Here s where you need to be careful. Many commerce-oriented hosting specialists will implement a single brand of commerce server software and attempt to customize it to fit each customer s needs. But for larger companies that need to consider special circumstances and massive amounts of legacy software, such an approach could be constricting. Find out as much as you can about the software your potential hosting service uses. If the company boasts that it can handle any kind of software brand to fit your situation, smile and ask to see examples of this in their customer base.
Electronic payment is another thorny issue.
Many businesses, both large and small, specialize in supporting both you and your outside partners with EDI services, but that s usually an added cost above and beyond hosting. For storefront commerce users, the main issue is credit-card payments. Some companies specialize in taking any kind of electronic payment from the customer and then dishing it back to the vendor in whatever format required. As you can see, the arguments for and against outside hosting are many and complicated. They prefer to keep things in-house.