Starting An Online Business? - Tutorial 4 - Selecting The Right Web Hosting Company

Once you have selected the business domain name(s) that you wish to utilize then the next step is to research what web hosting company best suits your online requirements? There are a vast amount of web hosting companies to choose from and each of them offers numerous packages for your ecommerce solution. Each of these packages includes the same basic features but each company performs better for each of these depending on the businesses requirements.

We will go through the basic features that your online business requires to have a reliable, successful ecommerce solution. Consider the following features when researching you ideal web hosting company:

  1. Customer Support - All web hosting company ought to have this feature but you must check how easily it is to use and how soon the company can deal with problems that occur. There are always problems that will occur when dealing with ecommerce software or your new website so look for a support number on the company's website and other means of contacting them. Many companies offer a free trial period so take this opportunity to test the support team, address issues such as email, domain transfers and server downtime, try the hosting company before you commit to it.
  2. Secure Server - This feature is an absolute necessity for ecommerce software as an SSL certificate is needed for the ecommerce solution to accept credit cards through their online store. This feature is often an additional cost but if you are going to operate an ecommerce store then having this facility within your web hosting company should be on you research checklist.
  3. Web Space - Most websites have pages ranging from 10k to 50k so for an average site of about 15 pages, of which images are included, the website should need no more than 5MB of web space. For a larger ecommerce solution that includes a large number of images then your web space will need to be larger, around 15MB. Many web hosting company's offer much more space than this as they know they vast majority of users will not use anywhere near the web space they are being offered. These packages that offer 500MB of web space do so for advertising to prospective customers who don't have an idea of how much web space they require.

For a complete ecommerce software solution that includes web hosting and enough web space to upload as many products as an online business requires, look at eSellution ecommerce software. Although a new company they have established a good client base, this is because of the integration included in the online software, this includes ecommerce website, eBay sync, Facebook store, Amazon sync and payment integration.