What if we told you that WooCommerce can do all that for you? With the free and open-source plugin, maintaining your website instantly becomes so much easier.

Keep reading to find out exactly what WooCommerce is and how it can help your WordPress website.

What Is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is an e-Commerce plugin used by over 3 million online stores. It was developed to be used as an extension to WordPress, which is why it integrates perfectly into any WordPress site. A simple but powerful platform chock full of features, it is a fantastic solution for anyone looking to sell their products online.

We highly recommend that you use WooCommerce as an extension for your shop, as it contains everything that you need for your business to run smoothly.

What Are the Benefits of WooCommerce?

WooCommerce exists to make managing your online shop simpler. It is incredibly user-friendly and offers dozens of helpful features right at your fingertips. If you’re about to open your own online shop or just want to upgrade an existing site, we’re certain that you’ll find all of the features of WooCommerce to be extremely helpful.

Customization Options

You can make changes to your store page any time you like with no additional costs, thanks to WooCommerce. You can either customize everything yourself or choose from a wide array of stylish, functional themes.

Built-In Analytics

Even if you have no experience in tracking implementation, WooCommerce comes with a built-in data analysis tool that will give you more insight into your growing business.

Integrated Payment Gateways

An efficient payment process is essential for any store. With WooCommerce, you can give your customers the option to choose from several platforms, such as Stripe, PayPal, debit or credit cards, bank transfer, or even cash on delivery.

Various Shipping Options

WooCommerce allows you to provide any variety of shipping options for your customers’ orders, like a pickup from nearby stores, local delivery, or international shipping. You can even restrict shipping options as you see fit.

Automatic Tax Calculation

WooCommerce makes it easy for anyone to calculate taxes for their online shops. All you need to do is configure the settings to automatically compute taxes on every order.

Order and Inventory Management

The built-in inventory management system of WooCommerce allows shop owners to handle and track everything in their supply. Plus, you can oversee the entire order process, from tracking orders to shipping them out.

All these amazing WooCommerce advantages will pair perfectly when used with a Managed WordPress platform, which is another worthwhile investment for any WordPress user.

What Is Managed WordPress?

Managed WordPress is a hosting platform that is fully streamlined and optimized for easy creation and management of your website. As its name implies, the web host manages your WordPress for you, taking over all the server responsibilities.

Our platform, A2 Hosting, revolves around making your site run as fast and secure as possible. We will handle all the administrative tasks, from installing WordPress, to security checks and updates, and even caching your web page. If you have any questions you can speak with our sales team for more information on our new and improved Managed WordPress plans!

WooCommerce is an incredibly powerful tool for WordPress users. When paired with our efficient Managed WordPress platform, managing your online shop will be fast and hassle-free. For an optimized eCommerce shop, get started on managed WordPress today with A2 Hosting!

The post What Is WooCommerce? Explaining the Features and Benefits appeared first on The A2 Posting.

What is a VPS Reseller Hosting Package?

A VPS Reseller server is a virtualized server that a user can split into several hosting packages. Here’s how it works:

1. You purchase a VPS package from us with as many cPanel licenses as you need.
2. Then, you can resell the cPanel accounts to individuals.
3. Then, using the WHM system, you can create additional client accounts and give each individual their own cPanel. 
4. That’s it! 

Who Would Want a VPS Reseller Plan?

VPS Reseller plans are for clients with multiple sites that need individual cPanel accounts for each site. It’s also for clients who are reselling to clients requiring the power, resources, and scalability of a VPS. Regular shared reseller plans are more limited in resources than their VPS counterparts. 

So, is VPS Reseller Hosting Actually Worth It? 

Privacy and Configuration 

VPS Reseller packages offer more privacy and greater server admin control. With a VPS server, you can have root-level access to configure the server to your liking. 

Not only that, but VPS packages are in their own virtually-allocated server environment so your clients have greater privacy. Your resources are also your own. In a shared Reseller package, you’re still sharing a server with many other individuals. With a VPS Reseller package, you’re sharing the same physical server, but not sharing the same virtual server. Your server is your own. 

Resources 

VPS servers have more resources than their Reseller counterparts. For example, our entry-level shared Reseller package Kickstart only offers 60GB of disk space whereas our entry-level VPS plan offers 150GB of disk space. 

Speed

Because you’re not sharing the server with many others, you’ll experience faster loading speeds on a VPS server. 

Why Should I Become a Reseller?

Low Bar to Entry

If you aren’t used to web hosting, there’s a learning curve at first. But if you’re familiar with web hosting or have your own website, it’s not much harder to become a reseller. Pricing for VPS Reselling packages is reasonable, starting at $54.99/monthly for a Lift 8 plan with 150GB of disk space and 8GB of RAM. 

Scalable

It’s easy to upgrade to a higher-tiered VPS at any time. Our reseller hosting accounts are scalable so you can start small and expand as your client list grows as scaling up doesn’t cost anything. 

Easy to Manage

When you sign up for a VPS Reseller hosting account, you’ll need to manually create users in WHM. Once you create the accounts, you can give each client their own cPanel account and manage them accordingly. Within each cPanel is a client’s allocated disk space and bandwidth. Their cPanel also contains the necessary tools to manage their website, set up email addresses, and add databases. 

If you have your own shared hosting package or have used web hosting before, setting up a reseller account is similar. Instead of setting up your own domain, you set up the framework for your clients to manage their own websites.

Your clients can manage their own accounts which saves you the hassle of administrating their websites yourself making this an easy way to make passive income. 

In conclusion, VPS Reseller hosting has a myriad of benefits ranging from server privacy, easy configuration to scalability and speed. With the right setup, you can start reselling today!  

Related Articles: 

• Reseller Quick Start Guide
• How to Make Your Reseller Hosting Business a Success
• How to Start a Hosting Business and Join the Remote Working Revolution
• What Reseller Hosting Is (And How You Can Take Advantage of It)

The post Is VPS Reseller Hosting Actually Worth It? Making the Case for Easy Passive Income appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Who has the best eCommerce hosting for small businesses? We tend to be a little bias when we answer A2 Hosting, but in this article, we’re going to review why we’re the industry leader in small business hosting and which plans are best for small businesses. 

How Does A2 Hosting Support Small Businesses?

A2 Hosting takes pride in supporting small businesses. We not only celebrate Small Business Week, but we celebrate Small Business Month. For the entire month of May, we offer some of our lowest prices of the season, increasing the affordability of our plans but still offering the same, first-rate service.

Apart from discounts, we also highlight the most important aspect at A2 Hosting: the people. From Katie Davis, author, and entrepreneur, to the Pyrenees Cycling Company in France, to music producer Gemtracks.com, we celebrate the backbone of our company, the small businesses that make us who we are. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have small businesses supporting us along the way. Knowing this, we like to give that support back by offering the fastest servers on the market and help from our advanced technical support team. 

Our CEO, Bryan Muthig said, “Small Businesses are so important and we’re trying to do everything we can to give them the prices and plans they need to flourish, everything we do is with the intention to help our customers thrive online.” We love our small businesses here at A2 Hosting and we’re committed to providing the speediest solution available for your business to thrive. 

Speed might not seem like an obvious way to support small businesses, but website speed directly influences a business’s conversion rate and profitability. Also, speed isn’t a preference but an expectation. More than 45% of consumers expect pages to load in 2 seconds or less. After 2 seconds, many users leave to find another fast-loading page. 

In fact, for every additional second of loading time after 2 seconds, conversions drop by 7% and continue to drop by intervals of 7% for every consecutive second.  

Amazon performed site speed tests that concluded they would lose $1.6 billion every year if their site slowed down by one second. Now, Amazon isn’t a small business, but as a small business owner, you can’t afford to lose money. Sure, it’s not going to total a $1.6 billion loss, but any loss is a loss for your business.

For small businesses, a one-second improvement in page load speeds leads to $70 more revenue per day (over $2000/monthly) for sites earning $1000 a day. 

That’s why it’s vital to invest in a speedy server. We offer our Turbo line of products that feature NVMe drives and our AMD EPYC processors. 

NVMe stands for Non-Volatile Memory Express. These drives are the fastest on the market, delivering sustained read-write speeds of 2000MB per second, miles ahead of its SATA SSD III counterpart, which tops at 600MB per second. 

We offer the NVMe drives for Shared Hosting, WordPress Hosting, VPS Hosting, Reseller Hosting, and Dedicated Hosting. 

As a small business, you won’t have the traffic of larger corporations like Amazon or Etsy. Your needs are smaller and it’s important to choose a plan that correctly matches your needs. 

We recommend the following plans for small business owners:

Shared Hosting – Turbo Boost or Turbo Max 

The Turbo Boost and Turbo Max plans both use the NVMe storage and AMD EPYC processors. They boast unlimited resources and include our 24/7/365 support on phones, tickets, and LiveChats. The reason we recommend these two plans is because of speed. Again, slow websites kill conversions but fast websites keep your customers coming back. These two plans are the speediest we have for shared hosting. 

If you only have a small database, use very little, and have a tiny budget, you can opt for a Startup or Drive plan. Keep in mind, the Startup plan doesn’t offer backups and neither plan offers a Turbo option. If you choose Startup or Drive, you can upgrade to a Turbo server at any time. 

