Hosting is critical to ecommerce success. For instance, your technology will hugely impact speed, which is fundamental to consumer satisfaction and search engine optimization. Performance gains are just one of the many reasons a virtual private server (VPS) is the best choice for ecommerce growth.<\/p>\n
If you have a growing ecommerce company, you have many things on which you need to focus, and it can be difficult to prioritize. However, one of the most basic elements is hosting. As the infrastructural technology that supports your site, hosting is clearly fundamental to your performance.<\/p>\n
Unconvinced that performance should be at the heart of your business plan? Consider the most important elements that will determine if an ecommerce site is successful, according to a couple of recent studies:<\/p>\n
Beyond consumer perception, also consider that slowness negatively impacts your search rankings \u2013 as discussed by Billy Hoffman in Moz<\/a>.<\/p>\n In fact, speed is just one reason you should seriously consider upgrading your hosting.<\/a><\/strong> Here are a few of the primary reasons why an ecommerce company might decide to make the switch from shared hosting to a virtual private server (VPS) \u2013 all of which contribute to lowering your risk and accelerating the rise of your online revenue.<\/p>\n Veteran IT strategy consultant Chris Lema compares<\/a> shared hosting to having terrible college roommates, in three ways:<\/p>\n With a VPS, you still have a landlord, but you can go into your own apartment and lock the door. A VPS<\/a><\/strong> is divided into multiple, distinct servers using a virtualization platform. You get your own operating system! You actually get your own slice of the CPU, RAM, bandwidth, and disk space \u2013 and it\u2019s substantial. It may be possible to \u201cburst\u201d beyond these parameters at times, but good hosts (like good landlords) will strictly manage all tenants of a VPS environment so that no one is suffering from poor behavior of others.<\/p>\n Sounds good, right? Let\u2019s look in a little more detail at three primary reasons ecommerce companies say \u201cYes to VPS\u201d:<\/p>\n Shared hosting is often sold disingenuously. Providers will suggest that your hosting will come without limitations; you\u2019ll be able to pop a dozen apps onto the server with one-click Fantastico and not have any latency problems.<\/p>\n Hosting is a competitive market, and companies will often overpromise and under-deliver. Check your contract, and you\u2019ll see that your company won\u2019t be able to scale as you\u2019d like it to, when you need it to. In fact, resources will always be limited within certain parameters, regardless your provider.<\/p>\n Shared hosting can become a nightmare, explains Ajeet Khurana of The Balance<\/em><\/a>. \u201cWhen your ecommerce business grows and your website runs several scripts to offer all that wonderful functionality to customers,\u201d he says, \u201cyour hosting will hit a wall.\u201d<\/p>\n Many shared hosting companies will reduce their overhead with shared security certificates. Secure sockets layer (SSL) certificates allow encrypted communication for digital transactions. If the certificate is not issued directly to you, the browser will notify visitors with a scary warning message that the connection isn\u2019t safe.<\/p>\n The error message will say something to this effect (from a sample Internet Explorer message):<\/p>\n There is a problem with this website\u2019s security certificate.<\/em><\/p>\n The security certificate presented by this website was issued for a different website\u2019s address.<\/em><\/p>\n Security certificate problems may indicate an attempt to fool you or intercept any data you send to the server.<\/em><\/p>\n We recommend that you close this webpage and do not continue to this website.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Now you tell me: would you feel comfortable doing business with a company when your own software on your computer<\/em> is telling you to run for the hills?<\/p>\n Smart businesspeople don\u2019t want to jump into anything headfirst. It\u2019s wise to test things and proceed. Hence, you start out with shared hosting and then decide if it makes sense to upgrade as you go. Does that really make sense, though?<\/p>\n Keep in mind that the difference in money you are talking about between shared and VPS hosting is in the neighborhood of $20 per month (maybe $30 if you want to further accelerate with solid state drives). It\u2019s effectively peanuts for a hosting plan that offers the speed to bolster user experience and SEO, business-grade security, and significantly more control \u2013 and that means you don\u2019t have to think about data migration right at the point your company is picking up pace (after all, that is when you hit resource limits and would feel \u201cforced\u201d to switch).<\/p>\n Now, the above three reasons you should say \u201cYes to VPS\u201d are really about why you should turn away from shared hosting. Let\u2019s look specifically at why VPS is awesome. Note that a central theme is guarantees<\/strong> \u2013 no guess-work<\/em>. Benefits include:<\/p>\n Isolation<\/strong> \u2013 Other users\u2019 activities won\u2019t affect your service. Someone else might crash their VPS, for instance. Yours will keep running.<\/p>\n Speed guarantee<\/strong> \u2013 If there are two CPUs designated for you, you know they are there exclusively to power your business. The same is true for RAM. Shared hosting speed fluctuates depending how much is going on with other accounts. With a VPS, the resources are set aside specifically for your use.<\/p>\n Stability guarantee<\/strong> \u2013 You will experience gaps in the steadiness of your service with shared hosting, but not with a VPS \u2013 because of the distinct distribution of resources.<\/p>\n Space guarantee<\/strong> \u2013 Khurana notes that hosting companies that say they don\u2019t limit your resources protect themselves legally from the expectations of this statement with \u201cfair use\u201d language in the contract. \u201cIn other words, the resources must be fairly shared between all users of that server,\u201d he says. \u201cThat translates to limited disk space.\u201d With a VPS, your disk space is truly yours<\/em>. In other words, no shenanigans<\/a>.<\/p>\n Root access<\/strong> \u2013 Some VPS plans, such as ours, will give you root access to be able to install certain software. That\u2019s completely unavailable in a shared environment.<\/p>\n Are you starting an ecommerce company? Is it running and starting to pick up speed? Either way, a VPS is the right way to go.<\/p>\nShared hosting: living with slobs<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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VPS: an apartment of one\u2019s own<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Yes to VPS #1 \u2013 Because shared hosting limits growth<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Yes to VPS #2 \u2013 Because SSL warnings scare visitors<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Yes to VPS #3 \u2013 To avoid migration<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\u201cSharing\u201d done right: the guarantees of VPS hosting<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Out with sharing, in with virtualizing<\/strong><\/h3>\n