E-commerce Hosting: 11 Things to Look for If You’re Serious About Your Store

We are confused about whether you run an e-commerce store or are planning to launch one soon. But we are definitely sure that it’s either one of them and that is the reason you are here. Well, we would like to inform you that selecting a reputable yet reliable e-commerce hosting provider for your e-commerce store is a lot more crucial than you might realize. Too many businesses fail due to slow web page load times, inadequate security, and poorly managed web servers.One ideal option is URL hosting, a platform for your e-stores offering higher uptime and guaranteed server resources.

Now, the question that arises for the owners or potential owners of an e-commerce store is- what distinguishes a top e-commerce host? Well, just as we accurately read your mind and figured out the question in it, we will similarly provide you with an accurate answer to it. To assist you in your research and help you make a wise choice, we’ve compiled a list of the essential characteristics you should always look for in an e-commerce hosting provider. But first, we will brief you about what e-commerce hosting is!

E-commerce hosting: what is it?

To go live, every website and online store needs a web host. Your website can connect to the internet and receive visitors thanks to hosting, which provides a server on which it can run.

In essence, you’re paying for the right to use someone else’s unused server space while receiving service from a business that can secure and optimize its servers.

There are many distinct varieties and specializations in hosting. Other hosting types have special plans with special features, while some are named after the hardware they’re based on.

A top-notch e-commerce hosting package comes with various special features made just for this kind of business. A few examples of the same are listed below.

Free SSL encryption
Help with the setup of payment gateways
Additional security
Scaling during peak traffic times

A common problem for e-commerce sites is that they outgrow their server environment quickly. A popular solution to this problem is cloud hosting. Cloud hosting is totally scalable. The availability of resources is always flexible. This implies that at any time, you will be free to add or remove resources. In addition, it is very affordable for startups too!

Let us now get to the main topic- 11 things to look for in an e-commerce host.

Eleven things to consider when choosing an e-commerce hosting company

Every e-commerce host needs to have a few features. Watch for these important features when looking for an e-commerce host that will work well for your online store.

Data Transfer Rate and File Storage
Scalable Hosting
Speed
Activated Assistance
Uptime
Complete Safety
Integration with WooCommerce
Automatic Backups
Developer-Friendly Environment
Website Builder
Room for expansion

1. Data Transfer Rate and File Storage

The type of website that typically receives the most traffic is an e-commerce site, which uses up a lot of file space. You’ll need a host with enough resources to avoid paying exorbitant overage fees.
No matter what your e-commerce web developer is designing, you will need a lot of images because they are an essential part of any website’s design. Particularly e-commerce sites have the propensity to consume storage quickly.
Every product uploaded by your e-commerce website developer will require several high-resolution images, and once your store becomes sufficiently large, it must be easier to figure out where all the file space has gone.

2. Scalable Hosting

The traffic to an e-commerce store can be unpredictable, unlike the traffic to other websites, which increases steadily and predictably over time.
A significant increase in traffic, a sudden influx of customers, and exponential growth are frequently caused by holidays.
Searching for scalable website hosting resources in a managed e-commerce host that can expand with your company would be best.
A host allowing you to add CPU, RAM, and other resources whenever needed won’t lock you in.
The best option for this is cloud hosting because an e-commerce developer can easily request more power or upgrade your plan whenever they want and have it added instantly.
A physical VPS or dedicated server requires you to switch servers or manually install more powerful hardware to upgrade, which can be expensive.
Hence, we recommend you upgrade to cloud hosting, as it is cheap.

3. Speed

Website speed is important for how long visitors will stay on a page (hint: if your site is slow, they won’t) and how well a website will perform in search engine results.
You lose the visibility you need to attract new customers if your e-commerce site loads slowly.
Additionally, potential customers visiting the site will likely leave before purchasing.
While there are many steps you can take to increase the speed of your website, your web hosting is one of the most crucial aspects of site speed.
You require a web hosting package that can accommodate the volume of traffic you receive without affecting your operation’s speed.
Make sure you choose a plan that will meet your needs initially, but test the speed of your website frequently so you can decide when an upgrade is necessary as soon as possible.

4. Activated Assistance

Your new website will undoubtedly experience problems and mistakes. In addition to being collaborative with you, when a problem arises, the support should also be approachable, effective, and quick.
Every support team should have a group of knowledgeable developers behind them. The e-commerce web development team of the web host can help you with even the most unexpected problems if their infrastructure and servers are well-built and experience little downtime.
Look for support around the clock because server issues can happen anytime, even in the wee hours. If you receive a notice that your website is unavailable, it is advised that you fix it.