VPS Hosting – Mach 8 or Mach 16

If you have a larger volume of traffic, the Mach 8 is your best bet. It offers 8GB of RAM and 150GB of NVMe storage with the privacy of a VPS server in the body of a much speedier physical server. It only offers a single cPanel though so if you’re looking for another cPanel account, it’s best to go for the Mach 16 plan.

Dedicated Hosting – Warp 2 Turbo AMD 

If you’re a small business with an unusually high volume of traffic, the Warp 2 Turbo AMD is for you. This is a state-of-the-art Bare Metal Dedicated server with NVMe storage, Turbo caching, and a whopping 64GB of RAM. For most small businesses, this plan is overkill but for those exceeding our highest VPS plan, the Mach 32, this is the best next step. 

All of the above plans feature our 24/7/365 support team. They’re available on phones, LiveChat’s, and through tickets and they work diligently to troubleshoot your server problems. 

Keep in mind that with all of our plans, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. What works for one small business may not work for yours. Every business has different needs and it’s important to find out what’s best for you. When in doubt, contact our sales team. They are web hosting experts and will set you up with the best plan for your exact needs. 

In conclusion, A2 Hosting is committed to the success of your small business. By offering fast, affordable hosting, you’ll quickly rise in SEO rankings, lower your bounce rates, and increase your conversion rates, leaving your corporate competitors behind in the dust. 

Related Articles: 

• A2 Hosting: Web Hosting’s Small Business Champion
• Who Has the Fastest Web Hosting? Matching Your Need for Speed
• When Is It Time to Upgrade from a Shared Hosting Server to a Virtual Private Server (VPS)?
• How to Write Better Product Descriptions that Drive eCommerce Sales During the Holidays

The post Who Has the Best eCommerce Hosting for Small Businesses appeared first on The A2 Posting.

But did you know that proper hosting is also important in establishing a good business reputation?

Through web hosting services, a website can provide amazing user experiences that will improve any brand’s image in its market. The opposite is true with a poor hosting solution. This can lead to poor user experiences that reduce your engagement significantly.

So how can you choose the right web hosting solutions for your website?

To help you decide, we’ve prepared a brief guide on the crucial things to know when choosing web hosting services.

How to Choose the Right Web Hosting Services

There are at least five factors to consider when deciding on the ideal web hosting service for your needs. Getting the highest levels on all these factors will ensure that your website can provide an excellent user experience.

These factors are:

Web Hosting Service Factor #1: Speed

The speed of your web hosting service provider is one of the first and most important factors you should consider. Hosting speed is a priority consideration as it shows how fast a provider can load web pages.

Websites that can load quickly often translate to a better user experience since most people won’t stay if a page takes a long time to load. With a slow website, your customers are more likely to leave your page and opt for competitors instead.

When talking about hosting performance, the software stack or server technology used by a provider is one thing to look out for. With technology evolving at a rapid pace, it’s important to have a web host that can adapt quickly and employ the latest tech advancements for maximum speeds.

At A2 Hosting we offer Turbo hosting plans that are designed to provide users with the best speeds for their websites. The limited occupancy of these plans minimizes the number of resources being used while optimized server configurations ensure top performance.

Furthermore, our Turbo packages take advantage of the latest server hardware and software technologies in the market, providing as much as 20x faster page load speeds than the competition. Websites hosted on their turbos plans can handle 9x more traffic with 3x faster read/write speeds.

Web Hosting Service Factor #2: Reliability

Reliability or the uptime of web hosting services is the second most important aspect to consider. Your host’s reliability refers to how often a site is going to be available and accessible to the public.

Besides a slow-loading website, one that can’t be visited is one of the worst things businesses can experience. An inaccessible site, even if it’s just for a few hours, can significantly reduce conversion rates.

Brand websites that experience frequent downtimes can expect their images to be tarnished. No lead or customer would want to visit a website only to find out that it’s not available. Catering to the needs of the target market at all times should be a top priority for your business website.

One way you can avoid experiencing downtimes as much as possible is by leveraging a hosting solution that is guaranteed to have at least 99% uptime. Anything lower than that would drastically reduce conversions.

At A2 Hosting we take advantage of tried and tested technologies, ensuring that all of our customers get 99.99% uptime from our web hosting services.

Web Hosting Service Factor #3: Security

As you browse for your potential hosting solutions provider, you should consider the levels of security they have to offer for new and existing customers. This is particularly important at the server level since this is where most of your site’s resources are stored.

For instance, you want to check if they apply the newest operating system patches to your server. Patches and updates are vital for servers to have as few vulnerabilities as possible. You should also check if they provide DDoS protection and high-level firewalls to filter potentially malicious traffic.

Besides cybersecurity, backups are equally important as well. Backup solutions provide you with a repository containing saved business data that you can fall back on if the worst should happen.

With A2 Hosting, you can leverage secure web hosting services that provide you with top-notch protection and stability for your website. We work on the OpenVPN virtual private network so that our users can work from site to site and point to point without worrying about their security. OpenVPN, in particular, comes with security features such as network address translation (NAT) protection.

Meanwhile, our Brute Force Protection solution lets you block cybercriminals using methods such as IP routing, APF, and custom commands.

Other security features you can find from our packages include:

• ConfigServer and Firewall (CSF) login security
• Linux malware detection solutions
• Linux environment security
• SSL certificates
• Secure Shell (SSH) login security solution
• SimpleRisk risk management solution

At A2 Hosting, our goal is to help you identify potential security threats and resolve them before they become worse. Our secure servers utilize the latest and proven cybersecurity solutions so you can have around-the-clock protection for your websites.

Web Hosting Service Factor #4: Features and Add-Ons

Features and add-ons are always great to have in any web hosting service. The main reason for this is that these added options let you scale up when needed, especially when you wish to expand to a new market.

A2 Hosting offers customers quite a few add-on solutions that can help improve site security, functionality, usability, and experience. These additional options are:

• Cloudflare: The content delivery network (CDN) known as Cloudflare is a service that we provide to our web hosting customers free of charge. We offer a knowledge base of tutorials that will teach you how to set up and get started with Cloudflare.
• SSL certificates: SSL certificate is a necessary add-on solution for any website, especially in terms of ramping up security. Using the right SSL certificate, site owners can make sure that their website data are encrypted while making themselves more trustworthy to their visitors.
• WHMCS hosting: Resellers looking to leverage A2 Hosting’s plans can take advantage of WHMCS since we also support hosting with this feature. You can learn everything from configuring OpenSRS access for WHMCS to ordering a WHMCS license with us.
• Domain and SSL reseller: Again, for resellers or those using managed VPS or managed dedicated server accounts, you can turn into an SSL or eNom domain reseller with A2 Hosting.
• Promotions: Promotional programs are available when you pick A2 Hosting as your web hosting services provider. You can even access a knowledge base containing information on programs for affiliates, refer-a-friend, and more.
• cPanel licensing: Dedicated, cloud VPS, and unmanaged VPS servers normally don’t have cPanel included in their accounts. With A2 Hosting, cPanel licensing in included with many of our plans.
• MailChimp account setup: We can help you sign up for a MailChimp account and teach you how to generate API keys. The latter should help you integrate MailChimp with your A2 Hosting website so you can manage your newsletters and drip campaigns easily.
• Dropmysite: The Dropmysite cPanel plugin lets you keep track of your websites and configure backups for your data. A2 Hosting will provide you with all of the resources you need to make the most of Dropmysite.
• Ordering a Blesta license: Looking to leverage Blesta for your website? A2 Hosting will guide you throughout the process so you can maximize your reseller hosting package with us.

Web Hosting Service Factor #5: Support

If you’ve found a web hosting provider that has the hardware, software, and features that you need, then the next logical step is to consider their support. Does your chosen provider have the expertise, equipment, and resources to ensure you get the best levels of service at all times?

Here are a few aspects to consider when it comes to support:

• Support level: When it comes to a host’s level of support, you need to consider the level of support your business website needs. For instance, do you require VPS, cloud hosting, or dedicated server support? What about WooCommerce or WordPress? Does your host offer help on those platforms? Are you looking for a managed plan where your host takes care of all of your backend server needs or looking to manage it yourself?
• Contact methods: The next aspect to consider is how your provider gets in touch with you in terms of support. Do they offer telephone and live chat or just email? Having an online support ticket system can be crucial, especially for business websites. A2 Hosting offers ticket, live chat, email, and phone calls 24/7/365!
• Ability to respond: Besides being able to contact them through multiple methods, you should also learn how quickly they can address your issue. In case your website goes down, you want to know how long before it gets back up so you can get back to business as soon as possible.
• How quickly they resolve issues: Similar to the above, resolution time is another thing to consider with your web hosting provider. Some hosts pass the concerns of their customers to third-party support providers, which can take several days to be resolved. You want to leverage the support services of a company that can resolve all of your issues themselves. At A2 Hosting we have an extensive in house support team, otherwise know as our guru crew.
• Operating times: Finally, you want to check and ensure your web host can provide around-the-clock support. 24/7 customer service is a must nowadays especially for website owners that can experience problems at any time of the day or night. That’s why A2 Hosting has someone there to help you 24/7/365!

