How to choose web hosting for ecommerce applications

When launching e-business your to do checklist is quite long: select proper e-commerce software, stock a competitive set of merchandise, work out reasonable marketing policy, organize orders fulfillment and plenty of other necessary tasks.
However you should never underestimate the importance web hosting that you are using to run your e-commerce applications. If your site is extremely slow or goes down a few times a day you can say goodbye to your online sales.
Is it easy to select a proper hosting? Yes and no. There are thousands of companies around the world offering hosting packages so you really have a choice but if you make shot in the dark you will obviously miss. So you'd better be prepared to select an adequate basement for your e-business.

1. System requirements

Firstly you need to check if the hosting satisfies minimum system requirements for your software. If it is said that host supports PHP/MySQL that does not necessarily means that any PHP/MySQL software can run at this host. PHP can be configured in many different ways, some of its functions may be disabled and settings may significantly differ from the recommended defaults.
Fortunately X-Cart and LiteCommerce depend on few settings that you can find on the server requirements page. If you are not sure about the required settings you should contact sales representative of the hosting company and ask them to confirm if their systems meet minimum requirements of the software.

2. Services and support

It is also useful to check how responsive is the personnel of the hosting company is and what level of services they provide. Check what is the guaranteed response time for your issues. What is the guaranteed network uptime and warranty for the server hardware. If you are renting a dedicated server you should also know what is the guaranteed time for replacement of defective hardware components.
Read service level agreement carefully to avoid any hidden fees. Find out how much you have to pay for over limited traffic, disk space, IP addresses, SSL certificates? Are there extra charges for nighttime support? How much it costs to install an additional hardware, software?. 30-day moneyback is highly recommended in case if the hosting company does not satisfy your requirements.

3. Matter of trust

You should ask yourself "do I trust this company?" before signing a contract. This is not the last question because e-commerce site can contain very sensitive information and it is not good if some people with cruel intentions have access to it. You should avoid amateur companies with 2-3 staff members (probably students). Usually they could not provide any actual warranty and any day can have a better business idea and drop their current business in favor of it.
Also make sure that the hosting company you are going to use is not involved in any illegal activities like providing hosting for spammers or forbidden content. Otherwise one day you could find out that your servers are in the spam list or they can just be closed and arrested by authorities.

4. Word of mouth

If you are not 100% sure in your choice you should try to check opinions of other customers. For more accurate results you should use several independent sources. However if you find one bad review it doest mean that this company is bad, there is always some percent of unsatisfied clients (or unfair competitors) even if the company is absolutely brilliant, but if there is plenty of negative feedback you should be alerted. Any search engine like Google can help you to find necessary information to get the right idea. Forums and users groups can give you a lot of valuable feedback.

5. Co-located hosting or dedicated server

Co-located hosting means that you are sharing one physical server with hundreds or sometimes thousands of other users; this type of hosting is rather cheap but has several important drawbacks.
Firstly, there is no warranty for stable performance. When planning how many users one co-located server can bear hosting providers usually take into account an average load created by one user. But during peak hours (in the hours of the highest business activity) the server may get overloaded and significantly slow down or even stop processing requests from some users.
Possible security issues. If server is not properly configured users who share one server can read (or sometimes even write) files that belong to other users. This can be a serious security risk because e-commerce site usually contains highly sensitive data that can be compromised.
Virtual dedicated server (several virtual servers emulated by the software on one physical server) are more secure from the co-locating point of view but still could not guarantee the performance of a real dedicated server.
Dedicated server is the most preferable but far more expensive solution because except for the cost of the server rent you should also pay for the server management to your system administrator or to the hosting company. However, the dedicated server is the only relaible option if you have many visitors or busy traffic.

6. Recommended hosting

There is a number of recommended webhosting companies that are compatible with our software. Most of them have a number of X-Cart or LiteCommerce customers who are already using their services. It is up to you whether to use their services or not but you can at least browse their websites to get a better idea what to look for.

A few extra hours you spent for search of an appropriate hosting solution will save a lot of headache and frustration in future. You should carefully determine what type of server is necessary and affordable for your business at the moment and make a decision.