eCommerce Partner with us Frequently Asked Questions
You now have an amazing web store powered by the world-class Magento platform. However, you might come across the worst scenarios when users shoot out crazy email regarding slowdown of the web store and error messages popping up when trying to add items to the cart for checkout etc. What do you do? You might have the best eCommerce platform, but this has nothing to do with your eCommerce platform – This is all about your hosting provider!
Isn’t it important to choose your hosting provider when working with your web portal? Read further to learn about the factors that you need to consider when choosing your hosting provider.
Your eCommerce Hosting
Hosting can either boost or break your site performance. Therefore, it is very important to choose the best hosting partner/options to boost your web store performance. Research the back-end technologies a bit before proceeding towards hosting options. Most of them go for shared hosting as it is a cost-effective plan but when your business expands, it turns out to be a nightmare. If you have knowledge about the back end, you can likely discuss the maintenance and performance related queries with your provider and even troubleshoot some of the issues yourself!
Choosing the right partner
How do you select the right partner for your eCommerce portal? To choose the best partner for your business depends on, you need to:
- Follow a strict evaluation criteria
- Properly assess your own current and future requirements.
For the above, you need to know what exactly your eCommerce site needs.
- Website Traffic
The first step would be evaluating on how much requests your server gets in on peak and off peak times. This way, you will be able to determine the size and scope of hosting plan that needs to be implemented. Google Analytics doesn’t provide the details of how hosting works (i.e. time slices of requests received per second). If you already have an eCommerce site, you will be able to check your existing hosting partner for the information. Ask them to send raw log files and there are couple of free tools available for you online to check on the requests per second.
- Pages and page types
The number of pages and the page types impacts on the webstore performance if the website hosting is not well optimized. The cost incurred for rendering the products differs based on category pages. For e.g. category pages with simple products take less hosting power compared to pages that have configurable items like clothing (different colors, sizes etc.).
- Your hosting type
There are two types of sever hosting:
- Managed and
- Self-service hosting
1. Managed Hosting
This type of hosting involves server maintenance and configuration with latest updates and fixes handled by the hosting provider's team.
2. Self-service Hosting
The server is run by the client or an outside consultant hired by the client.
In terms of Magento, managed hosting can cause issues like inability of the hosting provider to work on custom functionalities or even charging a high premium for enabling software/installation. Self-service hosting comes with risks of adding the latest features or managing them by yourself.
Server Types
To learn more about servers. Click here!
Support
You have to worry about the support services as you are running an eCommerce business that operates around the clock! Make sure that your hosting company ensures 24/7 support with Magento emergency services. Magento support comes in handy for users who are new to Magento suite and site building. You have to look for hosting companies that have a lower response time and come with reasonable rates for standard support mechanisms.
Web Security
Ensure that your hosting company blocks adult websites, spammers or misleading websites which may cause IP net to get blocked eventually, resulting in your site getting blacklisted too. Make sure to purchase SSL and SSH encryption features for your web store. Also, make sure you have daily/live backups done.
Magento with your Hosting Company
Magento is rated as the No. 1 eCommerce platform worldwide. However, the Magento 1.x version has been showing a slight slowdown in terms of its performance. When Magento 2 came out, speed and performance were the most evaluated factors which turned out to be the best in the latest version.
Whatever it may be, hosting is one of the major factors for the success of your eCommerce website performance. With several hosting providers on the market, it is important to choose the best provider for your online business considering Magento’s features too. To start with you may evaluate hosting providers based on:
- The number of products in your web store
- Number of site traffic achieved per month
- Site performance requirements that can fulfill current and future needs.
Is your hosting provider compatible with Magento Platform?
Yes, it is very important and make sure to choose someone who offers the best service with the latest Magento version. This means your web hosting provider supports PHP 5.4 and above, MySQL 5.6 and above and Apache 2.x versions.
So, what do you think? Isn’t hosting important when working with Magento? Yes it is! If you are going to factor all these requirements and evaluate the best, you will be able to choose the top Magento hosting service company for your web store!
About x2x eCommerce
x2x eCommerce is the first and the only solution that adds an eCommerce module to Dynamics GP and uses the latest and most comprehensive web front components provided by Magento eCommerce.
x2x eCommerce is an add-on module for Dynamics GP which adds eCommerce related features into Dynamics GP. These features, which do not inherently exist in GP (like Product Catalog, Item Images, SEO) are added by the x2x eCommerce module in Dynamics GP.
Isn’t it great to have a tool like x2x? No more hassles in managing inventory on your Magento store anymore! Get in touch with our experts today to see a quick demo.
by x2x eCommerce