Requirements for an E-commerce Shop
There are many options to consider when starting an online store or ecommerce shop. I'll try to list them here along with our recommendations. You will need 4 items for a successful and secure online store and we are able to provide you with all but 1 of them: Hosting Plan, SSL Certificate, Shopping Cart Software, and a merchant account gateway.
Hosting Plan
All of our plans support an online store. Some plans include the extra IP fees in the monthly cost of the plan, some do not. You should take this into account when deciding on a plan.
Suggestion:
The XtremeWebHosts.com Advanced & Premium plans are perfect for an online store. They both offer plenty of storage space for a few hundred or thousands of products with images. The 10GB monthly transfer limit of our Premium Plan insures you'll have enough bandwidth for anyone who visits your website. The Premium Plan also includes IP Address Fees which are required for the SSL certificate. We are a StarterSSL / GeoTrust Authorized SSL Certificate Reseller - Keeping Your E-commerce Shop & Customers Secure
SSL Certificate
If you're doing business online, you need one of these to ensure that your customers credit card numbers are safe. There is an enormous difference in price between the different certificates available. We offer 2 choices:
Starter SSL Certificate: Your basic certificate perfect for a small shop or store doing less than 50 transactions per week. 99% browser recognition, meaning your visitors will have the gold padlock visable on their browser when they enter your shop. Includes a free "Secured by StarterSSL" seal image to place on your website. Cost: $39 per year
GeoTrust QuickSSL Premium Certificate: If you want the best, this is it. GeoTrust is the second largest Certificate Authority in the world. The GeoTrust name is known by almost everyone and has a 99% browser recognition. This is a single-root certificate. Includes a free "Secured by GeoTrust QuickSSL" seal image for your website. Cost: $229 per year
Suggestion:
If you only have a small store, stick with the StarterSSL Certificate. They work great, and unless your customers are using an ancient web browser, they won't get any security alerts when they go to your store. If you have a high-traffic store, go with the GeoTrust. You're basically paying for the name, but it's a name people know and trust.
Shopping Cart
There is a plethora of shopping carts out there. Some are free and some range up to $1,000. Some are great, most are junk. Over the years though, we have come to know and trust these two carts which are available with all of our hosting plans. We chose to install these on our servers for the simple fact that they are rock solid, offer a lot of features, and are simple to set up and maintain.
CubeCart: A very simple shopping cart to set up and maintain, especially for the small business owner and those with little or no experience in programming. You can configure the look, color, and style of your CubeCart by simply pointing and clicking the configuration page. Supports multiple currencies and multiple shipping methods. It accepts Postal Mail, NOCHEX, PayPal, 2Checkout, Authorize, WorldPay, EGold, MoneyBookers, PaySystems, and Custom Merchant Payment Gateways. More info and a demo is available at: http://cubedemo.xtremewebhosts.com
OsCommerce: Our cart of choice for the larger business and corporation with many types of items. This has the best management of inventory too. It is very nicely laid out. You can have a store up and running in an hour if you want. Products and categories are easy to add, edit, sort and the product pages are very clean. It is open source and FREE under the GPL. There is one minor downside in that there is no template system. To customise the way the store looks, you have to edit hard-coded php files. If you don't know php or html this may be difficult. We can provide advanced setups and templating for you for an additional fee. Outside of this downfall, it has much better international support (languages), a wider range of Merchant Account Gateways, shipping methods, ability to check shipping rates inline with Fed-Ex, UPS, and US Postal Service. It is also able to do exchange rates. Demo: http://oscdemo.xtremewebhosts.com
Merchant Account Gateway
This is the only item we can not do for you. You'll need someone to process those credit card payments and transfer them to your bank account, right?
Suggestions:
Paypal is accepted by both of the above shopping cart software. Paypal is a world-wide accepted payment processor offering secure protection to both buyers and sellers. The Paypal fees for payment transactions are generally equal to and sometimes even less than other payment processors. If you do not wish to use Paypal or one of the othes listed as accepted above, consult your Banking Institution who should be able to help you. If your banking institution is not of any help, check with Wells Fargo Banking whom we have used in the past and feel confident in recommending.
To break all of the above down into meaningful information, here's an example setup using our Advanced Web Hosting Plan:
Hosting: $29.95 per month
SSL: $39 per year
Cart: Free - You add products and customise design. Additional Fee - if you require us to configure, install, add products and customise for you.
Merchant Fees: $ varies per merchant
Total Monthly Gateway costs are going to be dependent on total sales revenue and Merchant Account Gateway - expect to pay $40+
Yearly Fees (SSL): $39
Monthly Fees (hosting + Static IP Address): $34.95
I hope that helps anyone with questions about setting up a store. Any questions can be posted here on our message forums or submitted to our support department / trouble ticket system at http://www.xtremewebhosts.com
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