Cheapest Web Hosting

Undoubtedly, Electronic Commerce (or ecommerce in short) is the greatest gift of the advancements in web technology. Ecommerce allows merchants of all classes and business lines to trade electronically in a secured environment. Ecommerce has no boundaries. Merchants find it easy to get newer clients everyday internationally. The successes of EBay and Amazon websites underscore the stupendous credibility of ecommerce as a trading platform.

Merchants participating in ecommerce need a secure ecommerce website and ecommerce hosting services. Ecommerce hosting is a lucrative business in which a company provides all kinds of facilities by which a merchant can sell wares to a global clientele over the Internet. The facilities needed for ecommerce are (but not limited to) the following:

• A high capacity web server
• Ecommerce website design (including cataloging services)
• Software for electronic shopping carts, and to accept, process and confirm sales orders
• Providing templates for building virtual storefronts / online catalogs
• Managing secure e-payment mechanism
• Inventory control

A merchant gets in touch with an ecommerce service provider in order to procure space in its web server. Space in web servers are usually rented out on a monthly or yearly basis. Simultaneously, software for processing online orders is also leased out to the merchant. There are two modes of service – dedicated and shared. Commonly, an ecommerce hosting company’s servers cater to the requirements of more than one merchant on a shared basis. If the web traffic of a merchant is considerably large, and it suffers because of shared operation, it may opt for dedicated servers. The service providers usually assist merchants in opening up Internet e-payment accounts. These accounts are bank accounts capable of Internet transactions through Visa, MasterCard, American Express and other credit card companies.

The ecommerce hosting service providers are capable of managing the technical nitty-gritty behind the day-to-day maintenance of a commercial web server. For start-ups and smaller companies, opting for an ecommerce host is an economically viable option. These companies can avoid expenditure in costly servers, software connectivity. Moreover, they can escape the burden behind continued maintenance and upkeep of these components for ensuring a 24x7 service. Reliability is the essence of ecommerce hosting service providers. A reliable host should be ready to extend support even during off-peak hours. A merchant cannot afford to lose business on account of a server that has gone down all of a sudden. 

For a successful electronic commerce business, it is mandatory to choose a trustworthy hosting partner. The service provider should have goodwill in the market. This in turn is essential to establish your goodwill and credibility in the ecommerce world. Ecommerce merchants should give due importance to the insecurity of internet shoppers about leakage of their credit card details while transacting over the web. Today, hacking of financially sensitive credit card information is not at all uncommon. A credible host capable of providing a robust, secured e-payment platform can alleviate the shoppers’ fear to a great extent. 

Typically, a credible ecommerce host offers the following services:

• 24x7x365 service and technical support to ecommerce merchants
• Live chat, email support at all times, preferably a human support most of the times
• Fully automated, comprehensive package to track web traffic
• Shopping cart software
• Periodic database backups to ensure business continuity
• Upgrade facility to better ecommerce packages in sync with growing business needs
• Provision of secured server, with latest anti-virus and anti-hacking tools
• Support for scripting and server-side programming
• Instant switching to backup server in case the master server crashes or during server maintenance

A merchant should do thorough research before selecting an ecommerce host. The hosting charge varies from one service provider to another and depends on the service package you opt for and the quality of support you expect. There are some free ecommerce service providers also. However, their services are unreliable and insecure. These free ecommerce hosting provides make money in different ways – mostly through online ads. The flop side of free providers is their unstable service. It has been observed that free hosting service providers stop functioning abruptly within months or even weeks of commencement of their operations. 

A merchant should search for dependable ecommerce hosts over the internet and eventually narrow down the list into two or three. One way to check credibility of the hosts is to visit and study carefully the sites that are currently supported by these companies. The primary expectations can be summed up into two generic requirements – reliability and customer service. No hosting company under the sun can guarantee a 100% uptime, however, today, in the age of advanced hardware and software technologies, 99.9% uninterrupted service level can be achieved. The most important reliability factor is how quickly a service provider can spring back to service in case of a downtime. In real life, unexpected interruptions do happen and credible ecommerce hosts have to invest considerably to ensure business continuity. What’s more important is – host companies should have preventive mechanism in place for prompt restoration of services in cases of disasters like flood, fire, earthquake etc.