An e-trader is very often someone with a good idea, knowledge of a particular business, management skills and management, but not necessarily someone who has advanced skills in technique or computer science.
However, the problem is that an e-commerce site is, by definition, bound to be administered via a specific technical architecture. It is therefore absolutely necessary, to make the right decisions, to be aware of the technical issues related to IT hosting, or outsourcing (management) of the platform.
We will put aside the problem of choosing the e-commerce tool itself with which the website is built, just as important, but which raises other issues (development, evolution, user comfort). So in this article we are going to take the advantage that you have your own e-commerce website, which was created for you by a web agency or an IT developer, and that you want to find a technical platform to host it.
Computer hosting: Definition
IT hosting consists of the technical infrastructures that will host your e-commerce site. On this technical infrastructure depends the performance of your site and the possibility of accessing it. Of course, it is important that your site is accessible to the public seven days a week, even 24 hours a day depending on your activity, any interruption in service could mean a loss of profits.
Choose technology
Like any technology, multiple IT hosting solutions are possible, from the simplest to the most sophisticated.
So, first, we will talk about shared hosting and dedicated hosting.
Shared hosting is suitable for sites with low traffic. Its particularity is to host your website on the same server in the company of the sites of other clients. This induces a problem in terms of performance loss. Because if one of the sites hosted on the same server as yours is too greedy in terms of resources, the performance of your own site may be penalized.
Dedicated hosting consists of having its own server. The resources of the machine are then entirely devoted to your site. The problem with this solution: it requires knowledge of server administration, and it is of course more expensive, but it will be better suited to medium or high traffic volumes.
Finally, virtual private hosting (VPS) is an intermediate solution which consists of creating several virtual servers on the same real server, using virtualization technologies. These virtual servers thus have the same characteristics as dedicated servers, so they are therefore also suitable for medium or high traffic volumes. in addition, these virtual servers can benefit from their own operating system, services and specific configurations, or from individual reboots, which makes their management much more flexible. Flexible and scalable, virtual servers are preferred today for solutions that are both efficient and economical.
Choose the associated services
As we specified in the introduction, not all e-commerce companies have an employee specialized in server administration. So we have just distinguished the different technologies available in terms of e-commerce hosting, but what about associated services? So, when choosing a hosting plan, you must also think about the management of this hosting, also called outsourcing. We often have a false image of websites.
Because they are pages, texts, images, they are represented as a kind of virtual magazines, when in reality, behind, they are machines. Machines that can therefore become jammed, that require maintenance, that age over time and that can be subject to breakdown or breakage.
So to be efficient, to ensure you have a functional and available site without service interruption, to be sure that you can quickly put the site back online in the event of a technical malfunction, or even to be sure that you can have exploitable backups in the event of loss of data or total compromise of the site, it is necessary to have adequate skills or to be able to subcontract these services in the form of outsourcing services.
E-commerce hosting and outsourcing: which billing model?
Thus, we have just seen that from the technical point of view, it is the virtualized infrastructures which today offer one of the best performance / price ratios.
Similarly, in order to benefit from the services associated with the operation and maintenance of the hosting of its e-commerce site, it is necessary to subscribe to managed services.
The offers of e-commerce hosts now go in this direction, with billing for use according to your needs and your activity, and that it adapts quickly in the event of traffic peaks or changes in your business.
The outsourcing of this management no longer represents a constraint for companies today, it is rather an opportunity. The possibility for them to have expert skills at reasonable costs, technological performance comparable to that of large structures and a quality of professional service.
Do you want to know more about DMTwebhosting’s e-commerce hosting and outsourcing? Do not hesitate to contact us , our advisers are available to answer all your questions.
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