Best Ecommerce Web Hosting Plans and Don’t You Settle for Less

Experienced entrepreneurs launch ecommerce sites every day and become successful quickly due to the continual advance of ecommerce web hosting  plan technology.

The best web hosting for ecommerce comes in packages of all shapes and sizes and are offered by legions of different companies. How do you choose? What key pointers must you know to make an informed choice, and how do you differentiate the needs of a conventional website as opposed to your specific needs as an online merchant? Web hosting services for ecommerce are not created equal,

and it is important to be selective when determining who you do business with.  Who you do business with, in turn, will be influenced, by your specific needs.  As an ecommerce site owner, you require access to the tools, processes, and knowledge the experts have in order to duplicate their success.

Best Web Hosting for Ecommerce

There are many factors to consider when choosing web hosting.  For ecommerce, companies often offer different server options, such as shared hosting with unlimited domains, virtual private servers (VPS), dedicated servers, and reseller hosting.  There are different kinds of ecommerce business models, and you want to be sure you choose the hosting option that fits your business.  For example, if you plan on setting up many small niche stores on different domains, you might consider reseller hosting or perhaps your own dedicated server or VPS with multiple Class C IPs.  If you are planning on setting up a large store and anticipate heavy traffic, then you may be looking at a single domain on shared hosting, or if you expect crushing levels of traffic then your own dedicated server.  It is important that your hosting provider understand the demands of ecommerce traffic, and your need for bandwidth and disk space as well as typical ecommerce support needs.

Side Bar:

You may be interested to know that on 9/19/2011  Salehoo, the online wholesale and drop ship supplier membership and forum, started offering a new service called Salehoo Stores.  In a nutshell, this is intended to be a one-stop ecommerce hosting solution offering the technology and design resources to launch a professional ecommerce store at the push of a button.  How you stock the store is up to you.  You choose your inventory from whatever sources you choose.  You can use the Salehoo directory to find product suppliers or not.  Again, and this is important, Salehoo does not sell you the products.  What you put in your store and where you get your products is up to you.  The beauty of  Salehoo Stores is that it offers a professionally designed instant ecommerce storefront and all of the hosting technology to make sure it runs efficiently.

Having said the above, let’s cut to the chase.  Rather than me lead you through 2000 words about the best hosting, here are my recommendations that I think will allow you to achieve systematic and consistent results (I’ll explain why later):

• iPower
• Hostgator
• Bluehost
• Hostmonster
• Liquid Web
• Inmotion Hosting
• Salehoo Stores

All of the services listed above include multiple options for automatic shopping cart installation and payment processing options. Installation is a matter of one click and accomplished through the admin control panel (C-Panel).

• Salehoo Stores includes:

• With Salehoo Stores you do not handle any of the set up. All hosting, disk space, bandwidth, and store set up is handled for you. Salehoo Stores provides all of the infrastructure so that essentially only handle the administration and management of your business.

• iPower includes:

• SSL secure server
• OS Commerce Shopping Cart
• Agora Shopping Cart
• ShopSite Cart
• Offers shared and VPS hosting plans

• Hostgator includes:

• SSL secure server
• OS Commerce
• Cube Cart
• Zen Cart
• Offers shared, reseller, VPS, and dedicated server hosting

• Bluehost includes:

• SSL secure server
• OS Commerce
• Agora Shopping Cart
• Cube Cart
• Zen Cart
• Offers shared hosting

• Hostmonster includes:

• SSL secure server
• OS Commerce
• Agora Cart
• Offers shared hosting

• Liquid Web includes:

• SSL secure server
• OS Commerce
• Zen Cart
• Cube Cart
• Offer shared, VPS, dedicated, and smart server hosting

• Inmotion Hosting includes:

• OS Commerce
• Cube Cart
• Zen Cart
• Shared SSL
• Offers shared, VPS and Dedicated Server hosting

In addition, excellent ecommerce hosting must also make available multiple payment gateways. In other words, your hosting must allow you a variety of options for collecting payment, and each of the services listed here fulfill that requirement.

Each service offers inexpensive ecommerce website hosting. I have not tried to list prices simply because each host offers a variety of different kinds of packages, and pricing options become too complicated to list out here. However, most have options that begin between 3 and 4 dollars a month and go up from there. I’ve listed some of the points that make any of these companies an excellent choice:

• Reliability
• Tech support
• Superior customer service
• Maximum up-time
• Solid ecommerce track record
• Variety and flexibility of  plans and packages
• Affordable price

For ecommerce, especially if you are starting out and you are on a shoe string budget, it is vital that you remain focused on your business and not distracted by the technical details of managing your hosting.  The plans I’ve selected for mention all understand that as an online merchant, you are not a hobby website owner and that the technical demands of your site and you customer service needs require a higher standard and greater attention than that of the average blog owner.

