Your hosting provider should be one of your most important partners. Hosting can be a major factor in your success, especially for larger-scale retailers that sell many products online.

It should not be about comparing costs when choosing a host. You want your online store to be the heart of your company.

What is the definition of big?

Many online shops start small with limited hosting packages and shared servers. What is the best time to start thinking about upgrading to hosting that can handle large enterprises?

Consider upgrading your hosting if you’re seeing:

• The high volume of regular traffic. However, lower traffic levels can lead to problems. You should upgrade if you are seeing slow-loading pages, site outages occasionally, or issues with transactions timing out.

• A high number of customers and/or products. Hosting companies usually limit storage space. If you have thousands of products, variations, or images, your company might charge extra storage fees. Similar problems can arise from the storage of large amounts of customer account information.

• Site downtime during high traffic spikes. Spikes in traffic should be one of the main reasons you consider upgrading your hosting. It is important to feel confident that your sales can be promoted at peak times of the year and that your hosting company will quietly manage it without affecting your front-end website.

Hosting features you must have

When comparing hosting companies, this list of key features will help you decide if it is time to consider a higher-level service. An eCommerce hosting expert should be able to explain the benefits of each feature and include it in their packages.

Bonus: Look for hosts who actively participate in the WordPress open-source environment. Companies that dedicate staff time and resources to the development and testing of WordPress core are more likely to be experts in this field and to be aware when potential problems arise.

Backups included

Data is king when it comes to online shops. Data is crucial for online stores. It includes customer accounts, orders, inventory numbers, total sales, and customer accounts. You can rest assured that your site has automatic backups, regardless of how reliable it is.

Unlimited storage and bandwidth

Bad gateway errors are the last thing that you want customers to see when they try to load your website. These “white screens” often occur when overwhelmed servers cannot handle traffic to your site. This causes requests to time out.

You also need to ensure that you have enough space to store your order information, product information, and customer profiles.

Consider a hosting package that offers unlimited storage and bandwidth. You should consider dedicated or cloud hosting. This means you won’t have to compete with other sites for the same resources and can scale as needed.

Expert security configuration

Hosting companies that are trustworthy will openly discuss their security measures for your site and make sure their servers have the most up-to-date software. They should be able to answer your security questions and have a reputation for keeping servers up-to-date and disallowing hackers.

Your hosting company should at least use PCI-compliant servers to keep your customer’s data secure. It should also include an SSL certificate that ensures that all web-related communications are protected and encrypted.

Traffic spike protection

Imagine that you have worked hard to create buzz about a new product or an event like Black Friday. Your site crashes right before the big moment because of the flood of traffic. This can lead to unhappy customers and significant income loss.

You must have a host system that can scale to handle this type of sales spike. Cloud hosting is a great solution. It seamlessly scales to meet the demands of your shop.

International shops need a global perspective

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a must if your store conducts business internationally. A CDN is an advanced feature in hosting packages that copies your website to servers all over the globe and provides a cached version to international customers. This will allow you to provide faster service and better support for your customers around the world.

Premium plugins free of charge

Some high-level hosting plans will come with premium plugins such as Jetpack Comple. This adds security, one-click backup protection, and advanced speed features. Premium plugins are a great option if you’re looking at different hosting plans for your large-scale shop.

Built-in staging area

If you run a busy shop that is open 24/7, it’s difficult to take the shop offline for software updates or full redesigns. Updates in live environments can put your income at stake.

Access to staging environments is part of a quality host. You can create a duplicate site with one click. Next, you can run your updates and make any design changes. Finally, test your work by testing, testing, and testing again. Once you are satisfied with your changes, it should be easy to push them back to the live site.

Support is available 24/7 from a professional

You want to find a company that has great customer reviews and is easy to reach by phone or email. Your host should be there for you whenever your online shop is open. When you talk eCommerce, this means that your host is available 24/7.

Hosting that is of high-quality costs more, it’s obvious. Discount hosting is more expensive, but it can result in lost sales, website downtimes, and security problems that a store cannot afford. Hosting experts can help you support a variety of products, sales, and traffic spikes. This is a cost-effective way to safeguard your most valuable asset and online reputation.