Hosting and server requirements for ecommerce

In the past I've set up an ecommerce site on a shared hosting plan with woocommerce and PayPal. It's not an ideal situation, but if you are really on a budget it can work. You just need to make sure that your site is secure, and if you are really worried you can export any sensitive customer information and host it offline if need be.

If you get a business plan from Hostgator they will give you a SSL certificate for fee. Its not so much the number of sites you have as the traffic the sites get and the number of connections HG is going to allow you to have at once. If you want a secure site anyway Id go with there business plan (its like $14 a month or something) and get the free SSL and keep it separate from the others. This will also help with scaling should the site take off.

[quote=alfardo;8198519]Hey warriors I was just wondering your views on this.

If I was to have an ecommerce site, may be with woocommerce or magneto what sort of hosting would that require.

I have a shared hosting plan at the moment with hostgator have about 20 sites on the same hosting. Never had any problems. I'm guessing I could just host the ecommerce sites there too.

What about security though, payments etc, customer details, how secure are these. Customer details, at least the private ones, ARE supposed to be encrypted, but many don't. Of course that isn't really legal, etc....

You don't need a VPS, but you DO need an SSL certificate if you collect private details. Smart people will NOT send their birthdate, credit card details, etc... over a non encrypted connection, or an invalid SSL. Shared SSLs are either open to all users, or considered invalid. Any decent browser(I haven't seen one in the past decade that didn't) will issue a warning to the visitor if this is the case. BTW paypal, clickbank, etc... DO have hosted and isolated forms, and they DO have SSL! They ALSO store the really private info.

Hosted payment gateways mean LESS coding on your side, and NO need to get SSL or encrypt. So they may be best for you. Paypal offers three main types. Paypal HOSTED, which is what MOST, including clickbank, use. They just call it Paypal. Then they have Paypal PRO, which has partially HOSTED(they call it EXPRESS), and the other paypal pro. The other paypal pro DOES require an SSL cert, as you collect the credit card details on YOUR site. With the HOSTED ones, you setup the criteria(price, schedule, page to notify, etc....), and go to THEIR site, which collects the private details, on THEIR SSL encrypted page, charges, and passes an encrypted key back to your site.

Steve

I host woocommerce sites on Hostgator shared. It would depend on the traffic your site gets. Tons of traffic and you'll probably need a dedicated server.

Shared hosting is a good option for starting a e commerce site. You can go for VPS or Dedicated Later. However SSL is an essential part of a e commerce site. For Payment options I will suggest you to go for PayPal and Worldpay Both are very convenient.