Hosting is one of the essential elements for robust and stable e-commerce. Still, many web shops make hasty decisions when it comes to hosting and often opt for the cheapest solution. From a client perspective, a hosting plan should usually cost no more than €10.00 per month. We believe that choosing a hosting provider should be a well-considered decision. You take into account the goals of your webshop and the processes that take place on your webshop. You must also be willing to invest in hosting; after all, it is the Engine of your primary sales channel.
This blog post compares the best WooCommerce hosting providers and tells you what to consider when choosing.
Table of Contents
Why do you need a hosting provider?
A hosting provider offers server space and a database. The code of your eCommerce is put on the server, and your webshop data is stored in the database. Data includes the content of your webshops such as products, pages, blog posts, etc., but also what we mean by data such as orders, customer data, shipping information, and more. The combination is necessary to make your webshop work at all.
Often when you move a website from one hosting provider to another, you will start with the code and link the database. You will not recognize your website until the database is linked.
What influences the performance of your hosting provider?
There are several things to consider when choosing the best WooCommerce hosting providers. How many visitors does your eCommerce have? How many GB of data does your database have? How many external processes take place, and how often? How many internal processes take place, and how often?
For example, we have connected a webshop with the BigBuy WooCommerce plugin from Woosa. We have 1,000 visitors per month and have imported 15,000 products from BigBuy. These 15,000 products are regularly updated regarding stock level, prices, and other product information. Webhooks are processed every 15 minutes. Finally, the database has a size of 2GB.
We instinctively think of a small hosting plan. After all, you “only” have 1,000 visitors per month. However, we often forget the processes that take place in the background. The speed of updating products in bulk depends on your hosting plan (CPU processor and space in data storage). Every background process leaves traces in the form of logs, which take up the temporary hole in your database and on your server.
Types of website hosting
Let’s start by explaining the differences:
Shared hosting
A server that is made available from the hosting provider for multiple and different webshops. Different webshop can therefore influence the performance of your webshop with shared hosting.
VPS
VPS is short for Virtual Private Server. This means that you get your own digital server from the hosting provider, which only you and the hosting provider can influence. This not only gives you more security, but also more flexibility.
Dedicated Hosting
A significant benefit of dedicated hosting is that you don’t have to worry about other people’s websites which might be hogging your resources, which is very common with shared hosting and VPS.
When on a dedicated plan, it is common for providers to allow some customizations. You can make several changes, which can be helpful if you plan, for example, to run special software on the server.
Cloud Hosting (Cloud)
In essence, cloud hosting is similar to having a VPS and is an excellent alternative for anyone looking for a scalable option beyond the traditional.
Many hosts are switching from their traditional VPS systems to cloud-based systems because of the benefits they allow users, including easier maintenance and less work.
Colocation Hosting – Instead of keeping servers in-house in a private data center, you can choose to “allocate” your equipment by renting space at a colocation center. The center will provide your server’s power, bandwidth, IP address, and cooling systems. The space is rented in “racks” and “cabinets.”
Free Hosting
While you might think you’re getting free hosting, that’s not the case. With a free web hosting service, you are not technically creating your website but creating one or more pages on a website that a company owns. For example, WordPress allows you to create a free website or blog on the WordPress.com platform. However, you will find that your website is a subdomain of your domain.
If you have ambitions with your webshop, we will not advise you to go for shared hosting. It has too many dependencies on others and little flexibility to be set up especially for your webshop.
VPS, on the other hand, gives you the space to configure your server in such a way that it perfectly matches the requirements of your webshop. This results in a faster website, with better processors and computing power.
Now that you know all the hosting models, it’s time to discover the best WooCommerce hosting that provide this type of service because it’s no use knowing all this and ending up with a bad host, right?
The 5 Best WooCommerce hosting Providers
Okay, now that we have straightforward basics, let’s look at the best WooCommerce hosting providers.
1.Hoasted – best WooCommerce hosting
Hoasted is a Dutch hosting provider with a very high service level. They provide not only a hosting plan but also support and maintenance. This means that Hoasted proactively works on optimizing your server, database, and running processes.
- Fast and personal support
- Specialized in WordPress and WooCommerce
- Pro-active DNA
- Both Shared hosting and a VPS
Cost: from €12.99 per month for a shared hosting plan and €79.00 per month for your own WooCommerce VPS
Woosa has a collaboration with Hoasted, in which they put a copy of your webshop on one of their servers by means of a free benchmark. That way, you can immediately experience what Hoasted can do for your webshop. Interesting? Request the benchmark here.
2. Kinsta is the best hosting for WordPress eCommerce
Kinsta was founded in the United States but supported online stores worldwide. We particularly like Kinsta’s user-friendliness. They have developed their dashboard, in which you have access to ordinarily complicated tools to improve the performance of your webshop. Kinsta also takes care of having a live and staging website, which you can sync via their dashboard.
- Complex tools made simple
- Specialized in WordPress and WooCommerce
- Live and staging website
Cost: from $35.00 per month for 1 WordPress website
3. WP Engine
WP Engine was founded in the United Kingdom and had many similarities with Kinsta. They operate worldwide and only focus on WordPress and WooCommerce websites. That says a lot about a hosting provider if you ask us.
One of the most significant benefits of the WP Engine is the platform’s simplicity. You can easily create (new) WordPress websites in their environment, migrate, copy or set up a staging environment. WP Engine is therefore often used by agencies, web builders, and online marketing agencies.
- Complex tools made simple
- Specialized in WordPress and WooCommerce
- Live and staging website
Cost: from €27.00 per month for 1 WordPress website
4. Flywheel
Flywheel used to be a stand-alone hosting provider but was recently acquired by WP Engine. As a result, they provide the same hosting functionalities as you can expect from WP Engine under a different brand name.
Flywheel is also a hosting provider specialized in WordPress and WooCommerce websites.
- Complex tools made simple
- Specialized in WordPress and WooCommerce
- Live and staging website
Cost: from €27.00 per month for 1 WordPress website
5. SiteGround
SiteGround is an excellent alternative for anyone looking for one of the best hostings for international websites due to its exceptional quality, features, and support. The company offers stable, high-performance hosting in Google Cloud Platform data centers. Plans start at $2.99.
Other hosting providers
In addition to the hosting providers for WooCommerce mentioned above, there are many other hosting providers. The most popular ones mentioned in WordPress land are Bluehost and Dreamhost. However, we do not always have good experiences with these because they mainly offer “shared hosting plans.”
We are also not a big fan of these hosting providers for WordPress because they often only support the basic functionality of WordPress. Looking at our plugins for WooCommerce and dropshipping, we need advanced functionalities. For example: include scheduled actions, cron jobs, webhooks, and the WooCommerce REST API. These functionalities are often not sufficiently supported in a standard (shared) hosting plan and, in some cases, not on a VPS.
These advanced functionalities stuck processes in your WordPress website and probably frustrated you as an entrepreneur.
Conclusion
Are you planning to set up a WooCommerce webshop that has to realize revenue and grow every month? Then invest in the best WooCommerce hosting provider and do not save money on this. Hosting is the Engine of your WordPress website, and you should carefully select it according to your goals and needs.
Hosting is one of the essential elements for a well-functioning WordPress or WooCommerce website.
Check out our awesome WooCommerce plugins >>>
