Best Ecommerce Softwares & Hosting Unveiled
Ecommerce Hosting Overview
Creating and managing an online business can be a rewarding but challenging endeavor. Working with a perfect platform is crucial for successful online business. To help you get started well with your e-commerce website, we’ve picked up by far the best rated shopping cart softwares plus the best web hosting provider with different cart solutions.
All these ecommerce programs are designed to help you create an shopping cart site without programming skills or web developping experience. Each software provides a powerful GUI and complete solution from product uploading to delivery.
Best Shopping Cart Softwares & Web Hosting
Magento shopping cart – the most powerful Open Source eCommerce Platform at the moment. Flexibility and extensibility keep Magento open to merchant’s needs and always poised for change — a necessity in today’s eCommerce marketplace. Especially after transfered to Amazon, Magento is powering on cloud service for faster and more reliable web services. No matter if you want to have an online store or enhance your online presence, magento is your primary choice.
- Magento official site: http://www.magentocommerce.com
- System requirement: Linux, Apache, PHP with GD enabled, Mysql database, cron jobs with php5+
Magento is PHP scripting, though it’s quite easy to setup for any size cart site. We always suggest VPS or cloud based dedicated server if a large portal site to be promoted.
For small to medium size shopping cart, BlueHost is proved to be the best choice for reliable and fast services. Not to mention their fruitful hosting plan features, their backend support is cloud based. Either for server side setup or networking configuration, bluehost has deeply optimized for maximum online availability!
Video show of magento installation with bluehost one click installer
NopCommerce – a secure, scalable and extendable e-commerce platform based asp.net. It provides user friendly administration tools to manage your storefront, customers, wish lists, discounts, and coupons. It also has flexible tax support, multi-lingual support, and hundreds of other features. Support for the most popular gateways. Nopcommerce is your sole choice for secure and high performance online store site on windows server.
- Nopcommerce official site: http://www.nopcommerce.com
- System requirement: Windows server 2003 or 2008, IIS 5.1 or above, ASP.NET 4.0, MS SQL server 2005 or above
Due to the technical limitation, nopcommerce can only work with windows server hosting environment. To make your nopcommerce cart reliable and always available, we highly suggest WinHost for risk free choice. Winhost is dedicated for ASP.NET hosting and extremely simplified your hosting experience. Their professional and ease of use windows hosting plans are designed to meet with any your specific web requirements.
osCommerce – a popular Open Source online shop e-commerce solution that is powered by a dedicated, strong, and ever growing community. With osCommerce software you can build the online store in minutes. Being one of the most first ecommerce solutions, oscommerce is included support by most web hosting providers from very old ages. osCommerce is powerful but requires web development skills to operate properly. The platform itself is very flexible and scalable to work with any shopping cart by secondary development
- osCommerce official site: http://www.oscommerce.com
- System requirement: Windows or Linux, PHP4+, Mysql database
osCommerce is popularly supported by all hosting service so its easy to get started. We only need a high performance server to work with. For worry free choice we highly suggest BlueHost which will give us fantastic experience for website hosting.
Cubecart – PHP & Mysql based light weight ecommerce shopping cart software solution. With CubeCart you can quickly setup a powerful online store, 100% template driven with Email marketing function. Comparing to any other shopping cart software, cubecart has deeply simplified the structures and only remains most useful functions for basic store website requirements.
Few advantages with cubecart plateform: lots of payment gateway extensions, lots of skins, multi languages support, plugin based functionality setup, a larget support communicty and tutorial base, and more!
- Cubecart official site: http://www.cubecart.com
- System requirement: Windows or Linux, PHP4.3+ with GD2, Mysql database
Cubecart is simple support from most web hosting providers, server performance and reliability is the most important concern when choosing hosting plans. To support your website fast and friendly, we highly suggest BlueHost who is capable of handling various web requirements.
Zen Cart™ – is truly the art of e-commerce; free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart software. Zen Cart™ can be installed and set-up by anyone with the most basic web site building and computer skills. Zen Cart is also the most widely installed shopping cart software by lots of business owners at different sizes. Zen Cart provides very professional product and customer management at risk free!
- Zen cart official site: http://www.zencart.com
- System requirement: Windows or Linux, PHP4+, Mysql database
Zen Cart hosting can be various because it only requires minimum server resource to be functional. Both windows and linux server will be suitable for setup. For scalable and flexible choice we recommend BlueHost as your backbone, Bluehost provides multi class cloud based server solutions to meet with your different cart requirements.
