared web hosting plans. These plans are the most affordable and cost about $5 to $10 a month.

For large more complex ecommerce websites, VPS, Cloud and dedicated hosting plans can be considered. These three types of hosting plans allows a great deal more separateness from other hosting clients, and allows for the use of proprietary software and scripts that are typically not allowed in the traditional shared hosting plans.

Essential Features to be Included in an Ecommerce Hosting Plan

The following features should be included in any ecommerce hosting plan to boost the functionality of the website.

• Inventory management
• Search catalogs
• A large number of products available for inclusion to the shopping cart
• Products reviews
• A large number of categories and also sub-categories
• Ability to calculate taxes and taxes
• Creation of gift certificates, coupons and discounts
• Product update notification by email

These features are critical to the proper operation of an ecommerce website. For every host you consider, ensure that these features are included in their hosting plans. If they are not, keep looking for them in the hosting plans of other hosting companies. The stiff competition among hosts means that there are hosts that will go above and beyond and provide these features as a basic part of their plans.

In addition to the specific features required for ecommerce websites, there are basic features and resources that must be included in any hosting plan. They are as follows:

• Control Panel – The state of the art cPanel is available with most hosting plans. This provides a graphical user interface that is so user friendly even a total novice to web hosting will have no difficulty using it.

• 24/7/365 Customer Support – This availability has become the norm in the better web hosting plans and is particularly important since websites are required to have available 24 hours a day.

• Server Uptime Guarantee – Many web hosts will provide a 99% uptime server guarantee. The better hosts offer a 99.9% guarantee. Continue looking if this is not offered in a host you are considering.

• Unlimited Disc Space and bandwidth – These resources are available in many hosting plans, and upgrades are usually available if the resources offered in a plan are no longer adequate for a growing website.

• Site Builder – A free site builder is often available for use by hosting clients and provides the basic functionality for the creation of websites.

• Unlimited databases – Many hosts offer an unlimited number of MySQL databases for their hosting clients. For ecommerce websites that run on the shopping cart functionality, these databases are the resources that make it all happen.

If you are still unsure of the best ecommerce web host for your website,  select your best choice with a money back guarantee to test out its service without making a final commitment.