At A2 Hosting, our web hosting services come with the highest levels of support you can expect from a premium provider. We are available to answer inquiries or resolve issues of our customers whenever they need us.

In case you want to learn more about our services, you can visit our support page that contains all of the information you need on various hosting solutions.

Which Level of Hosting Plan Is Right for You?

So which level of web hosting plan fits your needs? Consider the short overview below and click this link to take our free quiz!

Shared Web Hosting Plan

Our Shared Web Hosting plan is our most affordable hosting solution that lets you share resources such as disk space, data transfer, and processing power. It also comes with cPanel, server backups, and unlimited storage.

VPS Hosting Plan

On our VPS Hosting plans you share the same server with other sites, but you get to operate your account independently. This means you get your own allotted amount of resources! If you choose our managed plans back-end server maintenance is handled for you.

Dedicated Hosting Plan

Looking for a premium hosting solution? Our dedicated hosting plan means that you get the highest performance, best features, and a private server solely for all of your business website needs.

Conclusion

These are the most important aspects you should know about choosing a web hosting service. Following the tips provided in this post will help guide you in getting the right solution for your website.

If you have any questions about our web hosting services, contact our sales team today. Interested in finding out which plan is right for you? I encourage you to take our free quiz to help you decide!

The post Crucial Things to Know When Choosing Web Hosting Services appeared first on The A2 Posting.

We recommend security certificates for any websites that collect sensitive information like names, addresses, and credit card numbers. One example of this certificate is the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). Apart from keeping consumers safe, search engine giant Google declared SSL’s as a ranking factor in 2014. Naturally, other search engines followed suit.

This article will discuss everything you need to know about having a security certificate on your site — what it is, why you should get one, and how to keep your customers safe. Let’s get right to it.

What Is an SSL?

Until 1999, SSL was the gold standard in internet communications. SSL is a type of technology that keeps internet connections safe. It protects the transfer of sensitive data between two systems by preventing cybercriminals from modifying any information. SSLs make it impossible for hackers to read users’ information during transfer with the help of encryption algorithms that jumble data in transit. These systems can be server-to-client like an e-commerce site and a customer or server-to-server like a cloud to a printer server.

What Is an SSL Certificate?

An SSL certificate is an online verification authenticating a site’s identity, allowing a coded connection between a web server and a web browser. Companies should add such a certificate to their sites to protect customer information.

Developers install these certificates server-side, but visitors will see visual cues that indicate site security. Take note of these signs:

• A website with an HTTPS address instead of HTTP has an SSL certificate.
• Check out the padlock before a website name. If you click on it, you will see this message: Connection is secure. This sign means a company guarantees that no one can intercept or modify the link between the sites. If it is not a secure site, you will see a warning symbol before the address.
• Your antivirus will prevent you from entering an unsecured site. Most of the time, your software sends red flags for websites with no SSL certificates, or expired ones.
• Brands will not likely misspell their domain name. If you notice grammatical errors, it’s probably a scam attempt. For instance, cybercriminals might attempt to steal data from amaz0n.com if they can breach the platform’s security protocols.

Reasons To Get an SSL Certificate

Having a security certificate for website use has taken the digital world by storm. According to recent SSL statistics, an impressive 82.2% of websites use valid certificates — a colossal leap from only 17.8% five years ago.

From being an additional layer of consumer protection, it has become a must-have for most site owners. Businesses of all sizes and industries will benefit from this certification. Below are some reasons why you should have one.

Ensure Visitor Protection

By providing websites with unbreakable encryption, SSL certificates ensure the safety of all site visitors. Without one, hackers can easily target customers’ sensitive data. They eliminate various threats, including man-in-the-middle attacks, phishing, and session hijacking.

Promote Subdomain Security

An SSL certificate called Wildcard enables site owners to secure their main site and all subdomains under it with one certification. This feature would greatly benefit organizations using multiple subdomains, eliminating the need to install separate certificates per site.

Provide Authentication

Certificate authorities (CA) sign and issue online certificates, including SSL. Through their signatures, other relying parties can verify a site’s credentials. Some of their tasks include domain and business verification, giving site visitors the confidence to navigate and interact with your platform.

Comply With PCI Requirements

Sites that process credit card payment should comply with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) requirements. The organization aims to elevate the standards for cardholders worldwide and has declared an SSL certificate a necessity for business websites. Non-compliance on your part may lead to lawsuits, unnecessary penalties, and revenue loss.

Boost SEO Efforts

Like any business, Google wants the best for its clients. For this reason, the company decided to make SSL certification a ranking factor. To increase your online visibility and stand out against uncertified competitors, we recommend getting an SSL certificate.

Speed Up Your Website

Contrary to popular belief, SSL certificates don’t slow websites down but speed them up. Recent technologies gave rise to web servers called HTTP2 that use single connections instead of multiple parallel ones.

Your page load speed should be anywhere between one to two seconds. If it reaches three seconds, 53% of your site visitors will leave. As page load speed is also a Google ranking factor, this feature further boosts your search engine visibility.

Pro tip: A reliable hosting solution can do wonders for your site speed.

Strengthen Brand Image

Few things in life can ruin a brand image faster than a company that doesn’t care about its clients’ safety. While SSL certificates cannot shield sites against all cyber attacks, they protect your customers’ names, addresses, and card information. If you plan on inspiring consumer trust, keep it professional by using an HTTPS site. Strengthen your brand image now with high-security standards.

How To Get an SSL Certificate

You can obtain an SSL through your hosting company! These are the SSL certificates we offer at A2 Hosting:

• Free SSL: Our plans come with free SSL certificates that offer basic website protection, allowing you to establish HTTPS on your websites. While they are just as secure as paid services, many of our clients go for the latter to enjoy benefits like warranties, extended validations (EV), and organization validations (OV).
• Basic SSL: Our Domain Validated (DV) certificates offer a practical solution for industry-standard security up to 256-bit encryption. We can complete this process via email, as long as you prove your domain ownership. These are the most affordable SSL types anywhere in the world.
• Premium SSL: With our OV certificates, you can get up to 256-bit encryption for your site. The verification process for this SSL type is more tedious than applying for a DV certificate. However, you get to enjoy more perks like third-party vouching and a trust badge for your site.
• Advanced SSL: EV certificates offer the highest level of trust and security for consumers — a feature that helps boost sales. If you want a top-of-the-line security option for your enterprise-level or multiple sites, EV certificates are ideal for you. With these certifications, you can enjoy the most recognizable trust indicators.
• Wildcard: This SSL type protects a domain and an unlimited number of subdomains with one certificate. They work like other SSL certificates do, using the same encryption and validation processes. Additionally, you can upgrade your Wildcard SSL to include domain authentication and organizational validation.

Activating SSL certificates offers an extensive range of benefits for your website. The best part is, there are now many options to choose from. Don’t miss out on the HTTPS revolution to enjoy all the advantages that these certifications bring.

Secure Your Site Now

From visitor protection to domain security to being PCI DSS-compliant, a security certificate for website use is one of the most convenient ways to take your business to new heights. It’s one of the best investments you can make to stand out in a sea of competition.

At A2 Hosting, we help clients level up their sites through award-winning hosting and SSL services. Are you ready to boost your digital leads, conversions, and revenues? Get in touch with our guru crew now to begin your journey toward growth.

The post What Happens When You Don’t Have a Security Certificate on Your Site? appeared first on The A2 Posting.

In this article, we talk about what SSL is and how it works in a nutshell. We will also go over the different types of SSLs that may be right for your business needs. Continue reading to learn more about the right SSL for you!

What Does SSL Mean and How Does SSL Work?

SSL stands for “Secure Sockets Layer”. It is a security certificate that enables you to use the HTTPS extension on your site. The use of this extension for your site’s URL is important because it ensures that traffic to and from your site is secure.

An SSL works by encrypting data that travels to and from your site. This includes sensitive data like credit or debit card details. For this reason, you need an SSL to keep transactional data from being grabbed by hackers.

What Are the Different Types of SSLs Available at A2 Hosting?

Not all SSLs are the same and there are many types of them available. Here are some of the most common SSLs available for your business site:

Free SSL Certificates

The free SSL Certificate included in our plans offers basic website protection. It allows you to set up trusted HTTPS on websites for encrypted connections. The protection offered is just as secure as paid certificate options. Having this equipped on your site can do wonders in increasing your credibility amongst your site’s visitors. Of course, because these are free, there are no warranties and they don’t come with some of the nice upgrades that the other types do.

Basic DV

A basic SSL is an easy and affordable way to protect your site. Domain Validated (DV) certificates are a fast and simple way to secure your website with industry-standard up to 256-bit encryption. The process of obtaining one of these SSL certificates couldn’t be easier and is usually handled with just a standard email. A file-based authentication method can also be used and is recommended if you have direct access to the server that hosts your domain name.

In order to receive a DV certificate from one of our trusted Certification Authorities (CAs), all you have to do is prove that you own the domain that you wish to protect. Since no extensive validation process is required, DV certificates are the most affordable type of SSL on the planet.

