Ecommerce industry is booming. Experts predict the market size of ecommerce will likely touch the $4trillion mark by the year-end. The good news is, this is just the beginning. Ecommerce has a bright future ahead.
As more people are moving towards digital businesses, this is the right time to start your own ecommerce store. In fact, ecommerce stores selling their own products are becoming millionaires overnight. But the only way that is possible is if store owners have a reliable hosting solution.
To identify which type of hosting solution is best for Ecommerce websites, I have come up with a list of requirements.
Hosting Requirements for Ecommerce Websites
Whether you are starting a dropshipping store, an affiliate website, an FBA business, or a small ecommerce store, these are the minimum requirements you need to start your ecommerce venture.
Scalability
The first thing you need in an ecommerce website is scalability. The fact is that after a few months your website will start getting more traffic due to retargeting campaigns, paid marketing, and organic reach. When that happens, you will either have to move to a new server or change your current hosting if you haven’t considered these things while starting the business.
Performance
Ecommerce websites need to load faster otherwise people will stop using them. Here is how a typical buyer’s journey looks like:
The buyer starts his/her journey from either a search engine or social media. S(he) will come to your website through a product page. Once the individual visitor likes the product, s(he) will move to check out. Now, if the checkout process is cumbersome, as it takes a lot of time to load, then the cart abandonment rate will increase even further. Thus, the ecommerce websites need to have fast loading speeds with easy check-out process.
Security
Security is an essential and integral part of an ecommerce website. Ecommerce websites tend to store the customer data, credit card information, and even product data. This data is too valuable to be neglected. A good hosting service needs to provide ironclad security through firewalls, double-layered authentication, and SSL security to help run the e-store smoothly, without any security loopholes.
Types of Ecommerce Website Hosting Solutions
Multiple hosting plans exist to serve different types of customers. Let’s check out which one of these hosting solutions offers these features.
Dedicated Hosting
In a dedicated hosting, a dedicated server is allocated to the user. The dedicated server allows rapid-fast browsing, high security, but lacks instant scalability feature. Users who want to scale their resources will have to either shift to a new server or wait for a couple of days after submitting a ticket to their host.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting offers hosting space on a public server already shared by many other websites. The shared server is not a feasible solution for ecommerce websites because the resources are shared with others and there are too many loopholes because of multiple websites hosted on a single server.
VPS
Virtual Private Server (VPS) server is a virtual server built on a dedicated machine. A VPS is scalable up to a certain limit depending on the availability of resources. It is a good solution for small ecommerce websites. One thing to note here is that VPS servers are costly.
Cloud
Cloud is the most feasible hosting solution for ecommerce stores because it offers complete scalability, cost-effectiveness, and multiple levels of security.
Which Hosting Solution is Perfect for Ecommerce Stores?
Based on a few factors, i.e. scalability, iron-clad security, and robust server performance, cloud hosting has a competitive edge over other hosting solutions when it comes to ecommerce stores.
Reason #1: Cloud Hosts Saves Ecommerce Websites From Crashing During Holiday Season
Today, ecommerce store owners want to shift to a hosting service that can handle more traffic. Most of the times, due to an outburst of traffic to an ecommerce website during the festive shopping seasons, the hosting servers start crashing. This leads to a loss of revenue and customer churn out. Therefore, to address this inevitable issue during the festive seasons, the ecommerce stores need a hosting solution that can automatically upscale or downscale based on the traffic numbers. Fortunately, ecommerce cloud hosting services have got users covered, as they offer this type of liberty.
Reason #2: Cloud Hosts Offer Ecommerce Stores Proximity to Customers
Cloud hosts have another leverage over other hosting solutions and that’s their proximity to customers. Getting a server near your customers’ home country increases page performance as the latency is at its minimum.
This means ecommerce websites and apps will load faster, providing a flawless site experience to the customers.
Reason #3: Cloud Hosts Keep Ecommerce Data Secure from Hackers
Hacking is a common problem in ecommerce. Hackers can steal customer data to sabotage the whole website. If proper measures are not in place, this can be disastrous for the ecommerce stores.
Luckily, cloud hosting services offer SSL security, built-in CDN, two-factor authentication, IP whitelisting and many more security features that keep the ecommerce websites safe from hackers.
Final Words!
Let’s get it straight. You won’t be able to change your host in the middle of your online shopping spree. You know the reasons why cloud hosting is the best solution for ecommerce hosting dilemmas, so it’s time to make a well thought out decision before the online shopping season starts.
