WordPress and WooCommerce is a match made in heaven, that allow you to build the most capable and complex eCommerce stores that turn conversion rates and sell. However, to benefits from all the advantageous assess that the deadly combination provides you should start on the right foot.
That is, you will need a powerful hosting provider that will meet at the criteria requirements to fulfill its respective tasks. No one wants a slow online store, while users are diving through your amazing products, you best be assured to provide them with top-notch performance. And that will be affected largely by the hosting provider you choose.
By all means, another important factor can impact the decision like the budget you are on, that is why in this article we will present to you the best WooCommerce hosting providers that will make creating your online store a piece of candy.
When choosing WooCommerce hosting that is dedicated to the platform, it will ease the process and will allow you to concentrate on what’s important, that is building the best marketing strategy and put on a display of your finest products.
With all the resources at hand that WooCommerce dedicated hosting will provide, you will be able to create a powerhouse of online store that sells on any day.
WooCommerce Hosting Requirements
The beauty of WooCommerce is that it will allow you to sell anything, any business idea that you might have can coalesce into this wondrous open-source plugin. The variety of products sold in WooCommerce will range from physical to digital and downloadable goods.
Although flexible, WooCommerce will demand certain requirements be met for it to function properly. While most web hosting providers will meet the minimum requirements, dedicated WordPress hosting providers shall meet all the requirements.
The minimum requirements for building WooCommerce stores will require
- PHP version to be 7 or greater.
- MySQL version to be 5.6 or greater OR MariaDB version 10.0 or greater.
- The WordPress memory limit of 128 MB or greater.
- HTTPS support.
- WooCommerce 2.6 requires WordPress 4.4+.
Note that if you are running on a PHP version less than 7.2+ and MySQL version less than 5.6, might expose your website to security vulnerabilities, due to the fact that they no longer receive active support and therefore no longer maintained.
Additional requirements for effectively running your online store in WooCommerce include
- CURL support for PayPal IPN.
- SSL certificate for installing direct payment gateways.
- SOAP support for extensions if you use them.
- Multibyte String support for non-English stores.
- Apache access with mod_rewrite to enable WordPress permalinks or the Nginx or IIS equivalent.
In the list below we will include the top sterling WooCommerce hosting providers that are capable of handling additional featured designed for eCommerce stores.
WooCommerce Hosting vs WordPress Generic Hosting
As we perpetually emphasized, choosing the right hosting provider will result in success for your WooCommerce website and will be the most important decision you make for your online store. Choose wisely.
While it is possible to build your WooCommerce on a shared hosting plan, that might not be necessarily the brightest choice. This might be due to the reasons we mentioned above and the requirements that are needed to run an efficient e-store.
You will need more resources at hand like an SSL certificate, maintenance, setup, security for you, and a WooCommerce-centric support platform. When opting for dedicated WooCommerce hosting plans, you will benefit from all of the above and even more.
Each hosting provider will bring something to the table, that is why in this article we will lay down all the features that distinguish one from the other and help you make an intelligently articulated choice for you, with a comprehensive comparison guide.
The only downside relating to using a dedicated WooCommerce hosting provider is the price, as they are slightly above the average price of shared WordPress hosting plans. Now that you know the advantages and disadvantages of WooCommerce hosting, we shall reveal the best solutions.
Ten of the Best WooCommerce Hosting Providers Compared
When running a high profile WooCommerce online shop there is so much that your hosting provider should bring to the table. To be profiled as a competent WooCommerce hosting provider, then one must obtain a server that is capable and powerful enough to deliver a seamless user experience even when there is a “rush hour” like visitor evolvement.
For this article, we will show and compare all the essential features each one provides, among other things including how intuitive they are and at what price they come.
SiteGround is one of the most eminent all-around WordPress hosting provider that seems to value loading speed. They provide a full solution to building and launching your website with the premium features and excellent support.
SiteGround will come packed with some advanced features et right-out-the-box including excellent support and assistance, server location for you to select your preferred server between America, Asia, Australia and Europe, unlimited traffic, excellent uptime and much more.
Since this is a WooCommerce hosting kind of article we will focus more on the features that will make your online store sellings fly over the roof.
