Matching Your Ecommerce Hosting to Your Needs

A Home Business Article Contributed by G. Uma Bennett

Matching Your Ecommerce Hosting to Your Needs

The foundation of your online store is your ecommerce hosting plan. Designing your website from the very beginning is easiest way to match all the components in a cost-effective way. Ecommerce hosting has several different features not always found in regular hosting. Knowing what you need is key to making the right choice and avoid spending money when you do not have to.

There are many hosting companies on the market, the basic requirements to look for in a monthly plan are: the amount of storage and bandwidth usage, the number of databases and the server platform and program applications that are available. Based on their features you can then begin to choose the software application to design your ecommerce website.

Be sure to check the technical specifications of the for storage and bandwidth usage, if it exceeds the monthly hosting plan you have selected, there will be an additional charge. Remember that your hosting fees are an ongoing expense, and it is a wise idea to calculate your budget on a yearly basis as well as for each month.

Select a Cost-Effective Ecommerce Hosting Plan

When you need to keep your ecommerce hosting expenses to a minimum, the best way to do this is to find a company that gives you the most of what you need, primarily storage for your files and bandwidth for your traffic. If you are only selling a few items, you might not need to pay for all the features of sophisticated ecommerce hosting plan, there are many regular hosting companies that are compatible with the simple online payment processors that use their own secure server.

These payment processors provide you with the encrypted links you need to sell your products safely. If your product line is under 200 items, you can use a simple database that works well with your ecommerce software. When you are selling globally using different types of currencies, make sure that your payment processor is able to handle conversions between your currency and that of your customer.

Calculating Your Ecommerce Hosting Plan Usage

If you compare ecommerce hosting plans, you will find that there are a variety of features you can get for your monthly fee. You need to keep a clear head as you begin the selection process: long lists of features may be impressive, but if they do not provide you with the support your website needs then you will be paying for nothing.

For instance, a hosting plan that offers 600 email addresses is great if you your website will offer paid email box service, if that is not the case, your money would be better spent on storage for your files or bandwidth to handle your traffic. If you plan to have several product lines, then you will need more than one database.

The same holds true if you plan to divide your website into sections, it is better to select a hosting company that offers you a large amount of subdomains to make it easier to setup your site in the way that works best to accomplish your business goals.