Premium OV SSL Certificate

If you run an eCommerce business, a premium SSL certificate is an excellent choice. They offer reliable security with organizational validation. Organization Validated certificates, or OV certificates, are a type of SSL technology that offers up to 256-bit encryption to websites of businesses and other registered organizations. The difference between OV certificates and domain validated (DV) certificates is that a little extra vetting is required to confirm that you own your domain and that your organization is registered and real.  As long as your business is registered, the validation process is simple and in most cases only takes a couple of days to complete the validation.

They also offer third-party vouching. The biggest differentiator for an OV certificate is that when you have your organization validated, a trusted third-party online security company is verifying you are a legitimate business. This level of trust that is bestowed on your business means visitors and customers can have trust in your business.

Another added benefit is their trust badges. The purchase of an OV certificate comes with a dynamic site seal that contains verified and time-stamped information about your company. This is an additional measure to ensure consumer confidence and build an extra layer of trust in your site.

Wildcard SSLs

These SSL certificates are generally more affordable than premium SSL certificates. Nonetheless, the protection they give your site data is still comparable to that of a premium SSL certificate. Wildcard SSL certificates allow site owners to register more than one subdomain on a single certificate. They secure your site and each of your subdomains just like a normal SSL certificate while using identical encryption and validation methods for enhanced security. In addition to being able to consolidate all of your subdomains under a single SSL Certificate, our Wildcard SSLs offer a number of additional options including Domain Authentication and Organizational Validation.

The functionality and affordability of wildcard SSLs have made them a popular choice for startups and larger online businesses.

Advanced EV SSL Certificates

Get the highest level of trust and security to boost your sales and stay protected with advanced EV SSLs. EV certificates are the top-of-the-line SSL option. In addition to encrypting your website and safely protecting user information, they also come with a variety of premium features that boost trust and give your presence legitimacy.  EV certificates do this is by displaying your verified company details in all major browsers, giving visitors and customers immediate trust in your site. Before an EV certificate is issued, your Certificate Authority (CA) must first complete a thorough validation process to ensure that you’re a legitimate business.

One top feature is their dynamic trust indicators. With an EV SSL certificate, your product comes with the highest-valued, most recognizable trust indicators.  Your visitors will instantly recognize that you’re a legitimate and verified business. Users on major browsers will see the Verified Company Name when clicking on the padlock symbol with your browser showing a green address bar for EV SSL.

With immediate visibility, anyone on your site will know that you’re safe to do business with – resulting in higher trust and more conversions and sales.  Procurement of an EV SSL on your site is a demonstration to your customers that you’re investing in the best possible protection.

Get the Right SSL for Your Site at A2 Hosting!

Your site needs the right kind of SSL certificate. But, which one is right for you?  If you are not sure about which to get, reach out to us at A2 Hosting! Our plans include all of the mentioned SSL certificates above and we can help walk you through choosing the right one for your site!.

The post What is an SSL and Which One Is Right For You? appeared first on The A2 Posting.

So you’re excited to start a website, and you’ve selected a perfect hosting provider, but you don’t know which content management system (CMS) you should choose. In this blog, we’ll look at two popular CMS; Drupal and WordPress to help you decide the perfect fit for your upcoming site! 

A Little Market Research

Before looking at the strengths and weaknesses of these two CMS, let’s first look at which is more prevalent in the market. When looking at google trends, WordPress is by far the more popular platform in all regions. .WordPress takes approximately 59.8% market share versus 4.6% for Drupal. Although this fact is enough to confirm WordPress is the best choice, understanding the specific features of each CMS can help you make a more informed decision when choosing the right one for your site.

Why is WordPress Popular?

WordPress is popular among bloggers and small and larger enterprises because of the following advantages:

• Ease of use: WordPress is known for its ease of use and does not require high technical expertise when first starting out.
• Learning curve: WordPress is a simple interface. Its themes and WYSIWYG tools allow users to start from scratch and have a fully functional website in just a short period of time.
• Large support community: It’s easy to get support and help with any issues because WordPress has a large group of users who are well connected on different internet groups. There are so many forums out there to search on so you can get expert help quickly. 
• Affordability: You can develop a WordPress site on your own or you have the option to hire WordPress developers. Luckily WordPress developers can be much more cost-effective compared to Drupal developers due to its popularity. 
• Extensive plugins and themes: You can extend your site’s functionality, look, and feel with over 50,000 WordPress plugins and 5,000 Themes!

Why is Drupal STILL a choice?

Many government agencies and large corporations still prefer Drupal because of its outstanding security features and content taxonomy. Here are a few reasons why Drupal is still a choice:

• Security: Drupal’s security is its top-selling point. It offers security reports and is much more transparent on its security features compared to other CMS. Drupal ensures data security with frequent security updates, including SSL and CDN support for full website protection.
• Multi-Language support: Drupal supports character sets and easy language management variants without the need for an external plugin to help websites in different geographical locations.
• Taxonomy: Drupal’s taxonomy allows for better content categorization and works really well for large content websites to facilitate faster site search.

 Drupal or WordPress: Which Is The Best For Me?

Now that you know a little bit about the benefits of both CMS, it’s time to decide which one is best for you. Here’s a little checklist to start you off: 

1. What’s your website for?: This is probably the first thing you need to determine as it can help you decide how complex your site needs to be and the duration you need to develop it.
2. Who will build the site?: Are you planning to develop the site yourself, hire a developer, or get a managed hosting provider to do it for you? If you plan to do it yourself then we suggest you pick WordPress. It’s easier to use, has tons of plugins, and has many WordPress hosting services to choose from. Plus a WordPress developer tends to be less expensive than a Drupal developer so you may save money in upfront costs.
3. Are you trying to start your site alone?: Working with an open-source tool means you may need help with errors or improvements. Choose a tool that has great support groups for beginners to even advanced-level users. Also, check if your hosting provider offers help for your selected CMS. 
4. Who is your web hosting provider?: Almost all hosting providers offer hosting platforms for WordPress and Drupal these days. If you have chosen a hosting provider, check with them on options or support given for the CMS. We recommend A2 Hosting because of its excellent support and prices!

Now that you’ve gone through this quick checklist, it’s time to decide: WordPress or Drupal? Overall we recommend WordPress as the first choice for anyone who needs a CMS to develop a professional and attractive website quickly! 

Conclusion

Before selecting your tools and platform, it’s vital to understand your website’s commercial and business goals. The right hosting provider and CMS are important when developing faster and cost-effective websites to gain a better online presence. A2 Hosting supports both Drupal and WordPress hosting, offering unbeatable speed for your site. Check out our WordPress hosting packages today and feel free to contact our sales team with any questions!

Related Resources

How to Install WordPress Using Softaculous

How to Install WordPress On Managed WordPress Hosting

How to Install Drupal Using Softaculous

How to Find the Right WordPress Plan

The post Drupal vs WordPress: What’s the Difference? appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Thankfully, with the right tools you can build a fast, reliable online store without having to write a single line of code. Using these tools, you can launch your e-commerce business and start collecting payments, with minimal effort and very few upfront costs.

In this article, we’ll show you how to launch an e-commerce store using WordPress and the popular WooCommerce platform. Along the way, we’ll share advice on how to maximize your sales, by prioritizing your store’s performance and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Let’s get started!

Why You’d Want to Start an Online Store

Over the last few years, e-commerce has completely changed consumer habits. Today, online shopping is an indispensable part of the global economy, and online-only stores such as Amazon and eBay are some of the biggest names in retail. It’s difficult to even imagine a modern company that doesn’t offer customers the option to purchase products and services online.

In 2019, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to $3.53 trillion, and 2020 seems set to be a record-breaking year for online retail. Throughout 2020, physical stores around the globe were forced to close in an attempt to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic. This caused online shopping to skyrocket, as consumers embraced e-commerce as a way to access goods and services in a safe environment. In June 2020, global retail e-commerce traffic stood at a record 22 billion monthly visits.

With more people shopping online than ever before, you could find a large audience for your e-commerce business. By launching your online store now, you can maximize sales while helping your customers access the goods and services they need, without the risks currently associated with in-person shopping.

Introducing the WooCommerce Platform

There are a number of e-commerce plugins available for WordPress. However, with over five million active installs, WooCommerce is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms.

Out-of-the-box, WooCommerce provides everything you need to build an engaging online store, sell products, and accept payments. This has made WooCommerce a popular choice among online stores of all shapes and sizes.

Today, WooCommerce is used by many big-name brands. Aeropress, Weber, and the All Blacks all rely on WooCommerce to power their online stores.

There’s also evidence to suggest that WooCommerce can help you build a successful e-commerce store. According to research, 28 percent of the top one million e-commerce stores use WooCommerce as their e-commerce technology of choice.

WooCommerce was originally developed by WordPress theme developer WooThemes. However, in 2015, WooCommerce was acquired by Automattic – the company behind WordPress – who run and operate WooCommerce today.

As an Automattic product, WooCommerce is a stable, reliable e-commerce solution that’s regularly updated. If you want to create an online store, it’s always worth considering WooCommerce.

Why Build Your e-Commerce Store With WooCommerce

As a free WordPress plugin, WooCommerce is accessible to organizations of all shapes and sizes. This includes startups and smaller businesses, who typically have tighter budgets than established enterprises. Using WooCommerce, you can launch an e-commerce store with minimal upfront costs.