WooCommerce-centric Features
SiteGround offers its users to choose from various WooCommerce hosting plans, with WooCommerce hosting being on the list. They provide all the same features as the basic shared plan but comes packed with some additional WooCommerce oriented features such as:
- It includes a free Let’s Encrypt Standard and Wildcard SSL certificate to keep your website secure and maintain your user’s information safe.
- SiteGround will automatically save daily automated backups and restore them.
- WooCommerce set up out of the box, also including the StoreFront Theme.
- They will provide a free Content Delivery Network service to speed up your load time for your visitors from different geographical locations.
- Enabling of NGINX Direct Delivery that boosts the site’s speed
- The GoGeek plan, a.k.a the most expensive plan will provide a high tier of resources, like white label clients, free backup restores, or create additional users that have access to the different websites you manage.
What’s more, their Customer Support is one made of professionals that are fast, multi-skilled, reliable, and helpful. And if you fear of migrating from other platforms, you can easily move to WooCommerce using their free WordPress Migrator plugin.
Intuitive Interface and Ease of Use
SiteGround offers a simple and easy way out to set up your WooCommerce store. They provide a click-and-install Getting Started Wizard that will automatically set your WordPress instances alongside with the WooCommerce plugin and the Storefront theme.
Your online store will e up and running in front of your eyes, no coding knowledge or work required. SiteGround’s backend will not disappoint either. The administrator can customize their visual interface to meet their needs.
Pricing
The SiteGround WooCommerce hosting will come in three plans starting with the StartUp plan for $6.99 per month, GrowBig plan that’s perfect for building multiple websites like serial entrepreneurs and comes for $9.99 per month.
The last and most exclusive plan is the GoGeek plan hat’s made for large websites and includes all the most top-notch features for a price of $14.99 per month.
Bluehost is another hosting provider on our list that is officially recommended by WordPress, while it is the perfect choice for creating blog websites, they also offer dedicated WooCommerce hosting plans that are affordable and include amazing features for your online store.
In a nutshell, Bluehost plans will offer excellent customer support, unmetered bandwidth, a free domain for the first year, improved security, backups, and a free SSL certificate.
Bluehost offers a wide variety of WooCommerce hosting plans covering from beginners to larger businesses, with 24/7 customer support and affordable pricing, especially for those who are just starting with WordPress and all.
WooCommerce-centric Features
Since Bluehost comes with a dedicated plan for WooCommerce, you will be able to benefit from all the amazing dedicated features exclusively for eCommerce stores.
- Domain Privacy + Protection
- Free SSL Certificate to provide security for all your stored user’s information.
- WooCommerce and StoreFront Theme installed out of the box
- A dedicated IP address to accept secure payments
- Unmetered bandwidth to grow your traffic without quenching your website.
More included within all their plans Bluehost will provide you with a free 2-hour set up call with a WooCommerce expert to get your online store up and running and list your local business online to quickly connect with customers in your area.
Intuitive Interface and Ease of Use
If you are worried about the rudiments of installing WordPress and WooCommerce and setting up your website, then you shall worry no more since Bluehost will provide pre-installation of both of these tools for you, all you have to do is click a few buttons and you will be done.
Alongside the WordPress and WooCommerce installation, Bluehost provides the set up of the FrontStore theme as well. You can get a head start and add your products in no time.
Furthermore, this WooCommerce hosting provider comes with its custom hosting dashboard from where you can manage your updates and performance. And for more advanced tweaks and configuration you will have access to the cPanel.
Pricing
Now that you have obtained insightful knowledge on the best features of Bluehost, let us introduce you to their three hosting plans. The Starter plan comes at €6.24 per month for only one online store.
The Plus plan comes at €8.04 per month and includes unlimited online stores and SSD Storage. And the final plan is the Pro plan that comes at €11.63 per month and offer an extensive set of feature for your online store.
Amazon Web Service is one powerful hosting provider that will overpower your website with the capability and competence to run a multi-complex online store that doesn’t flinch even when your website is overflowing from visitors.
Amazon Web Service is known as an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or cloud computing services company. As the name suggests, it is a subsidiary service of Amazon, the market leader of online stores. And what’s better than the master’s tools.
AWS does far more than the regular shared hosting companies, they also provide other services with cloud hosting being one of them. If you fancy sharing the same host as Netflix or other huge enterprises then AWS s your choice.
