Is it that traditional brick and mortar store or the new age online store? If it’s the second option, then let me help you bring that dream into reality! Here’s how. Understandably, creating a digital store could be intimidating at times, especially when it’s your first attempt. You might confuse with lots of available platforms, their functionalities, and features. That’s overwhelming! And in the process, many people commit mistakes, which becomes a pain after some time. So, you need to choose the platform that can justify your online store’s unique needs because you can’t go with a “one size fits for all” methodology. Your store deserves better than that. As each eCommerce platform includes its unique set of benefits, features, flexibility, and ease of use, you need to be careful while choosing one. It is because it plays a greater role in determining the success of your online business. One of the best eCommerce platforms in the market is PrestaShop. And to host this, you need an efficient hosting provider, which we will discuss in this article. Before that, let’s talk about PrestaShop first and why you should consider it.
What is PrestaShop?
Launched in the year 2007, PrestaShop is an open-source platform you can utilize to launch and run your online store. At present, over 300K stores are using this platform across the globe and in 65 languages. PrestaShop has innovative capabilities you need to create and grow your store. Its impressive out-of-the-box features and functionalities combined with intuitive interface strengthen its efficiency as well. With a powerful dashboard and many integration flexibilities, you manage and run your online store without any hassle. Some of the important features of PrestaShop are:
Offers a wide variety of quality themes to make your shop look beautiful and professionalA variety of plugins, add-ons, and premium support optionIt has a WordPress-like dashboard and a rich interface for store construction.PrestaShop can integrate with many payment providers, shopping cart solutions, tax rules, and shipping carriers.It offers a built-in product catalog, promotions, coupons, email integrations, SEO for search placement optimization, etc.Mobile responsive digital stores and checkout pagesCreate and send customizable goods and digital productsSetting minimum purchase quantity.Creating categories and subcategoriesInventory trackingManage delivery zones
As a result of all such impeccable features, PrestaShop is, beyond a doubt, a great platform for your online store.
How can it help to start an online store?
PrestaShop offers 300+ built-in features exclusively to help you get started with your store quickly. That means you can reap so many benefits out of this advanced tool, from management to flexibility and convenience for both your customers and you. Let’s understand the benefits of this feature-rich platform that can help you.
Easy to use
Although it might be tricky for non-techies to set up a PrestaShop store due to its technical backend, the next phase is smooth and worth waiting for once it’s done. You have the option to get ideas from their online demo that includes instructions, both for the backend office and front-end store. Watch it using desktop, laptop, smartphone, or tablet, without any interruption.
Marketing
Without efficient marketing, how can you expect your store to be successful? Show up in your visitors and customers’ eyes, influence, and startle them with new and useful products they want. You can make your website extensive by adding email marketing, codes, affiliate programs, special offers, and many more.
Effortless customization
Ordinary-looking websites are obsolete now. With the evolving technology, your customers know who can offer them how much and don’t want to waste time on lengthy or confusing check out pages. This is why PrestaShop allows you to give your website a radiant look and make it interesting and hassle-free for your customers through lots of customization options. You can customize almost everything on your website to give it a unique feel, plus add modules like cross-selling and newsletter subscription to remain engaged with them always. Now you know how beneficial and feature-rich PrestaShop is with its great customer support. So, once you decide to go with, you have two options –
Get a cloud VM and perform manual installation and take care of on-going maintenance, configuration, etc.Choose a specialized platform to host
You can save lots of your time and keep your confusion at bay by choosing the second option, especially if you are just starting. Choosing a powerful PrestaShop hosting service is the next biggest and crucial thing in your path to starting an online store. If you want your shop available all the time for your visitors, manage it easily, and an extra dose of security, you must choose a good hosting service. But where on earth are you going to find it? Here! We will discuss some of the best PrestaShop platforms to help you create and grow your store with ease.
A2
Launched in 2003, A2 Hosting has been consistent in delivering value to its customers. Get the high-speed hosting package designed to address your unique needs with this hosting service. Each of their PrestaShop plans is fine-tuned for the best possible performance with 20x faster page loading of your website. Their Turbo Servers include AMD EPYC having NVMEe drives for 40% faster CPUs, the capability to handle 9x traffic, 2x faster time-to-first-byte, and 3x faster write/read speeds. They provide pre-installed PrestaShop so you can get started without wasting time. A2 Hosting also makes sure you use the best versions of software for added functionalities and security, but it supports older versions as well, in case you need it. For security, you get HackScan protection for free, KernelCare updates, a dual-side firewall, brute-force, and DDoS protection, and other threats to secure your store. It also offers account migration free of cost and a 99.9% uptime guarantee with reliable servers. With their exclusive solution for caching, you can set up popular caching services Memcached, Turbo Cache, and APC with just a click from your cPanel. A2 Hosting costs just $2.99/month, including a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Scala Hosting
Trusted by over 700k site owners worldwide with industry-leading speed and performance, Scala Hosting is another viable option for you. It has been serving innovations for the last 11 years to customers from over 120 countries. Install PrestaShop and add 100+ applications and scripts with one click. You get the LiteSpeed server, the fastest server globally, and very few hosting services provide this. Scala Hosting is a reliable host that guarantees 99.9% uptime backed by an SLA. Whether you are targeting USA customers, European, or other regions, Scala Hosting possesses data centers with ultra-fast servers having Intel CPUs. The hosting plans come with malware scanning and removals without any 3rd-party services. Worry no more about broken pages and weird errors after PrestaShop updates because Scala Hosting takes care of it with automated updates. It backs up your site every day to keep your data 100% safe. You get a web attack blocker, a dedicated firewall, custom security rules, and a free domain for extra security. You also get free SEO analysis and tools for better visibility, RapidSSL certificate, and Cloudflare CDN free on all of its plans. They offer free site migration without downtimes and SShield cybersecurity that can block 99.98% of online attacks. Get Scala Hosting starting from $3.95/month for 1 site and 50GB storage. It includes a 30-day money-back guarantee.
