E-commerce - ecommerce or electronic commerce, means doing transactions on Internet. E-commerce business includes retail, wholesale, banking, auctions, hotel booking, airline booking, etc.

Ecommerce normally needs an virtual storefronts, which are offered by a variety of hosting services and large Internet presences, like eBay and Yahoo!. These storefronts include functionalities like shopping carts, inventory management, customer management, and the ability to accept a variety of payment options including secure credit card transactions or third-party payment gateways, like paypal.

E-commerce can reduce the employee overhead, and the yearly fee for an e-commerce website is so small compared to rent a store.

If customer's personal information need to be collected, the web site owner needs to set up secure solutions in his site, like secure http communication, and some other safety and security procedures to protect customers' information from stealing.

Currently, most web hosting providers provide free shopping cart solutions, like OS Commerce, Zen Cart, Cube Cart, etc.