Although AWS will offer the most encompassing set of features, that can get a little pricey. Especially for those who are just starting out.
WooCommerce-centric Features
Amazon Web Service will provide the features that will help you build sophisticated online stored with flexibility and adaptability. These features include:
- SSL certificate, which is the basics of storing your users’ sensitive information
- Automated backups, but as we will explain in a later section, you will need to first configure its settings.
- Scalable, flexible, and cloud-native NFS file system for use with AWS Cloud services and on-premises resources
- Huge Infrastructure covering 64 zones in 21 regions, with 169 points of presence, thus building the largest worldwide network
- Rock-solid uptime service-level that offers the lowest downtime of any other cloud hosting providers. Take our words for it, as we use AWS on our servers.
- AWS will include scalable resources, meaning in cases of a sudden spike in traffic or data, your hosting will automatically react.
AWS compounds a large marketplace where you can buy software, machine learning applications, Internet of Things (IoT), virtual reality (VR) tools, and more. The entire infrastructure of the AWS can be a little overwhelming for beginners, but once you get the hang of it, your WooCommerce store will thank you.
Intuitive Interface and Ease of Use
All in all, AWS is designed for developers, they provide preconfigured settings for ease of use or that can be configured by the customer, however, it isn’t as simple as other hosting providers listed on this article.
You will need to configure the settings, and do most of the work yourself, like automated backups. The interface is not exactly user-friendly and can be a bit scary for most novices, but they do offer an extensive set of documentation to help you along the way.
Pricing
AWS deploys a unique payment pay-as-you-go system that allows you to easily adapt to changing business needs without taking any budget commitments. With On-Demand instances, you pay for computing capacity by the hour or the second depending on which instances you run.
They provide a calculator that allows you to estimate the cost savings when using AWS. The calculators also give you the option to modify assumptions that best meet your business needs. A micro instance starts from 90$ a year, but it all depends on the speed and space of the instance.
We will move on with another top tier WordPress Managed WooCommerce Hosting that holds a respectable reputation for its capabilities and the advanced features it provides. Although not cheap, they offer value and competence.
WP Engine users will take advantage of the excellent features they provide such as automated security updates and backups, automatic caching as well, FREE CDN & SSL, free site migration, and much more.
WP Engine will provide the best support and performance backed by the top WordPress experts, so you can rest ahead knowing their team will offer excellent WooCommerce hosting for your e-store.
WooCommerce-centric Features
You can run a successful website on WP Engine because of the speed, security, and the easy-to-understand interface, let’s look more closely to the features related to WooCommerce.
- WP Engine will offer a wide range of WordPress optimization solutions on powerful cloud platforms such as Google Cloud Platform and AWS.
- The team behind WP Engine will manage all core updates and patches, you won’t need to carry a burden for such a task.
- Built-in unmetered DDoS protection.
- Free fully managed CDN that will make your load faster by routing local requests to the nearest server.
- Built-in proprietary caching solution Evercache will make sure your users are provided with the fastest and best experience.
WP Engine offers a wide variety of useful features including, security measures, the ability to switch between PHP 7.2 and 7.3, or data-centered locations.
Intuitive Interface and Ease of Use
Now that we went over the wondrous features this WooCommerce hosting comes buckled with, you will be happy to know that in the concluding package they offer a hassle-free, user-friendly interface. You can easily manage your account and make great use of all the features included.
Once you’ve logged into your WP Engine account the remaining process is simple and straightforward, including only a few clicks. The inside portal displays a simple interface from where you can enable the CDN, create SFTP user accounts, or activate the free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate.
Pricing
There are three predefined plans that WP Engine set out for its users, as well as including custom options that are suitable for individual businesses. We will start with the first plan, the Startup plan that comes for $25 per month for one WordPress website all the way to the Premium 1.5 that will come at a price of $828 per month for 115 websites and a bountiful of advanced features.
Next on our list, is Kinsta a premium managed WordPress hosting provider to help you boost revenue, SEO and give your users the best experience as they shop on your website. Kinsta is powered by Google Cloud Platform and its premium network.
Managing your website on the Kinsta host will prove to be simple and effective, as this host provider involves an environment that is optimized for WordPress websites. This means that you won’t have to worry about tasks such as security, caching, or backups as Kinsta will do the lifting for you.
