commerce is an abbreviation for “electronic commerce,” and it chiefly refers to the practice of conducting business over the Internet. The merchants who conduct ecommerce may be referred to as etailers or emerchants, and the place from which they do business is usually a website, rather than a storefront. Like all websites, these ecommerce sites need hosting — the servers, software, and functionality to run a business on the Internet. Since ecommerce websites have special needs that don’t arise for people with personal websites, the specialized designation of ecommerce hosting has arisen to specify those webhosting firms that specialize in providing the services that etailers need.
Because ecommerce involves businesses in a wide selection of industries and aiming to achieve a wide variety of purposes, ecommerce hosting generally provides far more
solutions than any single business needs. Ecommerce may be used to sell services, digital downloads, products that are shipped, licenses for use of online software, and an ever-growing number of other purposes. Some businesses combine a storefront with an online presence and need to integrate the two. Each of these particular ways of conducting business online has different ecommerce hosting needs.Despite the differences, there are some basic applications that nearly every emerchant requires. These include email, databases, a shopping cart program, FTP, and a payment system. Other applications that some sites might use and others might not include blogs, live chat applications, and a website builder.