Self hosting or hosted ecommerce solution?

Published on June 20, 2008 Self hosting or hosted ecommerce solution?

You’re creating a website for your business. Should you buy web hosting and build it yourself? Or an ecommerce package that is ready to go and includes hosting?

If you’re thinking of setting up a website or refreshing an existing one, a question that you’ll need to decide is about how the website will be managed. Will you purchase web hosting and build your own website, or purchase a hosted website where the provider takes care of the installation and management of the server and you take care of the content?

DIY solution with web hosting

If you’re setting up a simple text-only website with a small number of pages and content that doesn’t change and won’t be added to, then a web hosting solution could be right for you. You start by purchasing the web hosting (which is your space on the Internet) and then build the pages on top of that. There are a number of ways you can do this:

• By purchasing pre-made website templates, installing them and writing your content into them using desktop HTML website packages like Frontpage or Dreamweaver.
• By doing it yourself and using an HTML website package to develop your content and publish it to your website
• Paying a website company to build your website template and install it for you.

The main benefit of a do-it-yourself website is usually cost. You also have the benefit of knowing that you are in control. But things can get tricky if you have a large number of pages you wish to maintain or if you wish to install more complex software like shopping carts.

If you install complex software like carts and are not a technical guru and graphic designer all rolled up into one, things can get very stressful, very quickly. For example, what modules do you install and in what order? How do you troubleshoot payment method issues? What if your customers are contacting you about receiving errors as they go through checkout? How do you set up gift vouchers? What if your order emails are not coming through? How do you set up the database to allow for bulk importing of products? What if your buttons don’t display correctly or do not work?

While text-only DIY websites have little room for error, the complexity of the cart, checkout, payment and shipping components of shopping carts make them a huge troubleshooting challenge if things go wrong. How do you install security updates? If you have installed your own DIY cart you won’t be able to get support from your hosting provider and could be left trawling the Internet for hours, posting on forums, or paying consultants to fix these bugs. Not a good situation to be in if you have angry customers hounding you to get your site working again.

Hosted solution

More than ever, more complex website and ecommerce applications like shopping cart software, directories, forums, booking sites, real estate sites and car listing sites are being offered as hosted-only solutions. The benefits are:

• You focus on what you do best: running your business
• You don’t need to be a graphic designer and PHP programmer all in one
• The provider takes care of installing security updates, optimising the server, fixing application bugs, installing payment methods and configuring the graphics template.

If you’re running a small business, you might save costs in installation and support by having your own DIY website, but if your competition is fierce do you really have time to use all your time installing and maintaining your website software as well? Would you do your own signwriting? security? electrical wiring? People who want to focus on their business and not on the technical aspects of their website are choosing hosted solutions for these very reasons.

Ozcart offers hosted shopping cart software packages.