5 Best WooCommerce Hosting: Kick-start Your eCommerce Business
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce has a lot to offer for those who want to start their own web shop. It is basically an extension for WordPress that is available since 2011 and now thousands of companies of all sizes are using it. The main purpose of this plugin is to give you the latest tools that can help you establish a strong online presence for your business and accumulate potential customers.
WooCommerce is such a strong WordPress plugin right now that it powers approximately 40% of all online shops on the Internet. It is open-source and you can download it for free, as other 14 million users did already. With that 40%, WooCommerce is the absolute winner of the competition considering that Magento is used by only 7% and Shopify by 4% of the web shop owners.
One of the reasons why so many people use it is that you don’t need to be skilled in web development to start your own online shop, the plugin is completely beginner-friendly. WooCommerce is extendable, full-featured and guarantees full control over your data including customer information, products, payments, discounts, coupons and everything you can imagine on an eCommerce website.
Keep on reading and we are going to show you how WooCommerce works and how to choose the best web hosting provider for it.
Main Reasons to Use WooCommerce
WooCommerce is designed to be user-friendly, yet it offers a wide range of customization options that can help you create a fully functional website that looks exactly as you imagined it. It is definitely not just another WordPress plugin, it is actually the most developed and flexible plugin available that easily outranked all the eCommerce platforms out there.
It can function the same way as a complete self-hosted software, providing every extension an online store would need. There are plenty of well-designed themes available for WooCommerce that are also optimized for mobile devices. The most useful SEO and analytics tools are also available for the plugin, giving your website the potential to score high on search engines and provide quality content.
With WooCommerce, you can use all the functionalities that a typical eCommerce website would need. You can organize your products in many different ways, easily deal with shipping services, offer discounts and coupons and gather product reviews from your customers. Of course, there is a huge number of premium add-ons as well that can add some useful functionalities so investing your money into some improvements is not a bad idea at all.
Although WooCommerce doesn’t limit the number of products you can add to your web shop, the web hosting provider you choose can easily become a limiting factor. Now let us give you a few tips on how to choose the best WooCommerce hosting provider.
5 Best WooCommerce Hosting Providers
Such a great WordPress plugin like WooCommerce needs proper performance, security and a high uptime percentage from a web hosting plan. It usually needs better specs than the average WordPress website. One of the most important things to look for is SSL encryption that keeps up a constant secure connection with the server while customers look at the website through their browser.
Keep in mind that Payment Card Industries have their own standards, asking for an SSL that ensures the protection of customer data. Other than that, the server uptime needs to be as close to 100% as possible because you don’t want to lose money and customers because your site is not available.
In order to use WooCommerce, you need WordPress as well, therefore pick a web hosting provider that offers one-click installation. It is even better if you just need to sign in and WordPress is already installed. Choosing a shared hosting plan is fine, but eCommerce sites always work better if you purchase a VPS hosting plan instead.
Since it provides more resources, it’s more stable and you can rest assured that your website will run seamlessly even if the traffic grows higher. In terms of customer support, you need to look for quick response times and, of course, a team of professionals that can help you with various issues.
BlueHost
BlueHost is definitely one of the top web hosting providers out there and they are even recommended by WordPress on their site. There are plenty of hosting plans available at BlueHost, but the best ones for WooCommerce are those which are optimized for WordPress. With these plans, they guarantee a dedicated IP and top-notch performance based on VPS.
With higher tier WordPress plans, you will also get SSL encryption with supported PCI compliance. To make it even more secure, BlueHost runs a service called SiteLock that scans your website, looking for spams and programs that might do harm. The data of your WooCommerce site is also secured by automated backups.
The last thing you want from a hosting provider is a bad customer support, but you can always count on the team of WordPress experts at BlueHost that can be contacted at any time. In addition, they have a website where you can find helpful articles, videos and guides about all WooCommerce related topics you might be interested in.
There are three plans at BlueHost that are optimized for WooCommerce, including the Starter plan for $6.95, the Plus for $8.95 and the Pro plan for $12.95 per month. With the Starter plan, you get 100GB storage, a free domain, unmetered data transfer, 100MB email storage, a dedicated IP and Positive SSL for web shop security. The Pro plan grants you their SpamExperts filter, SiteBackup pro, and Comodo SSL.
If you feel like you need more, you can choose one of their VPS plans. The starter plan there is $19.99 all the way up to $59.99 per month. With the strongest one, you get 4 CPU cores, 8GB of RAM, 4TB bandwidth, 2 IP addresses and a domain.
