Whether you’ve been running your WooCommerce store for years or you’re just starting out, it’s important to understand the need for the best hosting possible. That may be different from your current hosting, so first let’s get into what it is.
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WP Mayor is hosted on Servebolt! Servebolt’s WooCommerce hosting seems to focus on speed and scalability. |
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Kinsta's server architecture utilizes Google Cloud Platform and their premium tier network, so it’s super fast. |
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In addition to the standard 24/7 support and global data centers you would expect, LiquidWeb provides monitoring for your store that is extremely valuable. |
What is WooCommmerce hosting?
Simply put, WooCommerce hosting is hosting that’s dedicated to supporting a WordPress eCommerce store that uses the WooCommerce plugin. You might be wondering how that’s different from hosting a non-eCommerce WordPress site.
There are some great hosts out there, and many of them have specific packages for hosting WordPress sites. Most offer automatic installs with database setup, regular backups, and their support teams are typically knowledgeable about WordPress.
While those hosting packages are perfect for a blog or more static WordPress sites, hosting a WooCommerce store can be a different game entirely. One of the biggest game-changers can be the difference between Shared hosting vs. Managed hosting.
Here, we’re going to focus on managed WooCommerce hosting. Let’s talk about the benefits.
The benefits of WooCommerce hosting over regular hosting
The fastest site speed possible
First, you should be aware of how your landing page load times can affect your sales. Did you know that 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load? That means that even a 1-second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions. (source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/loading-time)
For a typical WordPress site, most hosts are speedy enough. For a more dynamic eCommerce site, you need something more robust. Several factors affect the speed of your site. Location of data centers, availability of a CDN, and the number of PHP workers all play a role in how fast your site loads.
A dedicated WooCommerce host will have multiple options for data centers that are closer to your visitors. That will reduce latency and deliver your pages faster than if the data packets are traveling all the way around the world.
The option to host your content using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) also reduces the load on your server and speeds up your site load time.
You may have never heard of PHP workers. They aren’t actual people, they’re a background process. When we’re talking about WordPress, PHP workers are responsible for building pages and processing scheduled background tasks. As you can imagine, the more PHP Workers that are assigned to your site, the faster the PHP code is processed, and that can mean a speedier site for your visitors.
24/7 Support
While it should be assumed that any good host will provide support, there are significant differences. A typical WordPress hosting package will offer support through email or a knowledge base. That’s fine for most.
However, when you’re running a WooCommerce site, you’re going to need faster and better support. A WordPress eCommerce store has more moving parts, which means more things to set up and more things to break.
When searching for the best WooCommerce hosting, you’ll want to look for one that offers 24/7 support. That means you can chat online or on the phone when you need it, instead of waiting 24 hours or more for a response. That can make all the difference in making sure that your products are always available to shoppers.
Daily Backups
While there are several plugins to help you backup your WordPress site, a great WooCommerce host will offer their own backups as well. The best managed WooCommerce hosting will provide daily backups of your site, as well as longer backup retention times.
99.9% Uptime
When you’re running an eCommerce site, any downtime can kill a huge chunk of potential sales. Many hosts claim 99% server uptime, which is fine for a typical WordPress site. It may sound infinitesimal, but even the difference between 99.8% and 99.9% uptime can greatly affect your sales over time.
The best WooCommerce hosting providers
While you’re searching for the best host for your WordPress eCommerce store, you’ll want to make note of the features and benefits listed above. To help you get started, here is a list of some of the best WooCommerce hosting providers on the market.
Dedicated to WordPress users, WP Engine is one of the top choices for WooCommerce sites. Their standard features include what you would expect in a WooCommerce host, like 24/7 support, free automated migrations, daily backups, and free SSL and SSH.
Pricing
Pricing ranges from $30/mo – $291/mo from a Startup Plan to their Scale Plan.
In their basic Startup tier, they also provide an optimized store theme and a WooCommerce template. If you’re not into designing your site from scratch, you can also take advantage of their one-click store creation feature.
Features
Another great feature they offer is a one-click staging site. A staging site makes it easy to make significant updates or even do a complete overhaul without having any downtime on your existing site.
The higher pricing tiers all offer the standard features but differ in things like the number of sites included, monthly visitors, storage, and bandwidth.
Ease of Use
The WP Engine platform is designed around WordPress. That means that everything from onboarding and deploying your site to management and updating should feel very familiar.
Bluehost is another popular host for WordPress users. They offer separate solutions for a typical WordPress setup and more robust hosting for WooCommerce stores.
Pricing
Bluehost’s pricing is set up in varying payment arrangements of 1, 12, and 36 months. At the 36 month arrangement, the Standard Plan is $12.95/mo and the Premium plan is $24.95/mo.
