Small Business Web Hosting

You may or may not know of the term “Open Source”. This really means that the programming code is open to all who want to use it, provided that you do not resell or redistribute it. You can obviously use it for yourself, but not act as a representative of the software. Many Small Businesses follow this route at the beginning as it is free and it does the job. It does require at least some knowledge of programming, but by no means do you have to be a programmer to set it up. Most of it is just understanding that there is a database to maintain (where your product information is stored) and setting up the products and their respective photos and descriptions. An example would be oscommerce.com which is a very popular open source shopping cart /catalog system that small business web hosting uses for their web hosting environment. It is quite resilient and is compatible with many merchant processors for transactions and has a lot of free support on their forums, not to mention many developers already familiar with its inner workings as it is programmed in PHP.

For your small business web hosting, you might want to have something ready to go, so there are third party applications available that should fit your needs, such as Mercantec which will give you a product called E-Commerce Express that lets you sell using a standalone storefront, with email, or auctions. They also offer an advanced version for more complex business online systems and of course the ability to upgrade and get custom made solutions which is the next step up in the progression of a solid business web hosting site. You can also “offshore” this development to lighten the cost intensity, but then you would also have to find good people to work with, so do your research and use personal referrals when making decisions.