2016-02-29

As a revolutionary e-commerce software, CS-Cart has attracted a lot attention recently. It is a great help to online shopkeepers because it is extremely flexible and extendable. They can design online stores according to their needs by adding almost any functionality currently available.

CS-Cart makes online shopping effective and easy with such localization methods as language, currency and taxes. It also supports all major international expresses including UPS, FedEx, UPSS and DHL. More importantly, it doesn’t set any cap on products. Instead, it grows as your business boosts.

Due to its handiness and popularity, many web hosts are offering CS-Cart hosting service to small and medium-sized businesses. To help users find the best hosts, we have reviewed over 100 CS-Cart hosting providers and found InMotion Hosting, Arvixe and BlueHost are very outstanding. This table below serves as a brief introduction to their prices and features.

Best CS-Cart Hosting — InMotion Hosting

InMotion Hosting is a leading web host committed to open source. Aiming to thrill every customer with their expertise, professionalism and availability, it has been a CNET Certified Service Provider for ten years. Now it is engaged in domain registration and all types of hosting, including business hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated servers, reseller hosting and managed hosting.

InMotion Hosting offers 3 web hosting plans named as Launch, Power and Pro. Launch, which is their best value, is the 1st choice for small businesses. The regular starting price for Launch is $7.99/mo, but if purchased through the following promotional link, its price can drop to $3.49/mo. What’s more, a 90-Day Money Back Guarantee is available.

InMotion Hosting Promotional Link Activation

CS-Cart users have access to many useful tools that come with Launch. Core and competitive features include cPanel, Free SSDs, Free Site Transfer, Free Data Backups, Free 1-click Installer, Google Apps Integration, etc. Data centers are located in both East and West coasts, users can select the nearer one for faster speed. Their facilities are equipped with advanced hardware and software for reliable performance.

Technical support from InMotion Hosting is incomparable. The management team members are all experts with over ten years of web hosting experience. All the support staffs are well trained. In specific, they have been trained for at least 160 hours. InMotion Hosting was named as the Best Hosting Service Provider by many influential hosting rating sites.

Affordable CS-Cart Hosting — Arvixe

Founded in 2003 in San Luis Obispo, California, Arvixe has grown into an experienced hosting provider today. It has received several awards from industry authorities because of its superior hosting service. A wide range of options are available to meet different hosting purposes. Among them, Linux Shared Web Hosting is recommended to CS-Cart hosting users.

This type of hosting has two plans. One is Personal Class, the other Personal Class Pro. The former starts at $4/mo and the latter $7/mo. If people purchase through the coupon code BWH360, they can get favorable discounts & coupons no matter what plan they choose: a 30% discount. No hidden fees. Payment can be refunded within 60 days after purchase.

Arvixe Coupon Code Activation

This extremely low price covers generous benefits, including unlimited disk space, bandwidth, sub-domains, FTP accounts, email accounts, PHP 4 and 5, cPanel, automatic setup, $100 Google AdWords Voucher, and the list goes on. In addition, the company also guarantees 99.9% uptime, lightening speed and 24 hour support by:

Locating high-performance data centers in both US and Europe;

Employing bleeding edge hardware;

And extending support through live chat, email, and the knowledgebase all the day.

Old Brand Hosting — BlueHost

BlueHost, a web host built on open source, has won numerous awards since its founding in 2002 in Utah. These awards are well-deserved because of its great products, great prices and great support. It is capable of providing all types of hosting services, including shared hosting, VPS, dedicated, reseller and WordPress hosting. And it has never ceased to reform and innovate.

For CS-Cart hosting starters, the upgradable shared plans are a good choices. The plans are priced from $3.49/mo only for people going through the promotional link below but offer a full package of features. Basic hosting features include a free domain name, cPanel control panel, secure shell access and automated backups. The amount of disk space, databases and email accounts will be decided by the plan you choose.

BlueHost Promotional Link Activation

As for e-commerce features, BlueHost has SSL Secure Server, Password Protected Directories and GPG Encryption, leaving no loophole for malicious hacking or internet fraud. Other compatible features such as PHP5, Python, MySQL 5 Databases, etc are all available. Besides, CS-Cart is instantly accessible with the SimpleScripts 1-click installer.

To guarantee reliable and fast performance, BlueHost has set up three data centers featuring world class technologies. Dual quad processor performance servers, UPS power backup, 24/7 network monitoring system, diesel generator backup power, and customized apache web server are all in place for quality performance.

Last but certainly not the least, BlueHost offers professional support to its customers. Their passionate technicians can be reached anytime via support ticket, phone or live chat. Additionally, their knowledgebase and forums are all awesome ways to get informative resources.

How We Choose the Best CS-Cart Hosting

As CS-Cart is developed to run in most server configurations, it has very loose server requirements – PHP 5.3 (or higher) and MySQL 4.1 (or higher). Nowadays, these requirements are easy to meet, but it does not mean finding a good CS-Cart hosting provider is an effortless job.

Offering the required versions of PHP and MySQL is only a proof that the web host can guarantee the compatibility with CS-Cart. How you can manage your CS-Cart store and how it will perform are still impacted by many other factors including the web hosting performance, security and the control panel.

Below are the most important things we would look into when judging the value of a web hosting package.

Web hosting control panel

The features included in the web hosting control panel decide how you can install CS-Cart, manage files, create databases, and more. Therefore, the control panel must be rich-featured and easy-to-use, coming with an intuitive UI which is understandable even for beginners.

At present, cPanel is the first consideration when we review a web hosting package because this control panel is so far the best for Linux hosting. It not only makes it possible for developers to handle complex server issues, but also allows beginners to manage their sites and accounts with ease.

Security

Shared hosting is less secure because the server is shared by hundreds of users. So the security enhancement done by the hosting provider is especially important. The servers a web host offers must be physically secure, and the software and operating system are up-to-date. Those with SSL installed are more recommended since the data transactions are secured.

Web hosting performance

The speed of a website has significant impacts on the conversions and sales, so the web hosting performance is given the top priority, too. A web host considered to be good for hosting CS-Cart should be able to keep the server response time within 500ms and page loads within 2 seconds. The speeding-up technologies like CDN and SSDs are also preferred.

Technical support

The quality of technical support shows a hosting provider’s care for its customers. Therefore, all the web hosts recommended above provide 24×7 support services to all customers via various communication channels including phone, email and live chat. The support teams are accessible at any time, and they consist of technicians knowing well about CS-Cart.

The post Best CS-Cart Hosting with Helpful Features & High Performance appeared first on HowsHost.

Show more