Features
They will help you set up your WooCommerce store, or you can configure it yourself with a wealth of WooCommerce extensions and hundreds of free storefront designs.
You also get a free SSL certificate as well as one free domain name (if you don’t already have one). They provide 24/7 support, traffic analytics, and multiple caching layers, which “optimizes your site to load with maximum speed and efficiency.”
For backups, Bluehost offers a service called CodeGuard. It keeps a record of your website’s content like pictures, texts, videos, etc. You can easily restore your website to a previous point in time in the event of a crash or a mistake while editing. Free for the 1st year, CodeGuard backup will renew at the then-current price unless canceled.
Ease of Use
The Bluehost dashboard is fairly easy to navigate, even for non-techies. They also offer a Bluehost plugin that allows you to manage a lot of your hosting from within the dashboard, such as setting up a staging site.
Headquartered in Norway and The Netherlands, Servebolt was founded in 2014 and began serving internationally in 2017.
Pricing
Their site doesn’t list specific pricing for WooCommerce hosting, but all plans seem to cater to the need for robust eCommerce capability. Plans start at $99/mo to $1049/mo, the differences are mostly related to storage and the number of sites included.
Features
Servebolt’s WooCommerce hosting seems to focus on speed and scalability. They run proprietary, optimized versions of server software, such as Servebolt Linux, an optimized MariaDB, and their proprietary version of NGINX.
As expected, they provide daily backups and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Servebolt’s plans include unlimited Unlimited PHP workers, CPU, and bandwidth.
If sustainability and lowering your carbon footprint are important to you, Servebolt servers always run on renewable energy if possible.
Ease of Use
Servebolt offers a free trial as well as a free migration of your site to test out their platform.
Kinsta is another provider that’s dedicated to hosting WordPress sites. Their server architecture utilizes Google Cloud Platform and their premium tier network, so it’s super fast.
Pricing
At the lowest tier, you can purchase a Starter plan at $30/mo. The plans move up into Pro at $60/mo, then Business plans from $100 to $400 per month, and up through Enterprise plans from $600 – $1500/mo. Similar to other hosts, the tiers differ in the number of sites you can host, visits, and disk space.
All plans offer free SSL certificates, which by now you should come to expect with the better WooCommerce hosting providers.
Features
Here’s what they say about latency and speed: “Choose from 28 data centers worldwide to store your content close to your website visitors. Our CDN provider, Cloudflare, has a network that spans almost 200 cities in more than 100 countries. It’s available at no extra cost in your Kinsta plan.”
Kinsta provides server-level caching, daily backups, and regular malware scans.
Ease of Use
New users can request a live demo of the platform before signing up. They’ve also built their control panel specifically to make things easy for WordPress users.
While LiquidWeb is not exclusively a host for WordPress, they do offer impressive WooCommerce hosting packages. They place a lot of importance on customer service, calling their agents the ‘Most Helpful Humans in Hosting.”
Pricing
Pricing starts at $9.50/mo and goes up to $499.50/mo. The key differences are in bandwidth, storage, “orders per hour,” and dropshipping capability.
They also offer a free Astra Pro theme to get you started. Beaver Builder is included in the plans at and above $39.50 per month.
Features
In addition to the standard 24/7 support and global data centers you would expect, LiquidWeb provides monitoring for your store that seems extremely valuable. Built on their Nexcess Digital Commerce Cloud Platform, they will give you insights into plugin and sales performance, abandoned carts, and more than 20 site performance tests.
Ease of Use
LiquidWeb’s customer support is among the best in hosting. They offer a 59-second response guarantee by phone, chat, or their online help desk.
Choose the WooCommerce hosting that fits you best
Comparing dedicated WooCommerce hosting plans can seem like a daunting task unless you know what you’re looking for. As you review hosting providers, go through the checklist of benefits like 24/7 support, 99.9% uptime, and site speed. Think about which benefits are most important to you.
For example, let’s say you’re just starting up your store and you don’t have customers or even an audience yet. For you, there’s more margin for error in server uptime as you’re getting off the ground. You may want to place more importance on having help with design and configuration.
If you’re a newbie to WordPress or WooCommerce, you’ll likely want to find a host that provides stellar support. When you’re hunched over your keyboard at 2:00 AM wondering why your products won’t update, you’ll be glad you have them to help you.
If you plan to sell your products to a global market, then being able to choose from multiple data centers will be a high priority for gaining potential customers on the other side of the globe.
If you’re serious about eCommerce and you want to make your WooCommerce store as successful as it can be, choose a host that’s prepared to offer robust hosting and support. As your store scales, you’ll be glad you did.
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