OpenCart – outstanding shopping cart solution. You simply install, select your template, add products and you’re ready to start accepting orders online. It has order management and multiple built in payment gateways, Their official site provide lifetime free support and free software updates.
- Opencart official site: http://www.opencart.com
- System requirement: Windows or Linux, PHP4+, Mysql database
Open cart is recognized a light weight ecommerce solution but highlighted for its cutting edge structure design and flexible configuration. Open cart can be easily optimized according to different load purpose. So it’s suitable for any size store setup.
Best Ecommerce Hosting Awards
The best e-commerce hosting provider is equipped with a reliable platform that makes sure your store will stay up and running, with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. This is in addition to the around-the-clock customer service and technical support you need for an added peace of mind. Best ecommerce hosting awards goes to BlueHost for most store sites requirements. Bluehost not only provides you basic server environment but come with lots of support resource and tutorials on how to make a successful website.
BlueHost Hosting’s state of the art facility equipped with the best breed of Dell PowerEdge and Sun Microsystems server hardware. The network is powered by advanced routing technology and actively monitored to ensure that issues are addressed as soon as they are identified.
Bluehost has been recognized the standard for business website hosting provider. their super fast web server is not beatable for all other shared hosting providers. Everything from bluehost is by inhouse control from server monitoring and daily backup etc. BlueHost tech team has maximumly automated the service management.
Best Ecommerce Hosting Rating Standards
The best ecommerce hosting provider will not only be able to support various shopping cart softwares but also comes with full solutions for online store such as optimization, security etc. Based the requirements of online store, a leading ecommerce hosting provider should be prepared the following:
* Server performance – Why is fast eCommerce Web Hosting so important? Your host has a direct impact on how fast your page will load. Your page load speeds impact everything from your SEO rankings to your bounce rate to your customer satisfaction level. Most importantly, your page load speeds impact your conversion rate. In short, you can’t afford to have a slow website. It literally impacts your bottom line. Studies have show a mere 1-second delay in your page load speed can have a drastic negative impact on your conversion rate. Don’t take that chance.
* Affordable service – Big stores will definitely require higher hosting solutions such as VPS or dedicated server. But for new stores, a shared hosting is good enough. The best ecommerce hosting for new stores should come with leading shared hosting features with affordable plans. Normally, the cost should not exceed $6/mo.
* Ecommerce-friendly – A good e-commerce hosting solution will provide everything you need to create and manage an online cart. This includes a comprehensive payment solution plus a fully functional shopping cart, support for third-party payment services, or both. Once your storefront is up and running, the only thing you have to worry about is fulfilling orders and delivering great customer service.
* SEO Tools – Search engine optimization is vital for any business with a online store. E-commerce hosting companies often supply search engine submissions, keyword density analyzers, free search advertising credits, and other features with their packages. Tools such as these simplify the process of optimizing your site and boosting visibility in the SERPs.
* Enhanced Security – Security is important for any website, but even more so when that site involves monetary transactions and the exchanging of personal and financial data. A complete e-commerce solution will come with support for SSL certificates to ensure the highest level of security. Short for secure sockets layer, SSL uses strong encryption to protect the sensitive data of your customers as it travels over the insecure internet.
* Customer Support – A leading ecommerce hosting is prepared for 24×7 live support in multiple tunnels such as live chat, email, ticket and phone etc. In order to make sure your store is always online, such support is always needed no matter if you will encounter problems or not on your ecommerce site. Just keep in mind, it’s your business and you make money from it!
More About Ecommerce Hosting
eCommerce software, also known as shopping cart software, are the solutions that take all the complicated aspects of running your online business and simplifies them into a user-friendly interface. If you have ever purchased a product online, you likely have interacted with an eCommerce software. Your eCommerce software helps you with the important tasks surrounding managing your product catalog and facilitating customer orders. Your catalog is where you’ll store each of your product’s names, descriptions, prices, pictures and current stock. The actual cart lets your visitors add your products to the cart, displays the price and finally allows your visitors to actually submit their payment information to complete the order.
A shopping cart is an internet based system used by e-commerce websites that simplifies online transactions. Shopping carts allow online shoppers to temporarily store items of interest in it until they are ready to purchase them. The shopping chart software automatically computes the cost of the selected items, provides a portal for the customer to pay for them and allows them to provide other pertinent information necessary to complete the transaction. Quality shopping cart software is necessary to build and manage a successful and professional e-store.
