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Subj: Help! 30 Days to Replace Current Host for Our E-Commerce Site

There's some info missing from your post. For example, and most importantly, what e-commerce platform are you currently using?

If your site is using Miva Merchant or a FrontPage-based e-comm app, then you should have no problem finding a cost-effective replacement. Or is your site truly 'pure' HTML with graphical 'buy' buttons that just needs to be set up on an e-commerce transaction server in order to operate? Are you sure there aren't elements of your site that require specific platform support?

You MUST answer this question before you can even consider any potential site host. If your site requires FrontPage server extensions or a MySQL back-end, for example, those requirements will dictate what hosting providers you can consider.

Also, a couple points in your post need clarification: What exactly do you mean by "Full end-to-end order management"? Sounds like it includes order fulfillment (packing and shipping orders)as well as mere transaction processing. Is this the case or not? Far fewer hosting providers provide order fulfillment along with their hosting services.

WebGun's Advice Categories

E-commerce Execution
Online Security & Payment
Web Site Development
Web Site Analysis
Web Site Marketing
Project Management
Web Site Hosting
Advice to Start-Ups
Content Management

For the price range you quote--$2K to $3K per month--there are clearly a lot of requirements and specifications you need that you didn't mention. That's a high hosting price and should pay for a high-end dedicated server and database support in addition to your e-commerce platform and, possibly, order fulfillment.

And if that's the price range you're looking at it may be a waste of time for you to fish for the names of the hosting providers most of us are familiar with, which probably fall more into the shared server/Miva Merchant/MS Site Server hosting category (all generally under $1,000 a month, even for a dedicated server).

The rest of your criteria are pretty standard in any good e-commerce hosting provider. It's a bit more challenging to find a host that can provide "Support for software downloads and physical goods". I assume this is also a 'real' requirement and not some stupid item your CIO threw in to the requirements list "just in case". In other words you should be selling both digital and 'hard' goods and not just wasting time and space providing for "future scalability" on the off chance you'll one day be selling both.

After all, you could always outsource the digital fulfillment to Digital River or other 'download service' provider and thereby avoid eliminating potential hosting candidates just because they don't support both 'hard' and 'soft' delivery (especially as the latter involves a lot more hardware, software, and potential financial headaches for hosting providers than simple hard-goods order fulfillment).

Anyway, here are some URLs of some of the best Websites to search for site hosting providers: http://webhosts.thelist.com/business, http://www.hostfind.com/, http://www.hostindex.com/searchISP.asp, http://www.webhostmagazine.com, http://www.hostinvestigator.com, and http://webhostlist.internetlist.com/cgi/scompare.asp?stable=E-commerce_Host.

--WebGunForHire, 12/00

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