Small Business Hosting Solutions

There are more than 16,000 web hosting companies in the world currently. The hosting packages offered vary considerably. A small business hosting solutions for an ecommerce site generally requires more than a basic package provided by most webhosting companies. In other words, you would need a reliable ecommerce web hosting services, which also vary from one host to another.

Generally, a more expensive webhosting package does not mean that it is better than a lesser price package from another host. Having said that, a cheaper offer does not always mean we are really getting a good deal.

There are various factors that need to be considered in choosing the right webhosting for your need such as reliability, customer support, compatibility as well as the right price.
Web hosting service is not something that you want to change frequently. As such finding the right one is utmost important.

Things to look for in a small business e-commerce web hosting services.

It is best to shortlist about 3-5 webhosting companies that best suit your needs and make comparison among them. Look for review or complaints on the company by users at public forums as well as the hosting companies' own forums. Giving the nature of the service, if you really do thorough search, chances are you'll find that almost all web hosting companies have one or more complaints against them. The more important issue is how do they handle and resolve those problems. A good hosting provider will always attend to and try to settle problems brought up by their customers the soonest possible.
Ask them some questions you need to know and see how prompt are their response. How specific are the response to your questions?
Do they offer a trial period or money back guarantee? How much is the setup fee, if any?
Can you register domain name with them, or transfer existing domain name? Will your domain name work with or without the http://www. part attached to it?
Will you have your own IP address or is it shared?
Do they provide easy upgrade from basic ecommerce package to a more extended features version when the need arises?
How much is the server storage space, monthly bandwidth transfer, email accounts provided?
Do they provide PERL, PHP and MySQL or ASP and SQL?
How easy to use is the admin interface?
Do they offer own shopping cart? If not, do they offer easy integration and (recommended) discounted price of popular shopping cart?
Do they offer recommended or easy integration of a Payment Processing System of your choice based on your needs?
Do they offer details statistic and server logs access?
Avoid web hosting services that offer shared hosting to adult and gambling sites. Try to search other sites that use the particular host and see how fast their sites load.
Reliability. Check for their down time especially complaints brought up through their support forums or public hosting forums.
How often will your site be backed up?
Customer Support. Is their support available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Organized and prompt email support is very important. This is another vital aspect that needs to be checked through forums such as blunt post from actual customers in order to get objective result. You can also check at Better Business Bureau for any complaint made against them.
Compare the total start up cost from these few selected web hosting services provider. Bare in mind that really cheap ecommerce web hosting services might not be the best deal. The usual drawback is they might host your site at an overcrowded server and less supportive customer support due to inadequate number of staff.
Most importantly, always check the Terms of Service very carefully especially the fine print before signing up with a hosting service of your choice.

Here are the best small business ecommerce hosting solutions that we had reviewed.

Over the years, we had monitored a large numbers of web hosting companies and we'd notice one very similar trend. There are a lot of good hosting companies providing quality services when they first started-up, but once they have a considerable number of customers the quality of their customer support and services begin to wind down. It may be due to poor management, insufficient technical or customer support staff or countless other reasons.

Below are the lists of ecommerce small business hosting services that stand out through this test of time based on our experience. We also include a few newer hostings that have shown reliability. Review the list below for the one that best suits your e-commerce needs.