IONOS
Rent the suitable web server and system resources for your online store from IONOS. It offers a quick and affordable hosting service plus gives you the option for a domain of your choice. With IONOS, you can start installing PrestaShop with a few clicks while leveraging its numerous configuration options. If you are new, they also guide you in every step for a smoother online store experience. One great thing about this hosting service is that they provide domain names free for 1 year in all of their plans. Apart from that, you get professional email addresses matching your domain along with an SSL certificate. Don’t worry about web server updates and maintenance or data security because IONOS is there to take care of these aspects. You can also restore your data from the past 6 days any time you want, thanks to their automatic backups. IONOS follows strict standards for data protection in their data centers for optimum security. They have been awarded for their excellent customer service and also provide a personal advisor at your disposal at no extra cost.
Vultr
Leverage the power-packed performance of Vultr and launch your online store with style. Its computer instances provide the perfect environment needed for your website. All of its plans have 3+GHz processors that power applications, making them fast. It includes high-performing Intel CPUs and 100% SSD-based storage. It offers instant deployment, no matter where you are based on the globe. Compute instances of Vultr are available globally in 17 places spread across 4 continents. Use your preferred OS and spin it up with a different instance by deploying CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, etc. Vultr needs no long-term contracts; pay for resources you utilize and scale your plans based on the demands. It provides automatic backups with some clicks and lets you take snapshots of your complete server. You can enable a web-based firewall on-demand to secure your computer instances, leverage DDoS protection against layer-3 and layer-4 network attacks. Speaking of its interface, Vultr offers a simple API and control panel. It provides SLA, lets you establish isolated local private networks and a public IPv6 network. You get complete root access along with a dedicated IP for your VMs.
Cloudways
Cloudways has got all the ingredients in the right quantities to provide you with an amazing experience for your digital store. All the servers it provides include dedicated resources that allow maximizing app and server performance. Cloudways facilitates breath-taking performance along with reduced loading speed for dynamic websites through 3x faster SSD drives. You get an optimized application stack with ready-to-cache services like Memcached, Varnish, Redis, and Nginx. They also offer the latest PHP and Cloudways CDN for superior performance and faster response times. Their cloud servers have auto-healing capabilities, and HTTP/2 supported for a better user experience. For security, you get dedicated firewalls and one-click SSL installation by Let’s Encrypt. Schedule backups weekly or hourly or on-demand, plus ensure full data security with 2-factor authentication. Cloudways offers the flexibility of choosing IaaS providers like DigitalOcean, AWS, Google Cloud, Linode, and Vultr. It lets you launch apps with 1-click, supports MariaDB and MySQL, multiple PHP versions, and easy vertical scaling. To improve your workflows, Cloudways provides pre-installed Git, application and server cloning, and staging areas without affecting performance. You can also add multiple team members and assign tasks to them with full or limited access to an application or server.
FastComet
Whether you want a PrestaShop site for your business or hobby, FastComet is an efficient hosting service you can opt for. It will soon make you fall in love with its features and performance beyond your expectations. Access your files 300% faster with full SSD hosting and quick domain transfer with no extra fee. Distribute your products, services, and other content globally with a Cloudflare CDN for free. They provide free managed site transfer on all their plans with their migration experts to move your database, emails, and files. You get the most powerful control panel for web hosting – cPanel, along with free weekly and daily data backups. The WHM/cPanel hosting tools are available in 29 global languages. All your servers are well protected by the top-notch security of FastGuard against malicious activities. Its security perimeter includes account isolation, SSL, Bruteforce protection, firewall, IP reputation attack filters, and more. Its pricing starts from $3.95/month.
InMotion
Are you looking for a hosting service that actually understands the needs of your online store? InMotion Hosting can be a great option! It helps you create a scalable platform that engages your audience with your unique brand story and features expressed beautifully. As PrestaShop is already installed, you can quickly start uploading the products. They provide free domain registration and the flexibility of choosing from different variants like .com, .net, etc. Processes such as sign up, 1-click check out, and others are secured with a high-bit encryption SSL that comes completely free. You get the impressive drag-and-drop builder to customize your pages and layouts along with pixel-perfect templates. Managing users, subdomains, and databases are easy even from mobiles, and you can highlight user-generated reviews along with customizable special offers to garner more sales. Other features included are SEO, pre-configured tax rules, and effortless integration with major carriers for hassle-free shipping.
HostPresto
HostPresto is one of the most popular hosting plans in the UK and offers great features to support your website creation and growth. Just install PrestaShop and enjoy fully optimized servers to make the most out of PrestaShop with all the essential configuration and modules installed. The hosting provider does not impose any restrictions on account features like email accounts, databases, FTP users, and even bandwidth for that matter. They have been providing PrestaShop hosting from their initial days; hence, they understand its mechanism and what works for your online store. This is why you will get expert support to resolve the issues you may have. They offer you the flexibility of choosing PHP versions of your choice, daily backups automatically, 99.9% uptime, and free migration on its plans. HostPresto supports the latest versions of cPanel and has a state-of-the-art data center located in London, which is best if you are targeting UK-based customers. The best thing about its pricing is that it offers the same price every year, and there’s no hidden price included regardless of your traffic or site growth. A 30-day money-back guarantee is also there, so you can enjoy a risk-free hosting experience.
Conclusion
Your dream of having a stunning eCommerce store can finally become a reality with PrestaShop, coupled with a powerful hosting platform. So, go on, choose any one of the above-mentioned services based on your business scale and unique requirements.
