Self Hosting eCommerce
The answer to the question whether to choose professionally or self hosting eCommerce poses a challenge to many businesses. Though both these platforms have their own pros and cons, the decision what one to choose is largely dependent on a number of factors such as the nature and requirement of your online business, your convenience, and financial standing.
To help you identify what platform better suits your needs, this article will look at and compare the various features associated with them.
Self Hosting eCommerce Consideration 1: Ease of Usage
Ease of usage is a distinct advantage usually associated with hosted e-commerce platforms. Most of the time, the provider offers a web interface, and therefore, negates the need to write a single line of code.
However, a self-hosted eCommerce site will require you to do the entire coding yourself. As such, a professionally hosted eCommerce platform is the choice if you prefer a platform that is easier to use.
Self Hosting eCommerce Consideration 2: Upgrades
Professionally hosted e-commerce platforms continuously upgrade their platform to ensure their clients receive the best and they stay competitive in the market. This means you will neither have to spend a lot of money to make upgrades as your provider will do it for you.
When it comes to self-hosted platforms, you are required to do it yourself, thereby increasing your expenses. As such, if you want the latest hardware powering your e-commerce site, choose a professionally hosted platform.
Self Hosting eCommerce Consideration 3: Reliability and Security
With constant upgrades and scheduled maintenance, a hosted e-commerce platform is reliable and you can be sure the software provided by it is thoroughly tested. On the other hand, you will be required to spend more money for the added reliability and security.
As such, if you prefer unmatched reliability and security, which every e-commerce site should, a professionally hosted platform is the right choice.
Self Hosting eCommerce Consideration 4: Customization
A professionally hosted eCommerce platform offers a great degree of customization. However, because you are free to code as you want on a self-hosted platform, you can customize your e-commerce site to a greater degree. If you want an e-commerce site with options that a professionally hosted company cannot provide, choose the self-hosted route.
Self Hosting eCommerce Consideration 5: Ownership
Every website wants to be its sole owner and when it comes to professionally hosted eCommerce, you are rarely the owner. This is because you face problems such as changing rules and policies of usage and closure. As a result, you never really decide your course of action.
That is why many websites prefer a self-hosted alternative. They can code, customize, and upload elements as they want and retain ownership of the site.
Self Hosting eCommerce Consideration 6: Cost-effectiveness
Professionally hosted e-commerce platforms provide a host of different features and options but come at a price. With the right company, you receive excellent value for the amount you pay in the form of monthly fees. While self-hosted is a free alternative, you will need to invest a considerable amount of time and effort into your site. In fact, if you don’t know how to design or develop your e-commerce site, you will have to hire a developer and designer and this will significantly increase your costs.
As such, professionally hosted e-commerce sites may necessitate a small monthly fee, but you gain a very cost-effective website that is affordable to maintain.
Self Hosting eCommerce Consideration 7: Quality
If you are a website designer and/or developer who regularly upgrades their own system and wants to host an e-commerce site, a self-hosted platform is the right choice. However, if you want a great website that you can effortlessly develop, is very reliable and secure, a professionally hosted site is perfect and FinestShops will provide you the best quality and services.
Anton Pachkine
FinestShops offers premium managed packages for companies without a large IT department. Package includes: rapid setup in Rackspace Cloud, hundreds of professional designs which can be customized anyway you want, pro-active store performance monitoring, managed backups to a remote location and unlimited technical support for your X-cart, Pinnacle Cart or Prestashop based store. Visit www.finestshops.com
