Ecommerce Hosting Basics

Ecommerce Hosting a a very new type of hosting package that web hosting companies are starting to offer. These types of hosting solutions are very similar to shared hosting solutions. They offer the same level of access, email functionality, bandwidth, storage, etc. The main difference between shared hosting and ecommerce hosting is that with ecommerce hosting, you generally get your choice of a vast array of shopping cart software to setup your online store.

There are two variations to ecommerce hosting. The first is when you get a standard hosting account on top of your ecommerce package. This will give you email addresses, FTP access, etc on top of shopping cart software. The shopping cart software can vary depending on your hosting provider. The main shopping cart software you will see will be either Miva Merchant, osCommerce, or Zen Shopping Cart. These three pieces of software are all great and very established storefronts, offer a great customer experience, have a huge online support forum, and are very easy to use and maintain.

The other variation of ecommerce hosting that you will see will be a storefront only type hosting. What this will be is an interface that allows you to log into your account, and strictly manage your store. There will be no standard hosting functions, and you will not have a standard website to maintain on these plans. The main benefit to these types of hosting plans is that you often get to select a template for your store front. This takes away from the requirement to have a storefront custom made. This aides in a quick start up, and allows for more time to be spent adding products.