Technological advancements do not stop for anyone⁠— it is whether you go with the flow or you can go behind the line. As a business owner, you have to get up and grind with the gears of the future. You may have noticed the trend of online businesses and online retailers, mostly within the fashion industry. Some corporations have made their name on the e-commerce scene, companies such as Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, Wish, etc. But you do not have to become a corporate giant before jumping onto the e-commerce scene, you can start building your way up right now. All you need is a couple of articles on how to start turning your business into an online store.

First, you will need to be educated on how e-commerce works. It is basically just doing shopping over the internet; buying, selling, and doing transactions are all part of it. A big part of the industry is owning a website. Now, owning a website is not as daunting as it sounds like, you just need a good web hosting provider, they can help you set up your brand new online store. If their services are a good fit for your needs, you can confide in them about how you want your website set up, what domain name you may want to use, all things like that. So once you have that settled, it is about time to choose a server.

There are two kinds of servers: in-house or on-premise and on-cloud or cloud-based. An in-house server is the one where you have a physical server to keep and maintain on hand, meanwhile, an on-cloud server is where you have all the good things of an on-premise server minus the actual, physical thing. You can read a more in-depth comparison of the two here. All things considered, most businesses nowadays rely on cloud-based servers. Since a cloud-based server is automated by your hosting provider and not to mention, very accessible anytime, anywhere, and from any device, you would not have to worry about hiring an IT team to maintain and make sure that your server is up and running. Business owners are all about cost-effectivity, accessibility, and resilience, and cloud servers are all about that.

Cloud-based servers are great for small business because running and maintaining an on-premise server can hurt your budget. From the cost of the physical server to software licenses, you are better off investing your hard-earned money into upgrading your website. As a small business owner, you have to keep in mind these three things:

• ACCESSIBILITY
• COST-EFFECTIVITY
• FLEXIBILITY

These three things will make sure that you have got the best cloud-based server for your buck.

ACCESSIBILITY. As mentioned above, accessibility is an important factor of running an online business. You have to tend to your site even if you are away from your desk. A cloud-based server can help you with that since you can access your data and information as long as you have a stable and secure internet connection and a compatible gadget. Also, a ‘round-the-clock support team is important because server or website troubles do not sleep like us humans. A good support team should have a fast response time, knowledgeable about the services they offer, great at troubleshooting, and reachable at any given moment.

COST-EFFECTIVITY. Maintaining a physical server can be expensive. You would have to dedicate a room for it to be properly stored, hire an onsite IT technician, and still think about additional fees for licenses. With a cloud-based server from ServerHub, you can eliminate all of these. We will take care of everything, from the maintenance of your server to renewing your software licenses, we can handle it all. That means you can focus more on running your business since your provider will take care of your server, they will be in charge of minimizing the downtime that you may experience and they will be the ones who will continuously upgrade your plans whenever you see fit. Less backroom maintenance means there’s more time for you to upkeep the side of the business that customers see.

FLEXIBILITY. With your data and information all up in the cloud protected by your provider, running a business has never been a breeze. You can expand your business domestically or internationally if your provider offers international hosting and ServerHub offers international and local hosting with seven locations throughout the US and two locations abroad in Germany and the Netherlands, you can now expand into new territories smoothly. Even if you are running your physical store in the US, you can access your online site across Europe.

As a business owner with a working site running under a cloud-based server, you will have to power to work from the comfort of your own home. This will minimize the transportation cost (e.g commuting, gas money) of you going to the location on which you have your in-house server. As mentioned before, your chosen provider will be the ones who will take care of everything server related, taking off those kinds of responsibilities of your hands. Still worried about the integrity of the cloud? Ask your provider to walk you through their process of securing your site’s data. Make sure to regularly communicate with your provider to ensure the quality of the services you are getting and if they are truly catered to the needs of your business.