WooCommerce has a range of features built-in, but it’s also extensible. If vanilla WooCommerce doesn’t meet all your needs, you can choose from a wide range of WooCommerce extensions.

If you can’t find the perfect extension ready-made, WooCommerce is open-source software. This means you can always modify or extend the WooCommerce code to suit your exact needs – or hire a coder to make these changes for you.

WooCommerce is also designed to be user friendly. Using WooCommerce, you can potentially build a professional e-commerce store without having to write a single line of code. If you have previous experience with WordPress, building a store using WooCommerce will likely feel intuitive and easy.

Collecting payments is one of the most important parts of running a successful e-commerce business. WooCommerce can securely accept cards, mobile wallets, and bank transfers. It also integrates with over 100 payment gateways including PayPal, Stripe, and Square.

Today, many customers shop on their smartphones and tablets. In 2017, $1.4 trillion of total retail e-commerce sales were made using a mobile device. In 2021, it’s estimated that mobile e-commerce could account for $3.5 trillion of total e-commerce sales.

If you’re going to maximize your revenue, it’s essential your e-commerce store is mobile-friendly. WooCommerce works across all devices, including smartphones and tablets. The WooCommerce team is also continuously improving the plugin’s performance for mobile. For example, WooCommerce 3.0 optimized the product gallery for mobile users, and added support for touch gestures.

How to Start an Online Store (In 9 Easy Steps)

In this section, we’ll show you how to build a complete e-commerce store, using WooCommerce and WordPress. As promised, you won’t have to write a single line of code. Let’s dive in, and start your e-commerce business!

1. Choose the Right Web Hosting Provider

Your choice of hosting provider has the potential to make or break your e-commerce business. Downtime is always bad news, but for e-commerce stores downtime can mean an immediate drop in sales. To avoid downtime, we recommend opting for a provider that offers an uptime guarantee.

Performance is another crucial factor, as today’s consumer isn’t willing to wait around. Amazon calculated that a page load slowdown of just one second would cost them $1.6 billion in lost sales each year.

Performance can also impact your e-commerce store’s SEO. In particular, it can affect how quickly crawlers can index your content and serve it to customers. If your hosting provider doesn’t prioritize speed, your latest products and special offers may not even appear in Google’s search results for a significant period of time.

Google also uses page speed as a ranking factor in both its desktop and mobile search results. Research indicates that 39 percent of online purchases are influenced by a relevant search. Where your store appears in Google’s search results can have a huge impact on your sales and revenue.

There are many factors that can impact your site’s performance. However, your choice of hosting provider is one of the most important decisions you can make, particularly at this early stage.

At A2 Hosting, we take performance seriously. That’s why we’ve created a series of e-commerce hosting plans that are optimized for WooCommerce. These plans can deliver 20X faster page loads than competing WooCommerce hosting providers.

2. Set up WooCommerce

After activating the WooCommerce plugin, you’ll encounter a Welcome to WooCommerce screen. This is the WooCommerce configuration wizard, which is the quickest and easiest way to create a basic e-commerce store. By completing the wizard’s various screens, you can fast-track through much of the initial configuration, and get your e-commerce business off to a strong start.

If you accidentally dismiss the Welcome message, don’t panic! You can simply select WooCommerce from WordPress’ left-hand menu. WordPress will now display a list of all the steps required, in order to successfully complete the initial WooCommerce configuration.

You can now work your way through this list, by clicking each item in turn and following the onscreen instructions. Once you’ve successfully completed each task, it’s time to progress to the next step.

3. Add Extra Payment Gateways

As part of the setup process, WooCommerce will prompt you to add a payment gateway. A payment gateway enables customers to pay for goods and services using a payment system such as PayPal. By default, WooCommerce supports a number of core payment gateways. However, you can also add payment gateway extensions.

As part of the initial setup process, WooCommerce should prompt you to add at least one payment gateway. However, to maximize revenue we recommend offering at least two payment gateways.

There’s no guarantee all your customers will have access to the same payment gateway. Some gateways may also experience downtime. If you only support a single gateway, you’ll be unable to process payments until that gateway is back online. This could result is missed sales, and a significant amount of frustration on behalf of your customers.

Payment gateways may also have varying rules, regulations, and associated charges. Depending on factors such as geographical location, some payment gateways may represent better value for you and your customers.

You can enable additional payment gateways, by navigating to WooCommerce > Settings and then selecting the Payments tab. This screen displays all the payment gateways WooCommerce supports.

To add a payment gateway, click its accompanying Set Up button. This will open a menu where you can configure your chosen gateway. For example, if you’re configuring PayPal you’ll need to enter your PayPal email address and PayPal API credentials.

Once you’ve configured your payment gateway, select Save Changes. You can then enable the payment gateway by pushing its accompanying slider into the on position.

You can repeat these steps to enable multiple payment gateways. Just be wary of offering too much choice, as a list of unfamiliar payment options could potentially confuse your customers.

4. Create Your Product Categories

Product categories are an important way to organize your products, and help visitors find the items that matter to them. To ensure your e-commerce site is easy to navigate, it’s worth taking the time to define your product categories in advance.

You can always create more product categories as your store grows. However, by defining some product categories now, you can lay the foundations for an organized, logical e-commerce store.

To create a product category, navigate to WooCommerce > Categories. In Add New Category, enter the name of the parent category that you want to create.

In Description, provide a description for this particular category. By adding a description to each product category, you can help search engines such as Google understand your site’s content, and rank it appropriately. Relevant, keyword-rich product descriptions can also help boost your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Once you’re happy with the information you’ve entered, select Add New Category. Rinse and repeat to create multiple categories.

You may also want to create product subcategories. For example, you might create a Clothing category consisting of Sweatshirt, T-shirt, and Jeans subcategories. To create a subcategory, open the Parent Category drop-down. You can then select the parent category that you want to assign to this subcategory.

5. Create Shipping Zones and Shipping Methods

If you’re going to physically ship products to your customers, it’s important to create at least one Shipping Zone. A Shipping Zone might be a country, region, or even a specific zip code where you ship your items. Your customers will see only the shipping methods that are available for their zone.

To create a shipping zone, navigate to WooCommerce > Settings > Shipping. You can then select Add shipping zone.

Give your zone a name, choose a region, and select Add shipping method. WooCommerce supports several shipping methods by default, including free shipping.

According to a recent survey, almost half of consumers prefer stores that offer free shipping. What’s more, 77 percent identify free shipping as the most important factor when making purchasing decisions. To drive conversions, you may want to offer free shipping when certain conditions are met.

WooCommerce also provides a local pickup option. This is great if you’re selling bulky items that are expensive to ship, or you anticipate lots of local trade. Note that if you offer local pickup then store base taxes will apply regardless of the customer’s address.

Make your selection, then click Add shipping method. You can repeat these steps, to create multiple shipping zones.

By default, WooCommerce generates the following option: Locations not covered by your other zones. If no appropriate zone is found, WooCommerce will default to this shipping zone. You can edit or delete this zone, as required.

You can also add more shipping options, using a WooCommerce shipping plugin. These plugins give your customers more options, and some even integrate with well-known shipping services such as DHL. Some popular choices include WooCommerce ShipStation Integration, and Advanced Shipping.

6. Create Your First WooCommerce Product

It’s time to stock those shelves! To create a product, select Products > Add New from WordPress’s left-hand menu. You can then give this product a name, enter a description, and upload some images that represent the item or service you’re selling.

Next, open the Product data drop-down menu and specify the type of product you want to create. Here, you have a few choices. WooCommerce supports simple products, which are defined as products that are shipped and have no options. The opposite of a simple product is a variable product. A variable product has multiple options, for example a coat that’s available in different sizes and colors.

A grouped product is a collection of related items. Finally, an external/affiliate product is sold on a third-party website, but featured on your e-commerce store.

The next steps will vary, depending on the type of product you’re creating. For example, if you select Grouped product, you’ll be prompted to enter the product’s Stock-Keeping Unit (SKU). This is a unique string that represents this product in your e-commerce store. Alternatively, if you select Simple Product, you’ll be prompted to specify whether this product is downloadable.

After creating your product, it’s time to set your price. You can specify the everyday, non-sale price in the Regular price field.

You can now assign this product to at least one category, and add product tags. Both of these elements are essential for helping visitors navigate your store, and find the exact items they want to buy.

7. Create an Inventory and Stock Notifications

At this point, we’ve entered some basic information about our product. However, before we go ahead and publish the product, it’s a good idea to perform some stock management. This involves entering the total number of units currently in stock, and configuring some optional low stock warnings.

Stock management ensures you know when to order more stock. It also helps you avoid unpleasant situations, where you have to explain to customers that the product they’ve just paid for isn’t actually in stock.

To start, select the Inventory tab and create an SKU for this product. You can then enter the number of units you currently have in stock.

WooCommerce can email you when you’re running low on stock. If you want to receive these notifications, select the following checkbox: Enable stock management at product level. In Low stock threshold, specify the point where you’d consider this product to be approaching low stock.

By default, WooCommerce doesn’t allow for back orders. However, back orders can help you secure sales, even when an item isn’t currently available. This can be particularly useful during peak retail seasons, where it’s generally accepted that some items may be temporarily out of stock.

