If you are seeking for information about hosting for your future or existing online store on CS-Cart, you take it seriously and want to ensure it’s always online and performs perfectly any time. You are searching for the most reliable solution on the market, but at the same time you are a business person and value your time and count your spendings.
Let’s sort things out and find the hosting solution balanced between the quality and the price. Because we both know that the most expensive is not always the best.
1. What is hosting in general?
For most of the people living on Earth, hosting sound like something virtual, like something that does not exist physically. That’s almost the truth.
Although you purchase hosting online, monitor it online, manage it online, at the same time you understand that there are technologies, hardware and people behind this virtuality.
2. Why hosting is so important for online business?
The reliable hosting is very important. Why? The answer is simple – hosting is the foundation of any online business.
Making a mistake here can result in a real drama in a little while. Fixing this mistake will take time and money. So it’s a smart idea to make a research before the launch.
If you already have an online business and searching for new hosting options, you are probably not happy with the one you have. So you understand its importance.
3. What is high-quality hosting?
So what is it – a good hosting? There are hundreds of points that play the part – technologies, network, software, location and provider personnel. But any hosting starts in the data center, in the server rack.
What is Data center and what you need to know to choose the best one for CS-Cart or Multi-Vendor?
Data center is the brain and the heart of the Internet. It’s the center of the digital universe. There are several points that you should consider choosing a data center to settle your CS-Cart business in.
Data center location
The data center has to be close to your client. It will ensure the fast and stable content delivery. Fast website means convenient navigation, positive customer experience and finally results in a higher conversion. Your customers look through the products, find what they need, go to checkout and purchase faster. Additionally, load speed influences search engine rank – the faster the better.
Data center security
Data center has to be secure. Both digitally and physically. The best data centers have external security perimeter guarded by the armed personnel and multi-level access system.
On the virtual layer, the data should be protected by the firewalls, encryption, access control, and activity monitoring software.
Data center equipment
The next point is the equipment of the data center, the life-supporting systems. By this I mean the complex solutions which ensure that the data center will works at its best no matter what. The measures will include the protection from natural disasters, from fire or overheat, also from power surges or power outage. The data center has to have a backup internet connection, secondary power supply, and stable cooling system.
Without these measures, the stored data will be vulnerable to external dangers that can lead to sudden website downtime or to the data damage or even complete loss.
Data center hardware
Server hardware. The technologies are constantly improving. While you sleep, while you work, while you are watching this video. It never stops improving. The data centers would go broke if they tried to upgrade the hardware immediately after new releases. They do it constantly and gradually. But a good data center will always have an offer to use the top-notch hardware almost the very next day.
Data center support
And last but not the least point is support and service. The most important about support team is their competence and response time. Although you pay money for your server, you’ll never be able to enter the data center. Support will be the only connection between you and your website physical storage. And in case something goes wrong, you want to be sure that someone is there who knows what to do and will react as soon as possible.
Inside data center
Each data center is occupied with numerous server racks. Each rack looks like a locker with wires and blinking lights. They usually stay one by one making up a corridor. It’s usually pretty cool inside to prevent servers from overheating.
Each rack contains several separate servers that can have different hardware, software, different owners and serve different businesses.
For the big clients, the servers can be united in a single server machine within one rack. For major clients, like banks, data centers unite several racks to provide very powerful units which can even be located in a separate room with the individual cooling system and power supply.
4. Hosting types
There are many hosting types. But the most popular are: dedicated server, virtual private server (VPS), shared and cloud hosting.
What is a Dedicated server?
Previously there was a good example of a dedicated server for major clients.
Dedicated servers have their own resources and, usually, a connection channel. Having a dedicated server is pretty expensive. Sometimes it is very expensive. You will need to pay for the server itself, you will need to pay for the traffic, you will need to hire an administrator or probably a couple of them.
This is the best option for the companies from security-sensitive industries who have to keep and manage their data in a reserved ecosystem. Huge online retailers who have hundreds of checkouts a minute also choose a dedicated server.
What is Virtual Private Server (VPS)?
A physical server can be virtually divided into sections where each website resides within its assigned section. These sections are called virtual private servers – VPS. Each VPS acts independently of one another and has its own dedicated resources.
VPS server is an option for the mid-sized business that needs the flexibility of a dedicated server for a smaller price. VPS users can install their own operating system and software, update it and make any changes to the environment.
This type of hosting will require from you some technical skills to set up configuration and monitor the performance of the server. Or you can hire an administrator to do the work.
VPS Hosting is less expensive than a dedicated server but more expensive than a Shared server.
What is Shared hosting?
Shared hosting means you share resources of a server with different users. You don’t have your own resources, only a part of them. For example 10% of CPU or 20% of RAM. And whatever you do, you won’t be able to increase the performance because of these resource limits.
Nevertheless, shared hosting is very simple to use. Everything you need for a small business website is usually included in the plan. The provider takes care of the software and security updates. But this “included” also means that you are not allowed to change anything, like operating system or software. You take it as it is.
Additionally, what you do on the server may affect other users and vice versa. If your co-sharer gets penalized it can influence the reputation of the IP which you also will be using. However, Shared hosting is very cheap.
What is Cloud hosting?
The most popular type of hosting nowadays is Cloud. We are in the era of cloud. Everything is in the cloud. Hosting is not an exception.
“Cloud” means that multiple servers are joined together to provide better and faster performance by completing and insuring each other. This is the most balanced and sustainable hosting type.
Cloud is a flexible, scalable and stable solution. That’s why it is widely used by the businesses of any type and industry. Cloud technology allows all resources like storage, RAM, CPU, transmission and etc. scale quickly up and down with no limit.
This is an affordable solution where price depends on the resources you actually use. And it’s hassle free – the provider updates all software ensures its compatibility and performance.
