Web hosting allows individuals or businesses to make websites and applications available online. Web hosting providers provide the infrastructure and services that make this possible.
Choosing the right web hosting provider is essential to the success of your online business. A poor quality hosting provider can result in slow website speeds, security vulnerabilities, and frequent downtime, which can negatively impact sales and customer experience. For e-commerce websites, 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 e-commerce store.
Main features of web hosting for e-commerce websites
First, let’s take a look at some of the key features of e-commerce hosting.
Guaranteed uptime
Uptime is the amount of time the infrastructure is available online 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 remains online for a specified period of time. If not, your downtime will be compensated.
Providers typically indicate the uptime and availability that their web hosts achieve by a number of 9 (for example, 99.999% uptime), and companies typically indicate the uptime and availability that their web hosts achieve by a number of 5 to ensure reliable infrastructure performance and uptime. Looking for more than one nine. Our uptime guarantee gives you peace of mind that his web hosting for your e-commerce website won’t fail when you need it most.
safety
Because e-commerce websites handle sensitive customer information such as credit card numbers and personal information, security is important when choosing a web host. Unfortunately, this information makes them an attractive target for cybercriminals.
Security-minded web hosting providers prevent data breaches at the network and hardware level, protecting customer information from theft and unauthorized access. To keep your e-commerce website safe, look for a provider that offers features like SSL certificates, regular security updates, malware scanning, and firewall options.
speed and performance
Improving your website speed and performance is essential to the success of your e-commerce website. Online shoppers expect websites to load quickly and have little patience for slow sites or delayed purchases. Additionally, a slow website will result in a high bounce rate (users leaving your website and choosing another website), lower search engine rankings, and lower customer satisfaction. Masu. All of this means lost revenue.
Your e-commerce site should load quickly and perform well. Therefore, your web hosting provider 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 success and failure for your e-commerce company.
Scalability
Scalability is an industry term that refers to adding resources as needed. Cloud or purpose-built solutions can scale or grow with your business, but they accomplish this task differently. Regardless of the environment, a web hosting provider must be able to meet the demands of her website and accommodate growth.
A scalable web host for e-commerce retailers with competitive pricing, an easy upgrade path (depending on your needs and available options), and features to minimize downtime and performance issues. Provides a solution for sudden traffic spikes. It’s your responsibility and your hosting provider‘s responsibility to ensure your site can keep up with increased demand and provide a positive customer experience.
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 a cloud service provider. This relieves you and your team from the pressure of acquiring, configuring, and maintaining hosting infrastructure. Instead, your chosen hosting provider provides the servers and components, network connectivity, physical security, and power to your environment.
Many options fall into this category, some of which are discussed in other solution categories. Here we introduce some of those options.
VPS hosting
VPS hosting is a great option for e-commerce businesses that need more control over their servers than shared hosting. Most providers provide root-level access and dedicated resources such as RAM, CPU cores, and storage. Additionally, customization options exist, including a selection of operating systems (OS), control panel options, and the ability to install third-party software even with limited management.
dedicated server
For e-commerce sites that require more resource configuration, a dedicated server provides the necessary upgrade from a VPS. Instead of virtual server instances with assigned 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 cloud providers host apps and make them available to end users over the Internet. Service providers host software on remote servers, maintain and update the software, and provide services using apps, browsers, and application programming interfaces (APIs).
There are plenty of SaaS products for every use case, including e-commerce. Here we present two of his most popular options.
Shopify
Shopify is an e-commerce platform for online stores and retail POS systems. The Shopify platform provides a variety of services to online shops, including payments, marketing, shipping, and customer engagement features.
big commerce
BigCommerce is a publicly traded 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 enterprises.
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, network, power, and some software support.
Managed WooCommerce
Nexcess is one of the leading managed WooCommerce solutions available. 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. Businesses want inventory and order management, accounting, customer relationship management, resource planning, marketing, reporting and analytics, and other functions in one solution.
There are many possibilities, but there are only a limited number of e-commerce platforms that companies can use to meet their business needs. A good solution should be broader than commercial functionality and support many near-commercial functionality on a single platform.
server cluster
In a server cluster, multiple servers work together to distribute web traffic and provide redundancy in the event of 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 able to handle large amounts 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 that is 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 to production, reducing downtime and improving website performance.
final thoughts
Choosing the right web hosting provider is important to the success of your e-commerce website. With this in mind, this guide covers important features such as uptime guarantees, security, speed and performance, and scalability. We’ll also outline 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 e-commerce website.