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You can find the main differences between the hosted and self-hosted storefronts listed below, so you can decide which one you should use for your online store.

Hosted storefront:

  • Getting started - setup takes literally seconds as we set up everything automatically for you.
  • Programming/coding skills - little to none HTML knowledge is required.
  • Editing content and customization - limited number of pages and content. You can only modify the content of your hosted storefront pages through the ICDSoft Account Panel.
  • Maintenance - we take care of the website and server maintenance.
  • Uptime - expected 99.997% uptime according to the average uptime of our hosting servers since 2003.
  • Fee/s - the hosting and subdomain for the hosted storefront are completely free. If you want to use your own domain, you will need to cover the domain registration fee/s.

Self-hosted storefront:

  • Getting started - requires implementation of our widget or installation of our WordPress plugin on your existing website.
  • Programming/coding skills - programming/coding skills are recommended for the WordPress plugin and completely required for the widget.
  • Editing content and customization - you have full control over your storefront pages and content, so the only limit is your imagination.
  • Maintenance - you have to take care of your website maintenance, and we take care of the widget and WordPress plugin maintenance.
  • Uptime - depends on the stability of your website software and server uptime of your hosting provider. If your storefront is hosted on a shared/VPS account on our servers, you should expect 99.997% server uptime.
  • Fee/s - since you need to use your own domain/subdomain and hosting, your costs will depend on your domain/subdomain and hosting fee/s.