5. Cloud hosting is the choice of professionals
If you ask us, we vote for the Cloud solutions. Advanced technologies, secure infrastructure, sustainable network, convenient environment for the developers, it can easily scale and grow with no limits and fits any type of business. It’s future.
6. The best cloud hosting provider – Amazon (AWS Cloud)
This industry has a leader whom we trust – it’s Amazon, or Amazon Web Services Cloud.
It provides maximum security, the best hardware, a global network of first-class data centers and all the development tools that we need. But in this plenty of advantages hides the danger which you should know about. Amazon is a huge machine with millions of clients and it’s physically incapable of guiding each and everyone.
Amazon gives you an ability to create a cloud-based server, a hundred of tools to manage it, and leaves you on your own. Study, test, tune, optimized – do whatever you want, but remember, that anything you use is chargeable. One step aside and you have to pay an extra hundred bucks.
7. A hosting solution for CS-Cart and Multi-Vendor based on Amazon Cloud
To provide CS-Cart and Multi-Vendor businesses with the benefits of Amazon Cloud hosting and prevent them from unnecessary waste of money and time, we decided to create a business solution based on Amazon Cloud with all-in-one support services.
This is not a regular hosting service, it’s much more. We have the best data centers around the globe, 24/7 server monitoring, daily backups and knowledgeable support. It’s like having your own Amazon devops who does the entire server works for you. A pocket Amazon wizard.
8. Unboxing Simtech Development Amazon Cloud hosting solution for CS-Cart and Multi-Vendor
So what’s inside? What makes this solution stand out. In addition to the fact that it’s based on Amazon Cloud.
It is secure
- Whatever you say, there can’t be too much of security! We are living in a digital century with all concomitant benefits and dangers. The next is what we include in our solution and what we think is a must-have for any hosting service of today.
- We back up all projects on the daily basis and we don’t keep copies on the same server or even in the same data center with the projects. We back up to a different data center. If something happens to a primary data center, we always have a copy in the different region.
- We use hard drives with redundancy to keep the website online if something goes wrong with the hardware.
- We update software with the latest security updates. We test them first and then release.
- Control an access. All our clients have SSH and SFTP types of access and we monitor and log all user activities on the server.
- We have in-house security expert who is permanently monitoring our digital security perimeter. So we are ready to prevent hacker and DDoS attacks. If necessary we can even counter attack. We’ve had a positive experience of doing that already.
- And we also provide free HTTPS. This has become an industry standard already.
It is profitable
- We believe that hosting services do not have to be unbearably expensive or tiresome. The best hosting for the business is the one that you forget about because it works without any troubles. That’s what we are building here. The service for your online business, not for you as a person. You only need to deploy and forget.
- You need to focus on marketing and business growth instead of digging down into the hundreds of server settings and even more setting combinations. The service that we provide will save your time for more important things, like making money.
- Server configuration means a lot. The quantity of CPUs or RAM can play the part and speed up the server performance, but additional hardware also means additional cost. We know that it’s not necessarily the only way. Sometimes the right combination of settings can make your server speed up without extra charge. We’ve done that so many times and saved much money for our clients.
- Any online retailer knows that traffic peaks happen. During promotion campaign, or on Black Fridays – doesn’t matter, it just happens. And you have to have reserved resources to sustain those peaks. Because if you don’t, the website will be overloaded with concurring actions and will crash. That means the loss of time to return online and the loss of profit. At the same time, having spare resources all the time even when you don’t need them and pay for them – that doesn’t make sense.
- That’s when you feel the power of Cloud. With Cloud technologies, it’s so easy to scale up and down almost instantly. It’s the matter of minutes. You need more memory – get it. You need more storage – here you go. You don’t need those resources the next day – give them back. Simple. And you pay only for what you use on an hourly basis. It’s fast, it’s simple and it saves money. It’s Amazon Cloud.
It is development-ready
- Our servers are development-ready. Two levels of access – SSH master access and SFTP access for the developers.
- Each server is equipped with configured PhpMyAdmin, MariaDB, Nginx and Git. The server environment is ready for auto releases, deploys, and migrations.
- We also keep the logs of each access and error in the project directory for easy access.
- The project test copies are also being stored in case we need to roll back. We see everything and keep everything.
9. How much does it cost to have an Amazon Cloud hosting for CS-Cart or Multi-Vendor?
Now it’s time to talk about the price. We want to be as clear as possible on this subject.
We are not hiding small prints, we don’t make upsells, we are straight. We’ve made a very detailed pricing on our website to show our customers what they will pay for.
I’ll explain on the example of the Basic plan which costs $69. 30 dollars of that 69 we pay to Amazon for the services. For instance, for storage and traffic, for DNS, etc.
We take 39 dollars for our work. For configuring and monitoring, for updates and backups, for support and protection, for fixing errors and keeping a website up whatever happens.
To be honest, sometimes Amazon can charge us more than $30 as their prices are floating depending on the resources we use and we cover the difference with our internal resources. Our clients never pay more than the plan costs.
I think we created a very fair pricing! For the cost of one custom development hour, our clients get the best cloud hosting in the world backed up by the team of experts. That’s pretty cool.
10. Conclusion
At the beginning of the video, we were looking for the balance between price and quality.
We at Simtech Development found that balance in Amazon Web Services Cloud and created a comprehensive and complete business solution with a clear pricing.
If you want to grow your online business you need to have a strong foundation – a reliable hosting, and resources, which is time and money.
Amazon Cloud gives our clients both.
Don’t believe me, try it yourself. It’s Amazon after all, what can go wrong!
TRY AMAZON CLOUD HOSTING FOR CS-CART AND MULTI-VENDOR
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