How do I choose the right hosting plan for an online store?

Starting an online store is an undertaking that requires you to make many important decisions. What to name the site, what will be your marketing strategy, what colors to choose for the visual identity, etc. The list is indeed long, but it includes one mandatory step that is unfortunately often underestimated - choosing the right hosting for your online store. 

Why you should not underestimate the choice of hosting?
Choosing hosting that meets the needs of your business is key to the success of your online store. The overall online presentation of your company, as well as customer satisfaction, largely depends on it.

Modern users are becoming increasingly demanding of the sites they visit. Statistics also confirm that they tend to wait a maximum of 2-3 seconds for your online store to load. If your website loads slower, you are significantly losing potential customers who will look for your competitors' products or services. 

Unreliable hosting services can cause serious problems and financial losses for your business in the event of a malicious attack, a lack of backups, or increased traffic due to a large-scale advertising campaign. It is for these reasons that it is important to be careful when choosing a hosting provider and plan. 

What are the important factors when choosing hosting for an  online store?
We are sure that you do not want to find yourself in a situation where you have made an inappropriate decision that causes your business to suffer losses. To avoid having to urgently look for a new hosting provider and save yourself unnecessary problems, in the following lines we will look together at the important factors that you must pay attention to when looking for hosting for your online business.

1. Can the provider meet the needs of your online store?
When you are about to make such an important decision, it is a good idea to do some preliminary research. With a quick search online, you will see that there are many companies that offer different options. To be sure that you will choose the right hosting services, it is first a good idea to clarify what you need. 

For online stores, it is important to have a high loading speed and work quickly. As already mentioned, your potential customers do not like to wait long. It is also important that the site is up and running so that you can always offer your offers and your customers can complete their orders. 

Another important thing for online merchants is whether the  hosting service offers enough storage space. Especially if you sell a wide range of products, you will need storage space for all the high-quality product images that you will place on the site.

2. Price of the hosting plan
Price should not be the only criterion you rely on when choosing a hosting. However, when it comes to business, costs always matter. Therefore, it is an option to start with a lower hosting plan in the beginning and when your business starts to grow and bring in more revenue, move to a higher plan. 

3. Is there a possibility to upgrade to a higher plan in the future?
This is another factor to consider - can the hosting provider offer you a higher plan? If you start with the highest plan at the beginning, and your online store continues to develop and attract more visitors, at some point you will need more resources. In case the provider cannot offer them to you, you will have to change hosting during a period of growth, which entails serious risks.

4. Good technical support and customer service
Before you commit to a contract, make sure that the company offers good technical support and customer service. This way you will be confident that if technical problems occur, you will receive a timely response and an adequate solution. Do not ignore the importance of this factor, because every second your store is not online costs you financial losses. 

We also recommend that you investigate what servers your provider uses and whether they meet modern requirements. Refusal to provide you with this information may be a warning signal to look for another alternative. 

5. Backups
Although every owner of a starting online store is optimistic that his venture will be crowned with success, this does not mean that he should not be prepared for extraordinary circumstances. Therefore, it is highly recommended to choose a provider and a plan that offers the possibility of regular creating backup copies of your site. This way you will be assured that even if problems occur, you will always be able to restore your site to its previous version and all your data will be preserved.

6. Security
Security problems can also cost you dearly. That is why it is important to make sure that your provider offers modern security solutions. Clowbe.bg highly values ​​the security of each client, so we have developed our own system that offers real-time cyber protection with artificial intelligence.

7. Hosting provider guarantees and policies
We advise you to carefully study the hosting provider's policy and what compensation you will receive in case of problems with the hosting server. Are they enough to cover the possible losses that your business would suffer if it were not online during this time? 

The right providers will also offer you a test period or a money-back guarantee in case you are not satisfied with the service. We recommend that you take advantage of this opportunity. This way you will be able to get a better idea of ​​the overall service and whether it meets your needs.

Hosting plans for online stores from Clowbe.bg
A large part of the solutions offered on the Bulgarian market are so-called shared hosting. They are a budget option, but they are not recommended for online stores, as you have to share all the resources of the server, along with the other sites that are located on it. This means that the performance of your online store is directly affected by the consumption of others and you may not have enough resources when you need them most.

A much more suitable and flexible solution for online stores are the so-called Virtual Private Servers (VPS servers). With this type of hosting, you have predefined resources that are only for you and do not have to share with other sites. 

Clowbe.bg is a Cloud VPS hosting provider for online stores and firm sites, created to meet the needs of businesses and provide more speed and security. We use new high-end servers and offer various VPS hosting plans. Browse our offerings and choose the right hosting for your successful online business.