Hosting

Compared to traditional websites, e-commerce systems are somewhat more complex due to all the functionalities they include. This means they require more powerful hosting for their operation.

Many online retailers would like to save a few euros, which is why they often opt for regular shared hosting. Shared hosting means having multiple online stores on the same server, sharing the server's resources. As long as it's a small online store with a low number of products and traffic, this usually doesn't cause problems. However, as the number of products or visitors increases, this hosting method becomes insufficient. The performance of the server is not only affected by the size of your store and its traffic but also by the way other sites on the same server load it. In practice, this means that another site on the same server may have higher traffic and visits, affecting your store. Almost every store owner hosting on shared hosting has faced this issue.

For reliable store operation, you need a more powerful server or customized hosting that can handle more traffic and host larger online stores. Some hosting providers now offer tailored hosting for stores, having their servers set up specifically for the requirements of a specific store. In this case, it usually involves virtual private servers (VPS) or dedicated servers.

Virtual Private Server or VPS is designed for more demanding users who need greater performance for running their online stores. With VPS hosting, the physical server is divided into multiple virtual servers, with each user of a virtual server having allocated a certain amount of memory, processor, and hard disk available only to them. This way, you avoid problems that neighboring sites on shared hosting might cause.

Dedicated Server is the last step of web hosting, where an online store has an entire server at its disposal. A dedicated server offers complete customization of the system according to your needs and allows meeting specific requirements.

Another form of shared hosting is Cloud Hosting, where two or more computers are connected to a system. Servers are not connected by performing different work processes simultaneously, but they share them.

Cloud stores are also worth mentioning, and their advantage lies in the fact that online merchants don't have to worry about hosting since it is included in the cloud store service. This way, all tenants of a cloud store have one less worry since they don't have to deal with hosting. The store service provider takes care of hosting the system.

It is crucial to be aware that proper hosting is very important. Every moment your site is down or very slow, you lose customers and, consequently, revenue. Many are not aware that with a few additional euros per month, they can ensure more reliable hosting, reducing the number of lost customers and revenue decline.

Key functionalities important for e-commerce hosting:

Available space - the space must be sufficient for hosting all the code of the store, especially content (product images, etc.). Usually, the size of the required space on the server is proportional to the number of products. The more products you have, the more space they occupy with images, texts, attachments, and other content.

Adequate processor and cache availability - a very important detail that most hosting providers hide, although it affects the speed of executing e-commerce processes, and consequently, its responsiveness and execution speed. Usually, this represents the largest share of hosting costs, so many online stores with poor configurations prefer to omit it.

Unlimited data transfer - every request on the server (e.g., a visitor accessing the online store) consumes a certain amount of data transfer. This can vary significantly depending on the size of the transferred content and the number of visitors. It is advisable not to have hosting with such limitations, as we can quickly exceed the limit with increased traffic, such as launching a successful advertising campaign, making the site inaccessible until the limit is increased or the hosting package is upgraded.

Sufficient number of databases - usually, each online store requires at least one database. Databases are used to store data about customer orders or newsletter sign-ups and similar.

SSL support - for every store, installing a security certificate and an active secure connection via an HTTPS link on hosting is recommended. This is crucial for security since we have sensitive data in online stores (personal data, addresses, and credit card numbers of our customers). With a secure connection, we reduce the risk, and depending on the type of certificate, we also have various guarantees and types of encryption.

Daily backups - without backups of the store, various problems can occur, especially errors on the site, a hacker attack, or something similar that can cause the store to not work or important data loss. In such cases, data backup can save the business. Imagine accidentally deleting a few thousand products in your online store. The likelihood of this happening may be small in your opinion, but in my career, it has happened several times. If we hadn't made data backups, we would probably need a few months to prepare new content, during which time the online store would exist without content and without sales items.

Control panel - if we often develop an online store and our developers need accessible tools to help them make changes to the online store, a control panel is more than welcome. Without a control panel, performing certain tasks could be considerably delayed, as we would have to contact the hosting provider for each more complex intervention on the server and ask them to make a specific change to the server.

Protection against spam - unwanted spam is increasing, and it is important to have adequate protection that blocks at least a large part of the advertising messages on the server, so that our mailbox is not inundated with advertising messages. Protection against spam is also necessary because during browsing, it can lead to the replacement of genuine mail. In this case, we may inadvertently open one of the attachments, which can compromise the operation of the computer or attract us or our employees into a pyramid scheme.

Responsive technical support - qualified technical support must be available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year via email and phone. Fast and reliable support is what you need in case of problems because proper support will affect how quickly the situation will be restored to active status in the event of a server outage.

Reliable hosting is never an expense but a good investment.