If you want to permit back orders, open the Allow back orders drop-down. You can then select either Allow or Allow, but notify customer. If you choose the latter, the product page will display an Available on back order notice. The customer can then decide whether to purchase this product, fully aware that it’s not currently in stock.

8. Build an eBay-Style Product Menu

To drive conversions, your customers should be able to find their perfect product, in just a few clicks. WordPress supports a range of navigational menus. However, drop-downs are particularly popular, as selecting a parent category displays all the associated product subcategories. This is exactly what we see with many popular e-commerce sites, including eBay.

By default, you can’t add product categories to a WordPress menu. To enable product categories, select Appearance > Menus > Screen Options. You can then select Product Categories.

Next, scroll to the Add menu items section. You can now add product categories to your WordPress menus.

Since we’re creating a drop-down menu, position each subcategory beneath its parent. You can then grab each child category and drag it slightly to the right, so it appears indented beneath its parent.

You can now create your menu, as normal. To ensure this menu appears across your entire e-commerce store, we recommend setting it as your top menu.

9. Boost Your Revenue With Related Products

As an e-commerce store, you’ll naturally want to push customers towards purchasing additional products, or more expensive alternatives. One method is to display related products.

WooCommerce tries to generate related products automatically. However, you can often get better results by linking products manually. To start, navigate to Products > All Products. You can then open any product for editing, and select its Linked Products tab.

You can define two types of linked products: ‘upsells’ and ‘cross-sells’. Upsells are typically more expensive alternatives, whereas cross-sells are complimentary items. For example, potential cross-sells for a laptop might include a Bluetooth mouse, or a laptop bag.

Conclusion

If you sell products or services, chances are your customers are already online and looking to make a purchase. If you aren’t offering your goods via an e-commerce platform such as WooCommerce, you could be missing out on sales.

When building your online store, we’d recommend paying particular attention to your product tags and categories. These elements are often overlooked, but are vital for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

To climb Google’s search engine rankings, it’s also important to choose the right hosting provider. By opting for a hosting package that delivers high performance and an uptime guarantee, you can give your store the best possible chance of attracting a large volume of traffic, and securing lots of conversions.

Image credit: freestocks.

The post How to Start an Online Store (in 9 Easy Steps) appeared first on The A2 Posting.

The current economic situation may be volatile, but there are still ways to grow your business. We’re seeing an unprecedented rise in remote working services, online learning, and e-commerce. All of these areas have one thing in common: They all require web hosting.

In this post, we’ll look at why reseller hosting may be the key to protect, and potentially even grow your revenue during these challenging times. We’ll then show you how to setup and launch a successful hosting reseller business. Let’s get started!

An Introduction to Reseller Hosting

For the uninitiated, a reseller purchases products or services from a provider, with the intention to selling on those products and services. As a hosting reseller, you’ll purchase a hosting package from an established, trusted provider. You’ll then divide these resources into smaller hosting accounts, and offer them to your customers.

There’s various reasons why you might want to become a hosting reseller. This includes launching a new business that’s dedicated entirely to web hosting.

Starting your own hosting business requires significant upfront investment. As a minimum, you’ll need to purchase servers and software licenses, and setup your own network. By becoming a hosting reseller, you can eliminate practically all of these startup costs.

When starting a new business, the first few years can be tough. In fact, research suggests that around half of new businesses close within the first five years. To give your business the best possible chance of success, you should avoid unpredictable costs.

This is exactly what happens when you become a hosting reseller. Your provider is responsible for most of the costs. This includes replacing broken hardware, upgrading outdated software, and more. By becoming a hosting reseller, you can replace all of these unpredictable costs with a pre-agreed, scheduled payment plan.

Alternatively, you may be an existing business looking to boost your income. By becoming a reseller, you can upsell and cross-sell hosting services to your existing customers. This enables you to increase your revenue, without any of the costs associated with acquiring new customers.

Reselling can also be an effective way to diversify your income. Just because a product or service is in high demand now, doesn’t mean it’ll be flying off the shelves forever. By adding hosting to your repertoire, you can help insulate your business against market fluctuations. You can also protect your business against changes in customer spending habits.

Why Now Is the Time to Start a Reseller Hosting Business

Launching a new business, or breaking into a new market can feel daunting at the best of times. However, many businesses and consumers are increasingly turning to the internet to help them complete many essential, everyday tasks.

For organizations and individuals, the world wide web (and by extension, web hosting) has never been more important. If you’re debating whether now is the right time to start your reseller hosting business, know that many people currently have a real need for web hosting.

Let’s dive into this topic in more detail! In the following section, we’ll look at why hosting is becoming increasingly important for businesses, organizations, and consumers.

Remote Working Is the New Normal

Throughout 2020, businesses have relied on remote working to remain operational. Now, both Google and Facebook have informed staff that they won’t be returning to the office until July 2021 at the earliest. Twitter and Microsoft have also given their workforce the option to work from home on a permanent basis. It doesn’t like the remote working revolution is going to end anytime soon!

With many people continuing to work from home, tools that enable remote working are in high demand. As an A2 Hosting reseller, you can create packages that specifically target businesses who need to manage a remote workforce. These packages can feature add-ons that are designed to help these businesses support their remote workers.

Every A2 Hosting reseller account comes with the Softaculous installer built-in. You can use this installer to create multiple Softaculous plans that each feature a different combination of add-ons. You can then assign each of these Softaculous plans to the appropriate hosting plan. For example, you might create a plan that provides the tools customers need to build an e-commerce store, promote their SEO marketing business – or support their remote workforce.

To create a Softaculous plan, log into your reseller account, then launch Web Host Manager (WHM). In the left-hand menu, select Softaculous > Instant Installs.

This will launch the Softaculous installer. In the left-hand menu, select Plans > Add Plan. You can then create a plan and assign it to a hosting package. You can also pick-and-choose which add-ons will be included in this plan.

Now, whenever a reseller customer logs into their hosting account and launches Softaculous, they’ll have access to a carefully-curated list of add-ons. The customer can then install these add-ons, and will have instant access to advanced remote working tools.

People Are Spending a Record Amount of Time Online

The ongoing global pandemic has completely changed how many of us spend our free time. Throughout 2020, many communities have experienced lockdowns, or other social restrictions. This has forced many people to move their social, leisure, and entertainment needs online.

The last few months have been challenging for many businesses and organizations that rely on face-to-face interaction. However, as more people turn to the internet for entertainment, many online businesses have experienced record growth.

Netflix added over ten million new paid subscribers during the second quarter of 2020. Video communications specialists Zoom said daily users spiked to 200 million in March. Unsurprisingly, as stores around the world closed, online shopping giant Amazon experienced record profits.

More people are spending more time online than ever before. Now, many businesses are eager to join them. Some businesses are looking to expand their existing online offerings and services. Other companies may even be branching out onto the internet for the first time.

Regardless of the specifics, any business that is looking to invest in their online presence will require web hosting. By launching your hosting reseller business now, you could find yourself with a large, and growing customer base.

Internet Shopping Is at an All Time High

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a profound shift in consumer behavior. Throughout 2020, physical stores around the globe were forced to close. Unsurprisingly, this caused online shopping to reach an all-time high.

For businesses who already have an e-commerce store, there’s a huge incentive to grow their online presence. This might mean investing in hosting that can handle a surge in demand. It might also involve adding more web pages, or even launching additional e-commerce sites.

For businesses who previously only operated in-person, there’s been a push to move from “brick-to-click.” By launching an online store, businesses can remain operational, even in these uncertain and changeable times. These businesses may even be able to grow their customer base by connecting with a large, and growing audience.

You can leverage this online shopping revolution. As a hosting provider, you’re perfectly-positioned to offer exactly the services new, and expanding e-commerce businesses need.

Online Learning Is Growing Exponentially

It’s a sad reality that the pandemic has resulted in job losses. For those without employment, the job landscape is volatile and unpredictable.

Faced with the challenging situation, many businesses are evolving at a rapid rate. This might involve replacing lost revenue streams with new products and services. Some businesses might be scaling up, in order to cope with increased demand. Others businesses may have overhauled their everyday operations, in an effort to remain operational during the pandemic.

Recently, Microsoft’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) spoke to Wall Street about the rapid rate of transformation. “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months,” said Satya Nadella. “From remote teamwork and learning, to sales and customer service, to critical cloud infrastructure and security – we are working alongside customers every day to help them adapt and stay open for business in a world of remote everything.”

In this rapidly-evolving market, many job seekers feel the need to acquire new skills. However, ‘upskilling’ during a pandemic isn’t easy. Many traditional educational institutes are grappling with the realities of offering an in-classroom experience amidst a global pandemic. Increasingly, people are turning to online learning.

Online course provider Udemy reported a 425 percent increase in enrolments following the introduction of social restrictions. Udemy also reported a 55 percent increase in course creation.

All online education and training providers require web hosting. With a large, and growing interest in e-learning, this could prove a lucrative niche for your hosting reseller business.

How to Choose the Right Hosting Provider for Your Reseller Hosting Business

As a hosting reseller, your services are completely dictated by your hosting provider. Get this step right, and you’re off to the best possible start. Get it wrong, and you’re putting your business at a huge disadvantage.

