# Hosting Cost for online store Please Help



## Sirvivhor (Dec 19, 2009)

Can someone please tell me what a reasonable monthly fee would be for hosting my website, which will be an online clothing store? I've been quoted $85 a month, which seems high! I was told that hosting a website store is much different than hosting one that is purely informational. I would appreciate ALL responses as soon as possible - I need to make a decision. THANKS!!


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## btw-nc (Jan 20, 2010)

Wow. I use a company that I have been with for many years now and their basic hosting plan runs about $10/mo. The main things you have to be concerned with, imo, are customer service, bandwidth limits, and disk space limits.

I steer clear of the companies that advertise $3/mo. plans and unlimited bandwith. There's no such thing as "unlimited" and advertising it as such is misleading from the get-go.


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## aztshirtfan (Feb 18, 2010)

I'm pretty happy with Hostgator's Business Package.


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## pdpatch (Aug 30, 2009)

It all depends on what you get in the hosting plan, for the most part for $85 a month now days you should get the max features and option with some serious application support or even managing you store.

Generally any where from $9.00 to about $25.00 is the range for most decent host. 

Tom


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## kungfukitty_oz (Feb 18, 2010)

Hey I have been using www.HostingReborn.com for a few months now, and they only charge for what you use, which has been about 40pence for 2 blogs over 5 months!! They are pretty cheap and their service is awesome.


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## Sirvivhor (Dec 19, 2009)

Thanks everyone. One last question: is it typical to have someone create your website and then have a different company be the host?


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## btw-nc (Jan 20, 2010)

Sirvivhor said:


> Thanks everyone. One last question: is it typical to have someone create your website and then have a different company be the host?


It is unless you want to pay the designer's markup. You can always find out the designer's recommended host first, then purchase the hosting yourself and give them access.

If it is a massive design company, they might maintain their own servers, but most likely they just resell someone else's space and mark up the price.


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## aztshirtfan (Feb 18, 2010)

Sirvivhor said:


> Thanks everyone. One last question: is it typical to have someone create your website and then have a different company be the host?


Most web-hosting sites have templates you can buy. There are many websites that sell website templates that you can download. You will first need to decide what type of shopping cart you want. I am using Zencart and am happy with it, great support and very good users forum. Oscommerce is another popular cart. My recommendation is visit both forums and read as much as you can before making a decision.

If you are comfortable with computer applications you can download Zencart for free and build your own shopping cart website as I did. Be prepared to spend many hours!

You will pay hundreds to thousands of dollars for someone to build a site for you.

Of course you could purchase a Zencart/Oscommerce template for around $145, Hostgator to host your site for $15/month, and setup a Paypal account and you're in business!

Good luck!

Paul


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## Sirvivhor (Dec 19, 2009)

Thank you. I work full time and I'm trying to get this business off the ground while doing that so, I really don't have the time to spend trying to figure out how to build my website. I definitely need someone who knows what they are doing. The company I have contacted wants to charge $2,800.00 and then $85 per month for hosting. I think the $2,800 is pretty high already so, I don't want to pay that much a month for hosting if I don't have to. It's always harder when you don't know how to do something yourself but, I really don't have time to try to learn something like this and build it myself. I really need experts that know what they are doing so that any customers I get will have an easy time. Thanks everyone for the helpful info, as always!


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## redsuperhawk (Feb 19, 2010)

$2800 definitely sounds a bit high if it's just a simple t-shirt selling website. I typically charge $1500 - $2000 for the simple e-com sites I've done. $85 / month is completely out of line if you're just starting out.

If you had a huge site, and it was demanding a lot of server resources and required special server setups, ok. But overall the $10 - $20/month range is all you'll need to begin.

And depending on payment processing you'll also need an SSL key for secure checkout. Those usually run about $75/year on top of the hosting price unless otherwise noted on the hosting package specs. You can bypass that though if you used paypal's checkout process.

Hope this helps,
Jeff


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## tone1tees (Dec 24, 2009)

Sirvivhor said:


> Can someone please tell me what a reasonable monthly fee would be for hosting my website, which will be an online clothing store? I've been quoted $85 a month, which seems high! I was told that hosting a website store is much different than hosting one that is purely informational. I would appreciate ALL responses as soon as possible - I need to make a decision. THANKS!!


 i am jus starting out to and i jus got my site,threw pagebuzz.com $10.00 a month,they do all the hosting more then enuff( banwith) and they have the shoping cart already hooked up.save me alot of time now i can focuse on jus getting, the site looking good, i figuer i'll get some one to tweek it and jazz it up abit, that should be cheaper then someone design a hole site for me.i hope this help


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## Sirvivhor (Dec 19, 2009)

Hi Jeff: thank you for that information. I don't exactly know what kind of website would be defined as "simple" and what wouldn't. It is my intention to sell t-shirts for infants, toddlers, youth and women, onsies, cups and a couple things for dogs. I don't know if that is considered simple. It's difficult when you don't know how to do something yourself - like working on a car; if a mechanic tells me it is going to cost a certain amount I'm sort of at his mercy because I know nothing about what he would be doing. In any event, I appreciate your input and I definitely thought the hosting fee seemed high from everything I've read on this site.


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## Sirvivhor (Dec 19, 2009)

Thank you tone; I will take a look!!


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## redsuperhawk (Feb 19, 2010)

I'd say a t-shirt site in general is going to be simple...

You'll basically have a few categories (men, women, youth, baby, dogs). Then product in those categories. Product will have different sizes and/or colors.

Totally simple.

Jeff


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