Hosting is a vital part of any online business, but it’s far more important with an ecommerce website than just a standard website. The right Zen Cart hosting can make or break your business because of slow load times and down time.
Put yourself in the visitors shoes, if you found a website on Google or another search engine and you really liked the idea of what they offers, would you be happy if you clicked on the link only to find an error page or a blank screen taking forever to load?
Most visitors to websites will only stay for an average of eight seconds. If the site doesn’t load in those eight seconds, they will leave. Not only does a slow load time cost you customers, but it also hurts your search engine optimization. Part of the Google algorithm is dependent on how fast your website loads. If your site takes more than two seconds to load, it’s considered a slow loading website.
Start With the Best Hosting for Zen Cart
By choosing the best Zen Cart hosting from the beginning, you can avoid many of the typical issues of a new business. Many business owners base most of their original decisions on price. However, choosing the cheapest hosting package may be the biggest mistake you make.
If you choose a company only offering a cheap shared hosting package, you will have to switch hosts when you start receiving a medium to large volume of traffic. This will also happen if you plan to catalog more than just a few dozen products. The more products you include and the more traffic you receive, the better your hosting will need to be or you will experience slow load times and potential downtime.
Magento is defined as an open-source ecommerce web application. It was developed in 2008 and was originally called Bento. EBay now owns 100% of Magento, which is used by nearly 1% of all the websites found on the internet.
What Happens if You Choose Bad Hosting for Magento?
Bad hosting can lead to many issues from lack of support to downtime and more. The worst thing you can do for your customers is provide a website promising great product they cannot access because of your hosting. The most common issues with bad hosting companies include:
Slow website load times
More downtime than necessary
Lack of support
Slow support
Lack of resources
Over promising and under delivering
These problems stem from a number of issues, which include out of date servers, an unqualified support team and overloaded servers. You don’t want to deal with all these issues, while trying to launch and run your new business.
Avoid the Issues by Choosing the Best
Choosing the best Magento hosting found online will help you avoid all the issues. Elite Hosts is rated as one of the top choices for Magento hosting with shared, VPS and dedicated server packages to fit your specific needs. When you choose to host your new online store with Elite Hosts, you’re backed by one of the best support teams in the industry.
With a knowledgeable team handling your support request, not only is it dealt with quickly, but also accurately. This keeps you from dealing with support again for the same issue. Elite Hosts strives to fix any you encounter issues the first time.
Along with excellent support, your online store will be hosted on the best servers in the industry. Elite Hosts never overloads the shared servers ensuring you not only get the maximum uptime, but also the fastest load times possible.
Requirements for Hosting Magento
Magento requires a specific type of servers, PHP, MySQL and SSL for optimum use. The requirements are as follows:
Supported Operating System – Linux x86, x86-64
Supported Web Servers – Apache 1.3x, 2.0x and 2.2x
PHP 5.2.0 or above
MySQL 4.1.2.0or above
Valid SSL certificate
Along with these requirements, your hosting needs specific extensions for PHP and MySQL including:
PDO_MySQL
simplexml
mcrypt
hash
GD
DOM
iconv
SOAP
InnoDB storage engine
As long as the hosting package you choose provides all of the above or better, you will be able to use it as Magento hosting. All the hosting packages from Elite Hosts provide at least the requirements listed above.
Which Level of Hosting Fits Best?
Once you decide Elite Hosts will be your hosting company, it’s time to choose a package. Shared hosting will provide the most affordable option with three packages ranging from $4.95 per month to $11.95 per month. These packages provide unlimited resources and the more expensive package gives you the ability to host unlimited domain names.
VPS hosting is the next step up. With this type of hosting, your online store will still share a server, but you will receive an allocated amount of resources specifically for your store. VPS hosting provides better security and supports a higher volume of traffic compared to shared hosting.
If you want the absolute best Magento hosting for your new ecommerce website, a dedicated server will provide the best option. At Elite Hosts, all the dedicated hosting packages are fully managed making it easy for you to get the best possible hosting without purchasing and supporting your own server. You will be able to customize the security of the server and dedicated server hosting won’t experience any slowdowns during high traffic times.
Businesses can start with an inexpensive shared hosting package and easily upgrade as they grow. Maybe your budget is a little tight right now, but as your business grows, so will your budget. Start with shared hosting and progress through the VPS packages, all the way to your own dedicated server and our support team will make the transitions for you, with the minimum downtime possible.
Finalizing Your Hosting Decision
Making the right decision for professional hosting, whether it’s shared, VPs or dedicated, will make all the difference. If you’re just starting out, you may want to select shared hosting and work your way up as you grow. Those migrating from another hosting company can contact the Elite Hosts support team for a hosting package recommendation. The decision is ultimately yours, but if you want the best Magento hosting in the business, Elite Hosts is the right choice.
Elite Hosts is a Web Hosting and Domain Registration provider. We provide shared web hosting, reseller hosting and domain registration for small businesses.