Kinsta as a hosting provider will offer faster websites, less downtime, and fewer performance issues. Their infrastructure is optimized for handing complex and high-traffic websites, all provided by the advanced set of features they offer.
WooCommerce-centric Features
We mentioned some of the top-notch features that Kinsta offers, in this section, we will focus on the features that will help your WooCommerce site grow.
- Install WooCommerce and MyKinsta dashboard with just a click. My Kinsta will offer easy access to creating SSL certificates, and control all of your sites.
- WooCommerce optimization like not caching your shopping cart or automatically bypassing the cache when needed to ensure a smooth and in-sync checkout process.
- Kinsta uses isolated software container technology in order for the resources to be allocated to each container automatically.
- PHP workers to execute the code on your WordPress website, you can add additional PHP workers if opting to upgrade to a higher plan.
- Excellent support system.
Intuitive Interface and Ease of Use
Kinsta will provide its users with a simple to follow interface with the easy installation and integration of the MyKinsta dashboard. It works as a control center from where you manage all your sites and perform tasks that are needed for the website to function properly.
You can add multiple users of your team with and set their access rules either as developers or administrators to a subset of your sites. The interface though, is modern and straightforward, to perform and job required. Moreover, the Kinsta team will offer free white-glove migrations when moving from other providers.
Price
Kinsta will offer a variety of hosting plans starting from $30 per month where it’s included 1 WordPress installation, all the way to the Enterprise 4 plan that comes for $1500 per month with all-inclusive advanced features.
When it comes to WordPress DreamHost is yet another managed hosting that shines with advanced features, especially those made for WooCommerce, providing you with a foolproof hosting system for even the most complex online stores.
They offer separate plans for WooCommerce, offering features that are specifically created to strengthen your website and take full advantage of your store. DreamHost is made to suit everyone, even if you are a newbie in WordPress and trying to figure everything out.
They will offer the opportunity to handle everything for you, or if you are a little more tech-savvy then you can take full control of your server. DreamHost offers value, great performance, and a wide variety of choices for its users.
WooCommerce-centric Features
As mentioned before DreamHost will provide its users with plans that behold features made explicitly for WooCommerce.
- DreamHost comes with WooCommerce and StoreFront theme pre-installed, thus taking care of the main parts of your online store
- DreamHost offers a stable platform for your online store taking care of all the backups, thus keeping WooCommerce and WordPress up-to-date.
- DreamHost hosting provider comes with next-gen could tech and server-level caching to make your store perform faster
- It includes a free SSL certificate to make your payments and your client’s information safer
- Best of all, all your data is stored on solid-state drives, these types of drives are bound to have a way better performance and a safer environment.
DreamHost will take care of your site’s server and will make sure you are served with the best service.
Intuitive Interface and Ease of Use
Running your website on a hosting provider such as Dream Host will be a breeze. The hosting provider accounts for a simple and straightforward interface that will have your website up and running in no time, with pre-installed WooCommerce.
The DreamHost interface includes a wide variety of advanced options, but always keeping it simple, making it easier for you to navigate through it.
Price
In terms of price, DreamHost is rather expensive, starting from $16.95 per month with the Dream Press plan, all the way to the DreamPress Pro plan that comes for $71.95 per month.
What’s better than hosting from the source, WordPress.com besides being a content management system, they also offer website hosting to those who use the platform. WordPress.com hosting will be a smart choice since it’s specifically designed with WordPress in mind.
You can get a free sign up, they offer free hosting on their wordpress.com domain, or you can pay a premium plan to obtain your personalized domain.
The business plan will offer a range of advanced features and a lot of web hosting benefits. You will benefit in terms of speed, security, SEO optimization, backups and rewinds, 200 GB storage space, and much more.
WooCommerce-centric Features
The fact that the hosting comes directly from the main source, all the features that it includes are optimized for WooCommerce, let’s see the most prominent ones:
- Advanced payment system, where you will be able to make transfers in over 60+ countries
- Automated backup and one-click rewind, making it easy to download a backup of your website or restore it
- You will have the ability to grow your store and sell unlimited products or services
- Ship your physical products with ease using all the top-notch carriers
- Get help from the experts themselves, you can contact them via the live chat and email ticketing channels
If there is anyone who knows how to host, manage, and support WordPress websites, who better then their owners?