5. Uptime

whenever a user needs access to the site.
How consistently your web hosting provider’s servers operate is one of the most crucial factors to consider when looking for web hosting.
Uptime is the term web hosting companies use to describe the percentage of time that websites are up and accessible.
Sometimes it’s necessary to shut down web hosting servers for maintenance.
They might go offline due to problems like hacker attacks, hardware malfunctions, or even weather issues if they are not properly maintained. All these issues could result in some visitors seeing error messages when they try to access your website if you choose an unreliable web hosting provider.
Find a web hosting company that guarantees at least 99% uptime to avoid that and the resulting loss of revenue.
Likewise, make sure that independent reviewers can back up their assertions.

6. Complete Safety

Due to the sensitive information that e-commerce sites safeguard, including credit card numbers, PayPal and bank passwords, and frequently users’ full names and addresses, hackers frequently target them.
You must secure your website immediately because it is very profitable to hack an inadequately protected online store. Newly founded startups frequently have no idea how to keep this crucial data secure.
Although you and your developers are responsible for protecting your code, many hacks occur due to lax security on the part of your web host. Server code flaws make it simple for malicious hackers to access your website, access user data, record passwords as they pass through the server, or even install malware that targets users.
Picking a knowledgeable host is necessary for this reason. Watch out if they don’t have a hack-free policy. They need better security if you get hacked and won’t likely help you repair the damage.
To detect any malware that enters your website, your e-commerce host must offer round-the-clock monitoring and scanning services.
DDoS attacks are another frequent issue for e-commerce websites. These simultaneous attacks by thousands of computers can bring down a website quickly. A good host will recognize and stop DDoS attacks in their tracks.
Additionally, you must have an SSL certificate as an online store owner to encrypt sensitive user input coming in and going out. Without it, hackers can view anything from your website to your server, including user information entered into forms. Find a host that provides SSL for free.

7. Integration with WooCommerce

WooCommerce is what you use if you start your online store with WordPress.
Not all web hosts immediately function well with that plugin. If your site needs advanced functionality like WooCommerce-specific caching (and more), you might not experience problems directly, but it might not function as well as it could.
The best e-commerce hosts should offer WooCommerce hosting, given how well-liked WordPress is.
PCI compliance is a further requirement you should make of your e-commerce hosting provider.
The payment card industry, or PCI, is the name of a set of security guidelines created to prevent user information from being compromised by weak website security. A website must be PCI-compliant in order to accept credit card information.
Since you must put much effort into securing your website, a host cannot guarantee PCI compliance. However, they can undoubtedly facilitate the process for you by providing SSL certificates, protecting their servers with a firewall, and utilizing robust server infrastructure.
It is up to you whether you perform a PCI audit, but a good e-commerce host will work with you to secure your website and make any adjustments required to ensure PCI compliance.

8. Automatic Backups

We must uphold how crucial backups are for e-commerce websites. Backups of your data should always be automated. To safeguard your important store and database files, a reliable backup system must be in place daily, weekly, or occasionally even hourly.
You are simply risking making a mistake that causes your site to go down or corrupt your database. This happens especially if you’re working in WordPress as over there it’s simple to change sensitive settings unintentionally.
If you have a recent backup, you’ll save time and effort trying to get everything back to how it was.
One of your host’s main priorities should be data security in general. Sound infrastructure, continuous monitoring, and automatic backups ensure disaster prevention and site security.

9. Developer-Friendly Environment

Finding a host that supports developers who want to explore advanced hosting options can be challenging.
It makes sense that web hosts wouldn’t want inexperienced users modifying crucial files and bringing their entire website to a halt.
However, many hosts will make this an absolute nightmare for you when you need to edit core WordPress files, set up tools like WP-CLI or Git, or even update your PHP version.

10. Website Builder

Using a good website builder can save you money on a designer (or time trying to learn it all) if you’ve never built a website from scratch and need to learn how to code.
With the help of a website builder, you can pick one of many templates as the foundation for your website and then make changes to the template to suit your needs.
A top-notch website creator
- provides a user-friendly editor with drag-and-drop capabilities.
- offers a lot of responsive templates that are optimized for mobile use.
- includes a ton of options that make it simple to customize your website.
Even though you can buy website hosting and a website builder separately, choosing an e-commerce web hosting company that provides both will save you money and time.

11. Room for expansion

Your e-commerce site should develop over time, gaining customers, orders, and staff and expanding the range of goods you provide.
Today’s web hosting might differ from what you’ll need in a year or five.
Attempt to find a web hosting company that makes it simple to scale as necessary.
This entails simple plan upgrades that enable more storage and handle more traffic.
You’ll save time and hassle later on by making a choice now that makes it simple for your web hosting to expand with your business over the years.

Wrapping up

Too many recently launched websites experience the usual issues of sluggish loading times, inadequate security, and a lack of support as a result of a bad web host. Starting out with a standard shared host may seem affordable, but the harm to your business’s bottom line is not worth it.

When choosing an e-commerce hosting company, go with one that can scale to meet your company’s needs and provides top-notch quality as well as budget-friendly plans. Additionally, we recommend you look for the 11 things listed above while selecting an e-commerce website hosting provider