As a website owner myself, I know that technical problems can easily absorb 90 percent of my time if I become careless. Although I have basic technical know-how and can handle the day to day maintenance of my sites, I am in no way equipped to handle the complexities of maintaining a secure and trouble free hosting environment. I have enough to handle on my own without worrying about sloppy hosting. Since switching my hosting over to Hostgator and Bluehost, I would say that I am 99 percent worry-free. The other 1 percent is largely because I am a worrier. I’ve never (cross my fingers and knock on wood) had a serious problem with these companies, and the few problems I’ve had have been swiftly addressed and resolved.

Inexpensive Ecommerce Website Hosting

While all of the services mentioned above offer inexpensive  hosting, Liquid Web is the pricier pick.  My advice if you starting out is to choose one of the other 4 choices and then switch to Liquid Web if and when you require a more refined, “boutique” service.  Liquid Web is somewhat famous for combining commando-like focus on technical expertise with lightening fast customer service.   This is not to disparage the other hosting services in any way.  As I mentioned above, I personally use Bluehost and Hostgator and give them the highest marks for reliability and quality customer service, and I personally believe that for the price, they can’t be beat.

A word about Hostgator Of the ecommerce website hosting services mentioned above, only Hostgator provides reseller hosting. Reseller hosting is different from shared hosting in that it allows you to buy hosting and then act as a hosting company. The parent company, in this case Hostgator, then handles all of your support issues for your customers. I use a Hostgator reseller account not to sell hosting but to set up all of my individual domains with their own accounts. Many people who run many small, commercial ecommerce websites set them up on reseller accounts. Others prefer individual shared hosting plans or shared hosting plans that allow unlimitted add-on domains. Hostgator offers this kind of shared hosting but is well-known for its affordable and well supported reseller hosting.

The overall cheapest reseller hosting I’ve encountered is available through Hostingzoom.  I had an account with Hostingzoom for several years and recently dropped them and moved my sights over to Hostgator.  Although I thought their customer service and tech support were very responsive and professional, in the end I experienced too much down-time due to server troubles and denial of service attacks.  The trouble may have been local to only my server, but I finally through the towel in.  However, they are inexpensive and a big player in the reseller hosting market, so you may want to check them out.

Ecommerce Services You Need in a Web Hosting Package

• Great Tech Support
• Lots of Bandwidth and Disk  Space
• Up-Time Guarantee
• Variety of Hosting Plans
• SSL and Encryption
• Auto Responders
• Stats Management
• Choice of Ecommerce Shopping Cart Platforms
• Access to variety of Merchant Accounts

Generally speaking, shopping carts should include the following features:

• Products reviews
• Unlimited number of products
• Inventory management
• Efficient item upload process
• Easy inclusion of product images
• Flexible shipping and tax calculation
• Catalog management
• Coupons,  discounts, and gift certificates

If you have read this far, let me mention Salehoo Stores once again.  The reason for this is that many of the people who find this site–perhaps you–really do not want to to deal with the technical details of setting up your own ecommerce hosting.  If you already know how web hosting works and how to set up, install, and modify a shopping cart, then skip to the next paragraph.  If you plan on teaching yourself how to do this, then skip to next paragraph.  But  if you really just want a store, the Salehoo Stores service may be what you are looking for because they handle all of the technical details that you would otherwise have to deal with.  When you open an account, all you do is stock your store with your products and manage your business.

All of the services above make setting up a web hosting merchant account push button easy, and all packages include a shopping cart. In fact, as we have discussed, a choice of shopping carts is standard and include an optional push-button install (as opposed to you uploading all the files yourself).  All of the services above are equipped to handle any technical problems that arise with installation and maintenance should you encounter any problems. Perhaps most important of all, the services I’m suggesting you consider all have excellent customer service and technical support. Whether or not you decide to use the choices for ecommerce web hosting packages I’ve offered is unimportant. What is important is that you give your choice time and atttention to make sure you get the best ecommerce hosting plan for your needs.

 

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2. Suitable Web Designs For E-Commerce Sites
3. Ecommerce–Model for Home Business
4. Top 10 Ecommerce Shopping Carts
5. Bargain Ecommerce Store and Inventory Solution?