Looking for Zen Cart Hosting?

Speed matters. Period.

There are numerous hosting companies available nowadays and it's very hard to select one. Of course, most people don't have an unlimited budget and would like to save some money on hosting. This is possible, but you have to be extra careful because sometimes a few-dollar savings can bounce back at you and you'll lose much more than you've saved by choosing a cheap host.

You're probably wondering "why?"... It's simple. Your site needs to be reliable, secure and fast. Although you'll get the first two almost anywhere, speed is something that's quite hard to find. Unless you're prepared to pay $200+ per month for a dedicated server, you're probably going to opt for a shared hosting account. The problem with shared hosting is that one server hosts your site plus a number of other sites at the same time. A server is just a computer and it doesn't have unlimited resources. If other sites are using a lot of resources, chances are your site will be slow. Some large hosting companies put thousands of accounts onto just one server resulting in extremely slow servers, but they can offer very tempting plans such as "everything unlimited for just $4 per month". Don't fall for that, you'll regret it!

Remember, your customers don't want to wait for your site to load while they go buy some groceries or walk the dog, your Zen Cart MUST be fast. Otherwise it's very likely your potential customers will turn away and leave your site.

Zen Cart Hosting with A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting is a fantastic cheap Zen Cart hosting option, plus they offer SSD Hosting.

SSD is much faster than a standard hard drive so it allows for much faster page load time - your server has the ability to read files and database much faster resulting in your entire site to run smoother.

Some hosts claim to offer Solid State Drive Hosting but only host your OS or MySQL databases, not your files. A2 Hosting use SSD for everything (files and database hosting on SSD) so you get the best speed boost possible. That's why their SSD Hosting loads pages 300% faster than other competitors.

Combined with their highest security standards and absolutely fantastic support, A2 Hosting is a no-brainer if you want the best host for your Zen Cart site.

Zen Cart Hosting with catalyst2

If you're from the UK, then catalyst2 is the best UK Zen Cart host. They really have web hosting plans for every budget and a variety of available products. Their support is exceptional and you can find out more at: https://www.catalyst2.com/web-hosting

One important point is their servers are located in the United Kingdom - if you're from the UK, then this is what matters. Since search engines DO care about physical server location and will give you more credit if your server is located in the same country as your business, you should avoid using hosting companies with servers located in USA or anywhere else in the world. It's not a crucial factor, but it's still a factor.

If your site is even remotely busy, we recommend their Managed VPS hosting, but even their Shared Hosting packages will be just fine.

Other Hosting Services

Basically, a must-have for any e-commerce site is an SSL certificate.

Your customers' personal information is private and sensitive information - you should do your best to make it secured.

If you're running an e-commerce site, you will at some point ask your customers to give you their full name, address and some other personal information. If your site doesn't have an SSL certificate installed, that information can easily be stolen. Since most online shoppers nowadays are aware of that and don't like shopping on sites that don't have an SSL certificate, you might be losing customers at this point. Having an SSL certificate shows your customers you value their privacy, makes the entire checkout process secured and, most important, protects you and your business.

SSL Certificates have become very affordable and can be purchased for as low as $12 per year - entry-level certificates such as RapidSSL provide the basic level of protection and assurance and are definitely better than no certificate at all...

Hosting Tips

As we've already said, there are lots of hosting companies offering extra cheap plans that might seem very attractive at first. Before you buy a plan, make sure that company has a money back guarantee or offers a monthly plan so you can test it and move on if you're not satisfied.

We've had clients hosted with Dreamhost, Bluehost, Hostmonster, FatCow and some other well known companies and none of them were satisfied with their hosting. Hostgator has started to improve, but only to get even worse and is now shoulder to shoulder with GoDaddy. And, when it comes to GoDaddy hosting - well, you can consider yourself lucky if you're just unsatisfied... Whatever you do, DO NOT use GoDaddy hosting for your Zen Cart site - their servers are awful slow and simply don't work well with Zen Cart. Just check the official Zen Cart forums for headaches caused by GoDaddy and their specific way of configuring their servers. GoDaddy actually is a perfect choice for domain registration as they are one of the best registrars and we highly recommend using their domain registration, but not hosting.