How to Judge E-commerce Hosting Plans?

In order to judge E-commerce hosting plans there are many points that a user should consider. In addition to requirements of standard web hosting plans, Web hosting for e-commerce operation needs a shopping cart that supports online catalog and online payment processing.

Standard Web Hosting Plans:

An important feature of Standard hosting plans is that it varies in terms of programming languages, operating systems and performance of server. The most common used web development languages are PHP, ASP, JSP and PERL. The hosting plans that use to support these programming languages are known as PHP Web hosting, ASP Web hosting, JSP Web hosting or PERL Web hosting. As soon as the user has picked up the programming language(s) for his/her Web development, one will have the freedom to choose the operating system that hosts his/her Websites. O.S like ASP works only on Microsoft Windows, whereas PHP, JSP and PERL work on Windows, Unix and Linux as well. The hosting plans that support particular operating systems are known as Window Hosting, Unix Hosting or Linux hosting. When one talks about Web servers, the most important thing in which one is interested is the performance of server and the type of server like whether Managed Web Hosting, Shared Hosting, Dedicated Servers, or Virtual Private Servers (VPS). In comparison to all others, shared hosting is considered as the most cheapest plan, as here in this case one can host as many sites as possible like with a Reseller Hosting option. The cost of VPS is around $50 per month, and the cost of dedicated Server plan generally lies between $50 and $100 or even more per month depending upon storage space and bandwidth of the hosting plan.

Concept of E-commerce Web hosting plans:

In order to judge the quality of e-commerce web hosting plans the most important thing to check is functionality as well as price comparison of each plan. Here the process of comparison of functionality is quite simple but the comparison of cost for different e-commerce hosting solutions is little bit complicated. There are different hosting plans offering different free structures. It is often seen that the cost of each hosting plan varies in terms of transaction volume. Some of the most important e-commerce solutions are EBay Stores, Yahoo! Store and Microsoft bCentral etc. for small businesses who want to setup online stores easily and faster.

When comparing functionality, there’re many questions to ask: 1) whether a shopping cart accepts online check or eCheck beside support on online credit card and paypal for payment options; 2) whether there’s a limit on the number of products and categories that you can setup; 3) whether it automatically sends out an email notification once an order is placed successfully.

A user should while looking for a cost of commerce operation should ask for the following questions:

1. What is the basic subscription fee monthly?

2. Is there any setup fee for a new online store?

3. Is the user required to pay additionally for adding new products to the catalog?

4. What is the cost for each transaction?

Thus the above are some of the question one must ask from a company. There are several high volume sites that prefer the plans that charge a higher monthly-fee but a lower fee on each transaction, whereas there are several low volume sites which work better with hosting plans that charge nothing or quite less monthly fee and initial setup fees but a slightly higher fee on each transaction.