Intuitive Interface and Ease of Use
If you have ever used WordPress, you will most likely know just how easy and intuitive it is to work with it. One of the most prominent features of WordPress is that it makes all its users feel comfortable with their knowledge of coding and development.
It starts off with a creation wizard, helping you through all steps necessary until you have your online store all set up and ready to be managed.
Price
WordPress.com offers a free plan that has its limitations, in order to enjoy all the amazing and advanced feature this platform offers, you can opt for a premium plan, and based on your needs you can choose from the 4 plans available.
It starts off with a personal plan that comes at a price of $4 per month/ billed yearly. Them most sophisticated plan that includes all the top-notch features is the eCommerce plan for $45 per month/ this too billed monthly.
Liquid Web includes plans that are particularly designed for eCommerce stores. All the features they offer will provide an A-class quality of its kind.
- Liquid Web will make sure your online store is properly optimized for mobiles, meaning faster loading time for all the mobile shoppers.
- The hosting provider will have Astra Pro and Beaver Builder page builder installed right out of the bat, to get you started in an instant.
- Take your store’s management into your own hands and manage all the orders, inventory, discounts with just a few clicks.
- You can run performance tests to help you get your website ready for high traffic.
- The experts at Liquid Web will be of immense help, as they will guide you in setting up your store.
Liquid Web will provide its users with all the high-end tools and features as well as amazing performance. And if you need help to manage your hosting, they support system will be there, whenever you need them.
WooCommerce-centric Features
Liquid Web includes plan that are particularly designed for eCommerce stores. All the features the offer will provide an A-class quality of its kind.
- Liquid Web will make sure your online store is properly optimized for mobiles, meaning faster loading time for all the mobile shoppers.
- The hosting provider will have Astra Pro and Beaver Builder page builder installed right out of the bat, to get you started in an instant.
- Take your store’s management into your own hands and and manage all the order, inventory, discounts with just a few click.
- You can run performance tests to help you get your website ready for high traffic.
- The experts at Liquid Web will be of immense help, as they will guide you setting up your store.
Liquid Web will provide its users with all the high-end tools and features as well as amazing performance. And if you need help to manage your hosting, they support system will be there, whenever you need them.
Intuitive Interface and Ease of Use
If you set your mind in having Liquid Web as your hosting provider for your online store, then the process will be straightforward and easy, along with the support team’s help you shall not have any troubles getting your store running.
You can set up additional payment gateways and manage your entire store with ease. You will not stumble upon obstacles while using Liquid Web’s control panel as it is simple and easy to use. You can get the hang of it or simply reach for help if you need a little extra assistance,
Price
Liquid Web will include all the resources you need to get your store started, and will provide several plans depending on the growth of your store. The first and cheapest plan starts at $19 per month and includes 10 premium features, and the ultimate most expensive plan they have is the Enterprise plan that comes at $999 per month.
The higher the price the more traffic your store can handle. It is a matter of needs and priorities.
HostGator is yet another amazing hosting provider that’s dedicated to WordPress websites. HostGator will provide hosting for starter websites as well as enterprises, you can find all that you are looking for, each plan including features that will suit your needs. HostGator is a popular hosting provider among WordPress users.
This is mainly due to its capacity and practicality, HostGator comes with one-click installation of WordPress and 24/7 support to help you along the process. Also, the basic shared hosting plan comes with unlimited storage, bandwidth, a free domain for the first year, also including a free SSL certificate.
Although the basic plan comes at so much advantage, if you plan on running your online store with HostGator, then probably you need to check out their VPS Hosting plans since they hold the capacity to run your online store smoothly and with no troubles.
Side Note: VPS Hosting plans are more advanced since you have full control over your website’s hosting, while shared hosting will be managed by the hosting provider.
WooCommerce-centric Features
HostGator will offer its users three VPS plans that are dedicated for control and functionality. They provide advanced features to improve your store’s performance.
- With VPS Hosting you will have full control over your website’s hosting environment, which will include custom installing and configurations set up.
- HostGator will provide first-rate security, the multiple layers of the network will keep your store and your data secure.
- Performing weekly off-site backups, this means your data will be stored and will remain safe.
