What do you people know about website hosting?

[toldozer]

I'm thinking about starting an ecommerce site. Just curious if anyone has any experience. I know obviously Jeremy has experience in running a site but if anyone else has experience and insight I would appreciate it. Basic questions would be can I outsource the hosting or is it something where I would need to purchase a server myself. That's one question but I'm sure I'll have many. Anyone interested in being a business partner I would consider it!!

[Jbro]

How much traffic do you plan to get a month? Unless you plan on 100K plus visitors you don't need a dedicated server or a VPS. If you do a shared server which will be fine you can always upgrade in a matter of hours to something better if you see performance issues. Do not use Godaddy or HodtGator, they are horrible... I suggest HostNine, DreamHost, BleHost or 1&1. You can plan on spending under $15 tops a month to start but probably closer to $5.

[Jbro]

It also depends on the number of products. Again unless you are going to have tens of thousands you will be fine... About 1 in every 100K websites need anything above shared hosting.

[Ja Rhule]

Yahoo baby

[toldozer]

Products will probably be in the 1-2k range. Seriously doubt traffic would be 100k plus but if so I'd have no problem paying a higher hosting fee. Do I have an option to buy the domain name from anyone other than godaddy? It's 12 bucks so not a big deal. Just asking. Would payments be secure through hostnine?

[Jbro]

The domain can be bought through anyone and then you just update your name servers through your domain control panel to point at whatever you want it hosted. Secure hosting requires an SSL certificate no matter who you host with. Should run about $70 per year.