Choosing the right e-commerce web hosting can be a web-based entrepreneur’s nightmare. Good hosting is the first vital step to building a viable website for your e-business. The selection of your e-commerce web host is most important because the quality of services that your e-commerce web host provider offers can either empower or limit the functionality and efficiency of your e-commerce business.
Therefore you can only conclude that the functionality and stability of your e-commerce web host is of great concern purely because your e-commerce website is only as reliable and sustainable as your hosting service and in turn the servers on which they choose to host their clients.
Probably the most important factors to consider when selecting an ecommerce web host are the longevity and reliability of the company. In other words the amount of time that the hosting company has been in business is really important simply because in this day and age there are so many people pursuing internet-related business opportunities that scammers and the fly-by-nights don’t have the experience or invest the time and money to ensure that their ecommerce web host services are top-notch.
What happens with these dubious companies is that they quickly launch a hosting business using substandard equipment which provides shoddy service. As a result, they soon lose clients and the next thing you know, they have ceased trading and your website goes down right along with them. There is no greater setback for an internet business than losing their hosting and the associated resources; especially if they have no back-up copy of their site.
If your hosting company unexpectedly goes out of business and simply vanishes and you do have a backup of your website you can quickly re-launch with a new, more reliable web host.
However, there is a danger that over time, you will have spent a lot of time and money on your website development and little things that are worked out here and there in regard to your website’s functionality may not always get backed up since you expected to depend upon your e-commerce web host to backup your website regularly.
Reliability is a major factor when choosing an e-commerce web host. Internet business owners must accept that website downtime results in lost traffic, lost sales and even lost page rank. Most hosting services that are truly reliable guarantee at least 99% uptime. It certainly pays to find out what your web host’s policies and practices are in regard to uptime, backup procedures, disaster recovery and downtime prevention.
It is best to use a web host that uses automated backup solutions that backup their servers regularly to an offsite server. If one server goes down or needs maintenance, the backup server can then kick-in and continue web hosting without interruptions.
Extremely reliable web hosts use mirrored servers that are located in a different geographic area so natural disasters should not affect their clients. Unfortunately occasionally with the best will in the world this is not always possible and from time to time even with a good hosting company you are going to experience the odd period of down time.
It is usually best to avoid free web hosting services, high-quality e-commerce web hosting will never be free or really cheap, but reliability is well worth what you pay for it. Other than longevity and reliability, things to consider in regard to your e-commerce web host include the actual web hosting packages that are available and the potential of the hosting company to provide you with automated e-commerce solutions.
Security, speed and space provided by your e-commerce web host’s servers is also very important as is technical support, scripts, software, email services, control panels, FTP access and access to server logs and activity reports.
Once you find what you think is the right hosting for you don’t be afraid to Google the company. If they have a bad track record or offer poor back-up you will soon be able to read about any problems in the many online web business forums.