- HostGator comes with its own website builder, you can customize the templates and set up your online store, since it also includes an eCommerce plan to manage payment gateways, orders, plugins and much more.
- HostGator will include several advanced features like host multiple domains, databases, FTP accounts, and more.
HostGator will provide multiple hosting plans that are divided based on what a website is and needs. You have hosting plans for WordPress website, VPS Hosting, or even dedicated hosting but all these come at a more expensive rate.
Intuitive Interface and Ease of Use
HostGator provides all the latest cPanel system that’s intuitive and user-friendly. And if you need a little extra help you can always turn to their comprehensive tutorial guides that will help you get through all the worst parts of the DNS world and data centers.
What’s more, they also include extra features designed for beginners, as they will help you set up your website hassle-free and manage it on your own. In case you choose one of their VPS Hosting plans, it will require a solid base of knowledge since you will be handling everything on your own.
Price
HostGator will include a variety of plans that will suit every site’s needs and will incorporate numerous advanced features for each plan. The cheapest plan will start at $2.75 per month, but that will not be ideal for online stores.
You can check out other plans like VPS Hosting that start off at $19.95 per month, or upgrade to dedicated server hosting that start off at $89.98 per month, with the ultimate most expensive plan being Enterprise Server at $139.99 per month.
When running an online store speed is of crucial importance, that is why we included A2 Hosting, a hosting provider that focuses on speed and well as performance and security. A2 Hosting is viable option and it includes the use of SSD (solid state) drives as well as their SwiftServer platform.
A2 Hosting will provide excellent speed performance, never compromising security. And if you need a wquick installation of WordPress, this hosting provider comes included with a quick auto-setup.
A2 Hosting will be a great choice for your WooCommerce store. In terms of security this hosting provider does not disappoint. You will have included free SSL certificates, automated updates, as well as firewall protection.
WooCommerce-centric Features
A2 Hosting will be the ideal choice for any WordPress website, including online stores built upon WooCommerce. They offer plans dedicated to the popular plugin to give the best performance for its users.
- Unlimited storage and bandwidth as well as free site migration set up
- A2 Hosting will have WooCommerce pre-installed for better convenience to its users.
- A2 Hosting will provide DDoS protection, which means your store will be kept safe even in unfortunate events.
- The support service is at its finest, they will be willing to help you along the way until you complete your online store.
- Although the free SSL certificate you can buy a premium one, A2 Hosting will provide a wide variety of SSL certificates that will help all sorts of stores with their PCI compliance.
One amazing feature that A2 Hosting presents its money-back guarantee policy. You can still get your money back even after your 30-day money-back guarantee ends.
Intuitive Interface and Ease of Use
A2 Hosting comes bundled with cPanel, the leading web-based control panel, with which you can manage your domain through a user-friendly interface. The interface of the control panel is left unchanged, so users that are familiar with the platform with feel confident to use it.
For those who are still novices in this area, A2 Hosting will provide a handful of tutorials and documentation on how to use the cPanel to offer the best user experience for all its customers.
Price
A2 Hosting will provide 4 WooCommerce plans that will have your store filled with advanced features. You have plans like Startup, Drive, Turbo Boost, and Turbo Max.
The cheapest plan is Startup, starting at $2.50 per month for 1 site, and offers 100 GB SSD Storage. The most expensive plan for WooCommrce is Turbo Max that costs $12.55 per month and offers features like unlimited site usage, unlimited NVMe Storage, free automatic backups, and much more.
Final Thoughts
WooCommerce websites are highly dynamic and very demanding, thus choosing the right hosting will either make or break your website. We included all the best options for your WooCommerce hosting providers and tried to provide a comprehensive guide to make your choice easier. You can’t recommend only one ultimate hosting provider.
Depending on your budget, Site Ground or Bluehost can be a great choice if you are just starting and don’t want to spend large amounts of money. They provide all the essential WooCommerce features under $10.
Hostings like Kinsta or WP Engine will strike a balance of a little over the average price, amazing performance, and an advanced set of features.
But if you are looking for the one hosting that will provide all the most high-end features, over the top performance and sheer functionality, then AWS takes the crown. Although it is pricey for online stores that are on their first steps, if you are running a multi-layered, high traffic e-store then this investment on dedicated WooCommerce hosting shall be worthy.
