E-commerce hosting

Micky_d

Hi all, I am looking for a little advice.

I had an e-commerce site built over the past 12 months and for the first year I was charged £300 to host it. I didn't know any better and paid the money. I have had time to look about and most unlimited packages are at least half of what I am paying.

The site is a large site, with several thousand items in the database however only around 2-3000 items will be live at any one time. I would probably be looking at an unlimited GB package given the size of the data base.

Can anyone suggest a hosting company whom they have dealt with regarding service/ price and affordability. When the site takes off the hosting cost shouldn't be a problem however, at this stage, every penny counts.

Regards

earthstorm

are you sure the £300 did not include the site designing. At £300 a year you could have got a VPS.

check out these

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=4

http://www.hostingdiscussion.com/shared-reseller-hosting-special-offers/

Micky_d

Hi, the site cost £4K to build which was a separate cost to the £300 hosting. I have since found other software that I have bought to build my own sites moving forward.

Some companies wanted to charge upward of £7K to build the site which I just could not justify.

Thanks for the links. Much appreciated.:T

earthstorm

Micky_d wrote: »

Hi, the site cost £4K to build which was a separate cost to the £300 hosting. I have since found other software that I have bought to build my own sites moving forward.

Some companies wanted to charge upward of £7K to build the site which I just could not justify.

Thanks for the links. Much appreciated.:T

depending on your actual budget and what you need you could check out http://www.bigscoots.com/hosting_shared i have had VPS servers with them for many years and they have never let me down and support is excellent

InsideInsurance

First of all check what you have bought and that you have rights to the site. It could be you are locked into this host as the design company has retained the rights to what they built (legally they are still the copyright owners unless the contract explicitly states it transfers to you)

Secondly, how are credit cards being processed? On your website? If they are then you're going to have to ensure the hosting is PCI DSS compliant which will add costs. If the card payments are being processed off site by a third party (eg PayPal standard) then this isnt an issue.

Thirdly, dont go with an unlimited product. There is no such thing as truly unlimited, the seller evidently has a finite amount of space/ bandwidth and yet all the hundreds or thousands that are sharing the same server as you is all getting "unlimited" - ie its massively oversold and you're likely to run into problems.

Finally, what technologies is your site built on? PHP & MySQL? .Net & MS SQL? JSP & Oracle?


Once you know the answers to the above you can then start looking for a suitable replacement host. You are overpaying but headline prices on webhosting sites wont be what you need to pay if you have to be PCI DSS compliant.

earthstorm

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Secondly, how are credit cards being processed? On your website? If they are then you're going to have to ensure the hosting is PCI DSS compliant which will add costs. If the card payments are being processed off site by a third party (eg PayPal standard) then this isnt an issue.

some third party providers still insist your site is PCI compliant, even though they are the ones handling the payments.

2checkout
Google Checkout/Wallet

are 2 that your site still needs to be PCI complaint. simple process they will accept is if you get a Comodo SSL certificate (which an ecommerce site should have) and then get a free hackerproof upgrade which provided PCI daily reports which they will accept if you forward 1 at least monthly to them

InsideInsurance

earthstorm wrote: »

some third party providers still insist your site is PCI compliant, even though they are the ones handling the payments.

The important part was third party and offsite, so like the basic options with PayPal where the card details are entered not on the OPs site then PCI would not be relevant to the OP site.

Certainly if they have something like PayPal Pro where payment details are taken on the OPs site and passed behind the scenes to the third party then absolutely PCI still applies.

earthstorm

InsideInsurance wrote: »

The important part was third party and offsite, so like the basic options with PayPal where the card details are entered not on the OPs site then PCI would not be relevant to the OP site.

Certainly if they have something like PayPal Pro where payment details are taken on the OPs site and passed behind the scenes to the third party then absolutely PCI still applies.

2co and GC/GW take payment offsite and they still insist on the site being PCI compliant, so best to check with payment processors if they need your site to be PCI compliant even if the payments are taken offsite, as this will add extra costs.

paddyrg

Ask your current provider for a deal to stay with them - moving is at the very least a PITA which could easily cost £300 in consultant time and even possible downtime and lost sales, so it is a last option. Yes, you may be able to save money elsewhere, but if/when you need help it's good to have a company who know the system you have. Sometimes the intangibles are worth more than straight bottom line costs.