February 2016

Bitcoin Accepted Managed Hosting

bitcoin-hosting

At T35 Hosting, we’ve been accepting bitcoin as a form of payment on all of our shared and dedicated hosting plans. However, we still get a lot of questions about bitcoin, so let’s take a deeper dive and help shed some light on this revolutionary form of currency.

What are Bitcoins?

A bitcoin is a type of digital currency that is created, used and held completely electronically. No single entity controls it and it can be used worldwide with no geographical or political borders. Bitcoin was the first type of what’s now known as cryptocurrency.

Who makes Bitcoins?

Bitcoins are “made” via process called mining. Unlike most worldwide currencies that are either tied to Gold reserves or controlled by the government, Bitcoin don’t have a central authority to regulate them. There are a total of 21 million bitcoin that can ever be mined, with over 15 million of them already mined. As more and more are mined, the mining process becomes more difficult, this regulating the currency. Coinbase, a digital wallet and exchange for Bitcoin has a great write up of current circulation and prices: Coinbase Charts.

Why accept Bitcoin?

As of 2016, almost 10% of Fortune 1000 companies now accept bitcoin including: Overstock.com, Dell, Expedia and much more. Accepting Bitcoin for our hosting plans allows our customers to pay us in whatever way is most convenient for them. It also facilitates international exchanges and allows clients outside of the U.S. to easily pay for hosting without incurring international transaction fees and other complications.

Where can I get Bitcoin?

With mining aside (since that is a very complicated process), the best way to get Bitcoin is to purchase and trade them on Coinbase. Clicking there from our site will get you $10 of free bitcoin after you buy $100.

What hosting plans can I buy with Bitcoin?

T35 Hosting accepts Bitcoin as payment for any and all of services we offer. This includes Managed Shared Hosting Plans, Dedicated Servers, and Domain Name Registration.

Magento vs. Volusion vs. WooCommerce vs. Demandware

We often get asked about which eCommerce platform is best. Although we often recommend Magento (and specialize in Magento Managed Hosting), each platform has it’s pros & cons. so let’s take a deeper dive and take a look.

First, let’s take a look at the eCommerce market place, comparing the platforms used by the top 1 million websites.

ecommerce-usage

As you can see, Magento continues to be the leading eCommerce provider (and has gained market share every year for the last few years). Being owned by eBay gives Magento tons of funding in developing updates. In fact, their current Magento 2.x is perhaps the biggest update to Magento since it was first released. Additionally, being open source makes it affordable (free for non-enterprise) and ensures that the code is not proprietary and easy to work with. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the pros and cons of the most popular platforms.

1. Magento

Open-source, owned by eBay. 14% market share. Just released a major update (Magento 2).

Pros

– Open-source (ie: free).
– Very popular: Tons of themes, plugins, addons, etc.
– Very customizable.

Cons

– Backend can be overwhelming for novice users.
– Requires a developer to do periodic updates, fix bugs.

2. Woocommerce

#1 WordPress addon for Ecommerce. 10% market share.

Pros

– Integrates with WordPress.
– Very easy to use.

Cons

– Limited addons/plguins.
– Somewhat customizable, but still limited.
– Not suitable for high traffic sites.

3. Volusion

15 years in business. 6% market share.

Pros

– Very easy to use.
– Doesn’t require separate hosting.

Cons

– Not customizable.
– Limited ability to change anything.
– Hosted by Volusion.
– On-going costs.

4. DemandWare

Enterprise-level Ecommerce. 1% market share.

Pros

– Enterprise-grade – meant for millions of transactions.
– Battle-tested by several fortune 500 companies.

Cons

– Limited plugins/addons.
– Requires a full-time developer to use & maintain.
– Very pricey.

Final Comparison

magentoVSwoocommerceVSvolusionVSdemandware

As you can see, Magento often winds up being the most flexible and cost effective choice. It’s for this reason we created a special managed shared hosting plan specifically optimized for Magento: Magento Shared Hosting.