So, here are six tips to help you choose the right web hosting provider for you!

1. Do They Have a Good Reputation?

You should research what customers are saying about any potential hosting provider. Customer testimonials, case studies, and feedback posted on the provider’s website is a good place to start, but it’s always going to be biased.

To get the bigger picture, you should check platforms that aren’t under the hosting provider’s control. This includes third-party review sites such as TrustPilot.

You should also boot up your favorite search engine, and search for the hosting provider’s name. This will often reveal locations where people are discussing this provider, such as third-party forums, and blogs.

2. Do They Prioritize Performance?

Studies have shown that 40 percent of customers abandon a website that takes longer than three seconds to load. This can affect key performance metrics, including bounce and conversion rates.

It’s impossible to determine exactly how search engines such as Google determine your website’s ranking. However, performance does appear to be a ranking factor.

To help your customers drive conversions and rank highly in search engine results, you should opt for a hosting provider that prioritizes performance. At A2 Hosting, our Turbo Serves are fine-tuned for performance. These servers can deliver up to 20x faster page loads compared to competing reseller hosting solutions.

3. Do They Offer 99.9 Percent Guaranteed Uptime?

Uptime is the amount of time the provider’s servers have been up and running, and is typically expressed as a percentage. Uptime is always important, but it’s crucial for running a successful hosting reseller business. If your hosting provider’s servers go down, it’ll take all your customers’ websites down with it.

For your customers, downtime means everything from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) penalties, missed sales, and loss of revenue. According to Gartner, unscheduled downtime can cost a company as much as $5,600 per minute.

If the customer’s website is down when Google tries to crawl their site, Google will be met by a 500 internal error. A study by SEO specialists Moz found that intermittent 500 internal server errors can cause tracked keywords to drop. Your customers may subsequently see their site plummet in the search results, after adopting you as their hosting provider.

Opt for a provider with unreliable uptime rates, and you’re going to wind up with very unhappy customers. When choosing a hosting provider, you should look for a high uptime percentage, and ideally an uptime guarantee.

4. Do They Have White Labelling Options?

Some customers have a negative impression of resellers. There’s the misconception that customers can get a better experience, by going directly to the “source.” Many customers also believe that reseller hosting is more expensive, as both the original provider and reseller are earning a profit.

White labelling can help you avoid these negative misconceptions. You should always look for a reseller that provides white labelling functionality.

At A2 Hosting, we give our resellers free rein to rebrand our products. This includes customizing your customers’ cPanel accounts, your nameservers, and your billing software. You can access these customization settings, by logging into your reseller WHM account and then selecting Customization.

You can also restyle the cPanel User Interface. There’s lots of cPanel style customizations available. Alternatively, you could create your own, bespoke style and then upload it to WHM.

5. Do They Offer 24/7 Customer Service?

There may be customer queries, complaints, and issues that you can resolve entirely in-house. However, occasionally you may need to defer to your hosting provider. Perhaps the customer is requesting an upgrade that requires you to liaise with your hosting provider. Alternatively, if a customer’s website goes down, then you’ll need to alert your hosting provider about this problem immediately, so they can resolve it as quickly as possible.

When you’re relaying queries between your customers and provider, it’s easy for delays to spiral out of control. To minimize these delays, your chosen provider should offer 24/7 customer support.

Ideally, your chosen provider should also be contactable via multiple channels. You can then choose the method that promises the quickest resolution. Sometimes, this will mean filing a support ticket, contacting live chat, or finding the answers yourself, by consulting resources such as the provider’s knowledge base.

6. Do They Provide WebHost Manager (WHM)?

We’ve mentioned it a few times already, but WHM deserves its own section. This is an essential tool for managing any reseller hosting business.

Using WHM, you can perform tasks such as creating your initial hosting packages, and creating, deleting, and suspending customer accounts. You can also use WHM to monitor your client accounts, right down to the resources they’re using.

Since it’s such an integral part of running a successful reseller hosting business, we’d recommend opting for a hosting provider that offers WHM as standard. If you opt for A2 Hosting, WHM comes built into your account.

How to Launch Your Hosting Business

Choosing the right provider is essential for getting your business off to the best possible start. However, there’s still lots more work to do!

Firstly, you’ll need to create your hosting packages. This process can vary, but by opting for a provider that has WHM built-in, you can make this process much easier. Simply log into the WHM console and select Add a Package. You can then specify the resources that you want to include in this hosting package.

Once you have your packages, you’ll need to plan your support system. Some customers may prefer to find answers for themselves, rather than contacting you directly. For these customers, you should provide self-help support.

Your self-help resources might include a knowledge base or wiki website, which you can create using plugins such as Encyclopedia. You can also provide technical documentation, using the Echo Knowledge Base plugin.

For more complex queries, customers may prefer to submit a support ticket. By implementing a ticketing system, your customers will have the option to submit detailed reports. They can also provide supplementary materials such as screenshots, which illustrate the problem they’re experiencing.

You can create a complete ticketing system, using a plugin such as Awesome Support. If you’d prefer a premium plugin, Support Ticket Management System will automatically assign a customer service agent to each new ticket. This ensures customer queries are resolved as quickly as possible.

You’ll also need to provide a Terms of Service, as this will help protect your reseller hosting business against legal action. You can create these legal documents using a tool such as TermsFeed, or the WP AutoTerms plugin.

Conclusion

The current situation is challenging. However, there are still opportunities to launch a successful reseller hosting business.

In this post, we explored how COVID-19 has created an increased need for web hosting, in several key areas. This includes businesses that require remote working tools, online learning, and e-commerce. By specifically targeting these demographics, you should be able to find an eager audience for your hosting services.

Even if you target one of these growth areas, your choice of hosting provider can still make or break your business. To give your new business venture the best possible chance of success, you should opt for a hosting provider that prioritizes performance, offers 24/7 customer support, and has an uptime guarantee.

Image credits: Unsplash.

The post How to Start a Hosting Business and Join the Remote Working Revolution appeared first on The A2 Posting.

If you’re going to earn money from reseller hosting, you need to get ahead of the competition. This means offering the right services to the correct customers, with strong branding and a consistent marketing message.

In this article, we’ll cover all of these points. If you’ve been debating whether to start your own reseller hosting business, we have a ten-step plan to turn reseller hosting into a profitable online venture. Let’s get started!

A Brief Overview of Reseller Hosting

As a hosting reseller, you’ll purchase a hosting package from an established hosting provider. You’ll then divide these resources into smaller hosting packages, and sell them to your customers for a profit.

As a business, it’s a bad idea to depend on a single revenue stream. By adding hosting services to your repertoire, you can diversify your income and protect your business against fluctuations in the market. After all, just because your flagship product is in high demand now, doesn’t mean it’ll be flying off the shelves forever.

In today’s market, it’s difficult to think of an organization that doesn’t need a website. If you have an existing customer base, you already have an audience for your hosting services. In this way, reseller hosting can help you maximize your revenue without the added expense of acquiring new customers.

As a reseller, you can generate additional income while also eliminating the upfront costs typically associated with launching a new business venture. This includes purchasing servers and software licenses, and configuring your own network. It also removes many of the ongoing costs, including hiring staff to manage your hosting infrastructure, and repairing broken hardware.

Reseller hosting can be effective for building long-term relationships with your existing customers. Since it’s a subscription-based service, hosting can transform one-off or occasional purchases into loyal, repeat customers. In the best case scenario, reseller hosting will provide your business with a reliable, recurring revenue stream that lasts for years.

How to Make Money With Reseller Hosting (10 Ways)

You now know the answer to the question: What is reseller hosting? Next, let’s find out how you can turn reseller hosting into a lucrative sideline, or even an entirely new business venture. Here are ten tips for making money with reseller hosting.

1. Find Your Relevant Niche

Becoming a successful hosting reseller isn’t about competing with the big hosting providers. These established companies are often in a position to provide highly competitive pricing. They also have the funds to target a large, diverse customer base.

Many successful hosting resellers target a niche audience. By focusing on a specific audience, you can create services, features, and marketing that speaks to the deep needs of your chosen niche.

As such, your potential revenue may be smaller as a niche hosting provider. However, you’re not trying to compete with the big hosting companies. This means your costs should be lower – which is great news for your profit margins.

When deciding who to target, it’s important to find a niche that’s large enough to sustain your business. Here, it may help to use a tool such as Google Trends. Using Trends, you can gauge how many people are searching for keywords related to your potential customer base.

You should also pay attention to the areas where relevant searches are originating. You may be able to increase your appeal, by adding a local slant. For example, if a large number of relevant searches originate from the Florida area, you can incorporate this location into your branding.

2. Plan for Future Expansion

Targeting a niche audience can help you reduce costs, while improving the customer experience. However, if you get too specific, you’ll limit your future growth opportunities.

You may have already chosen your niche. However, before committing to this niche it’s smart to consider future expansion opportunities. One solution is to transition into new niches as your business grows. This might involve expanding into related industries, or related locations.

For example, your business might target local restaurants that require web hosting. This is great for positioning yourself as an expert in the local hospitality industry. However, eventually you may struggle to find new customers who fit this very specific demographic.

In this scenario, you might expand your geographical reach to include restaurants in neighboring cities and states. Alternatively, you might target other segments of the hospitality industry, such as local hotels, gyms, and theaters. When identifying expansion opportunities, it may help to refer to Google Trends.

By planning your businesses’ future now, you can ensure you’re targeting a niche that has growth potential. If you need to adjust your niche, it’ll be far easier to make these changes now, rather than waiting until after you’ve launched your business.

3. Position Yourself in the Market

Once you’ve found your niche, it’s time to identify what they want from a hosting provider. To help you understand the needs of your target audience, you should examine the providers already operating in your chosen niche.

Wherever possible, try to identify at least five competitors who are targeting your future customers. You can then examine the products and services they offer, and their price points.

These are your direct competitors. To stand out from the crowd, you can either offer hosting that’s more budget-friendly, or present yourself as the premium option. Of course, the latter might involve offering more resources, unique features, or a higher standard of customer service.

You should also gauge the size of your direct competitors, and the resources available to them. It’s possible that established providers may already be targeting your chosen niche. In this scenario, you may decide to further refine your target audience. For example, if there’s fierce competition for local e-commerce sites, you could narrow your focus to local affiliate sellers, wholesale retailers, or business-to-business sellers.

4. Choose the Right Hosting Provider

As a hosting reseller, your services are completely dictated by your hosting provider. Choose the right provider for your business, and you’re off to a strong start.

For the best results, you should find a hosting provider that closely matches the resources and features your customers need, without providing any unnecessary added extras. It may be tempting to opt for the provider offering the latest features, or uncapped resources such as bandwidth, memory, and disk space. However, this doesn’t represent good value for money if your customers don’t actually need these features and resources.

If you’re launching a new business, it can be difficult to predict what your target audience might need. Here, it can help to study your competitors. You can also opt for a provider that offers a range of bandwidths.

When choosing a provider, we’d also recommend paying attention to uptime. If your hosting provider’s servers go down, it’ll take all of your customers’ websites down with it. According to Gartner, unscheduled downtime can cost a company as much as $5,600 per minute.

A recent study by Moz also found that intermittent 500 internal server errors can cause issues with tracked keywords. Choose the wrong hosting provider, and your customers may see a drop in their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) after switching to your reseller business.

Wherever possible, we’d recommend opting for a provider that offers an uptime guarantee. You should also check the provider’s reputation amongst customers, including their rating on third party review sites such as TrustPilot.

When you have a network of customers relying on your hosting services, it’s also vital that you can contact your hosting provider 24/7. Ideally, your chosen hosting provider should be contactable via multiple channels, and provide self-help resources including a detailed knowledge base.

5. Create a Strong Brand

Your branding should reflect your chosen niche, and communicate what makes you unique. By creating a consistent message that runs through your entire branding, you can clearly communicate who you’re targeting, and what you have to offer.

By creating a clear, consistent brand now, it’ll be easier to market your business in the future. Strong branding can also help obscure your identity as a hosting reseller.

There are some misconceptions surrounding hosting resellers. Some customers believe they can get a better experience, by cutting out the middleman and purchasing directly from your provider. Other customers may believe that reseller hosting is more expensive, since both the provider and the reseller have to earn a profit.

At A2 Hosting, we provide extensive white labelling functionality. Our resellers can use these features to re-brand all of our A2 Hosting products and services.

Our white labelling options include customizing your customers’ cPanel accounts, your nameservers, and even your billing software. By taking advantage of these features, you can build a strong brand identity.

6. Launch Your Reseller Hosting Business

Once you’ve chosen your provider, the next step is creating your hosting packages. This process can vary, but at A2 Hosting all our reseller accounts include Web Host Manager (WHM) as standard.

WHM is an essential tool for managing any reseller hosting business. You can use WHM to perform important tasks, including creating client accounts, monitoring bandwidth usage – and creating your web hosting packages.

To create a package, log into the WHM console and select Add a Package. You can then specify the resources that you want to include in your hosting package.

You’ll also need a way to get your hosting packages in front of potential customers. If web hosting is a natural extension of your current services, you might add a landing page to your existing WordPress website. It’s possible to create landing pages using WordPress’ built-in features. However, you may find it easier to create beautifully-designed landing pages, using a dedicated page builder such as Elementor.

Another option is to launch an e-commerce store dedicated to your web hosting business. When it comes to selling products and services online, WooCommerce is a hugely popular option.

7. Excel at Customer Support

As a smaller hosting provider, your customer support has the potential to make or break your business. Provide a high level of customer support, and you’ll stand out from your direct competitors – and potentially even the major hosting providers.

Happy customers can be the best way to advertise your business. Today, it’s difficult to think of an organization that wouldn’t benefit from an online presence. In a world where everyone needs web hosting, every satisfied customer could potentially recommend your company to a huge number of people. To grow your business, it’s essential to provide a good customer experience.

The best customer support starts as soon as someone lands on your website. If they have questions then it should be easy for them to get answers. This might involve posing their questions via live chat, or researching the answers themselves using self-help resources such as FAQs.

Ideally, there should be multiple ways to contact your customer support. This might include telephone support, live chat, and a dedicated ticketing system.

Some customers may prefer to find answers for themselves. For these customers, you should provide self-help support. Popular self-help resources include a wiki, or a knowledge base. There are plenty of WordPress plugins that can help you build an effective knowledge base, including Echo Knowledge Base.

However, it’s important not to over-promise and under-deliver. It’s far better to offer a few support options and provide excellent customer service across these limited options, than to offer inconsistent support across all channels.

If you’re an A2 Hosting reseller, you can display information about how to contact customer support, as part of the customer’s cPanel account. This ensures your customers know exactly where to turn if they ever encounter an issue.

8. Connect With Your Ideal Customer

When you focus on a specific niche, you can market your business more effectively. Instead of marketing to everyone (which rarely works), you can concentrate on connecting with a specific target audience.

First, it’s a good idea to determine whether there are any platforms, websites, publications, or other channels that target your ideal customer. These niche channels will usually have a smaller audience, which helps reduce your marketing costs. There should also be a strong correlation between the channel’s audience and your ideal customer. This means the Return On Investment (ROI) for these marketing activities will likely be very high.

9. Do Your (Keyword) Research

Targeting a specific niche also makes it easier to market your business using tools such as Google AdWords. Keyword research can often reveal keywords that strongly relate to your business and target audience, but have very low competition. This can help get your adverts in front of your ideal customer, at minimal cost.

To create Google Ads, you’ll need to sign up for a Google Ads account. You can then access the Keyword Planner, and research keywords that are related to your business. You can also filter these keywords according to search volume and level of competition.

As a smaller or newer hosting provider, we recommend avoiding popular keywords, as these tend to be hard to rank for. Instead, it’s a smart move to focus on keywords that have a decent search volume and low competition.

There are many more factors that go into marketing your business. When creating a marketing plan, it may help to ethically ‘spy’ on your competitors. For example, you can review a competitor’s marketing activities, using tools such as SEMrush or SimilarWeb. This may involve gaining an insight into your competitors’ SEO strategies, and much more.

10. Monitor Your Site’s Performance With Google Analytics

At this point, your website is up and running and you’re actively promoting your hosting services. This is a great start, although to grow your business you’ll need to continuously monitor its performance.

By consulting key metrics, you can identify content, actions and campaigns that aren’t delivering your desired results. You can then remove these activities from your business plan. On a more positive note, you can identify the actions that are delivering the results you want. You can then focus more time and effort into these activities.

You can monitor your website’s performance, using analytics platforms. Using analytics data, you can make more informed decisions about the future of your marketing campaigns, and even the future of your business in general.

There’s lots of analytics platforms that you can use to monitor your website, but Google Analytics is one of the most popular. Platforms such as Google Analytics provide access to metrics that are critical to your businesses’ success, including bounce rate, traffic sources, and conversions.

The sheer amount of data in platforms such as Google Analytics, can be overwhelming at first. To start, we’d recommend focusing on your overall traffic, and time spent on site. These two metrics provide an insight into your ability to attract visitors, and your ability to keep them engaged with your content.

It’s also a good idea to monitor your primary sources of traffic. This can help you identify any third parties or platforms that are supplying you with a significant amount of traffic. You can then invest more time and effort into nurturing these sources.

Conclusion

Turning reseller hosting into a profitable business isn’t always easy. However, many people have already successfully added hosting to their offerings, and have even launched entire businesses dedicated to reselling hosting services.

The ten-step plan we’ve given you in this article is a great start for making money from your new business venture. Of course, identifying a niche audience with lots of room for future growth is one of the first steps to take. Also, building and marketing your brand as a respected hosting provider in your own right is key to success.

As a hosting reseller, the service you provide to your customers is ultimately dictated by your hosting provider. If you’re going to make money with reseller hosting, it’s important to choose the right provider. This will vary between businesses, but we recommend opting for a reseller provider that offers an uptime guarantee, prioritizes performance, and provides 24/7 customer support.

Image credits: Pexels.

How to Make Money With Reseller Hosting

Reseller hosting is a great way to earn extra revenue, but it’s also a competitive industry. These ten tips will help you get ahead of the competition!

The post How to Make Money With Reseller Hosting appeared first on The A2 Posting.