InMotion Hosting
InMotion is another web hosting provider where you don’t need to install WordPress, you can simply choose one of their WordPress hosting plans and it will be up and running with a single click. The disadvantage of their cheaper plans is that you won’t get SSL encryption nor dedicated IPs. However, their VPS plans compensate for that because they offer every feature a WooCommerce website needs.
With their cheapest VPS plan, you get 4GB of RAM, 75GB storage and 4TB bandwidth for only $19.99. This can be scaled up to 8GB RAM, 250GB storage and 6TB bandwidth which costs $44.99 per month. These plans will surely provide the performance that is necessary for all online shop operations. You even get more than one IPs in case you want to set up more than one web shop.
SSL certificates at InMotion need to be refreshed each year. For further security, they provide remote backups and a free plugin called Sucuri that makes sure nothing threatens your website data. Firstly, their customer supports consists of a knowledge base where you can find helpful articles and other common topics. For direct technical assistance, you can either call their team via phone or contact them through email or live chat.
HostGator
HostGator is a well-known web hosting company even for those who never worked on websites. There is no plan available that is directly optimized for WooCommerce, but they still have plenty of hosting plans that might do the job. By choosing one of their plans, you will definitely get lots of features that might come in handy to your eCommerce website.
HostGator has a WordPress cloud hosting plan, but if you want to start a web shop, it’s definitely not advised to purchase it. On the other hand, their VPS hosting plans are full-featured, securing your website for its future growth. These plans can be scaled and even customized if you want to change it to a particular setup.
Each of them grants you unlimited databases, FTP accounts, email addresses and domains. HostGator guarantees weekly off-site backups, cPanel for account management, top-notch hardware and if you are not satisfied, you can always get your money back in 45 days.
The prices are quite low right now at HostGator, with their Snappy 2000 VPS plan being $19.95 per month, the Snappy 4000 $29.95 and the Snappy 8000 $39.95 per month. With the first one, you get 2GB of RAM, 2 CPU cores, 120GB storage and 1.5TB Bandwidth. These specs can be scaled up to 8GB RAM, 4 CPU cores, 240GB storage and 3TB Bandwidth.
iPage
iPage is one of the oldest ones in the web hosting industry. It is established back in 1998 and now they are one of the leading companies by consistently providing top-notch web hosting services. Their VPS plans are powerful, customizable and able to run a WooCommerce website seamlessly even during high traffic spikes.
They have a strong support team with trained professionals that know a lot about WordPress and are always ready to provide help. With iPage, speed and security is guaranteed with lots of additional features for an affordable price. After purchasing one of their plans, you will be able to customize it through your control panel and even to install additional applications you might need.
With each of their VPS plans, you get a free domain and a huge number of available scripts that can be installed whenever you want. Their Basic VPS plan costs only €19.99 per month and you get a 1-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, 40GB storage, 1 TB Bandwidth and an IP address as well. Their Business plan is the most recommended one for €47.99 per month with 2 CPU cores, 4GB RAM, 90GB storage, 2 IP addresses and 3TB bandwidth.
If you need a stronger one, there is the Optimum plan for €79.99 with 4 CPU cores, 8GB of RAM, 120GB disk space and 4TB of bandwidth. All the plans run cPanel for account management.
GreenGeeks
GreenGeeks is a web hosting company that also protects the environment besides offering web hosting services. They not only generate power for their servers and offices with wind energy but also invest in generating three times the amount of Green Energy they spend. Therefore, by purchasing their web hosting plan, you also contribute to a better environment.
GreenGeeks is another provider that has a hosting plan optimized for WordPress, yet if you want a service that is powerful enough for a web shop, you should rather choose one of their VPS plans. No matter which plan you choose, there are plenty of one-click installs available that can ensure a quick WordPress and WooCommerce setup as well.
There are 5 different VPS plans to choose from. The specs for the first one are 1GB RAM, 25GB SSD storage and 1TB bandwidth for only $39.95. The strongest one gets you 8GB of RAM, a 125GB SSD and 3TB bandwidth, costing $159.95 per month. All the plans come with a 4 core CPU, nightly backup and a guaranteed 99.9% uptime for your website. If you join with an existing WooCommerce site, they will migrate the data for free.
Conclusion
WooCommerce is an outstanding plugin if you want to start an online store as a beginner. If you are a WordPress user, it is the best option but you need to pick a powerful web hosting provider if you want to get the maximum out of it. Your web store needs to run without any downtime and to load your pages quickly, otherwise you will lose lots of money and customers as well.
It is always preferable to choose a web hosting provider that makes things easier for you by installing WordPress and WooCommerce for you or letting you install them with a single click. If you are just starting off, a shared hosting plan might be enough for a short while. But if you want to secure a high-quality shopping experience for your customers, a VPS hosting plan is definitely your best choice.
Feel free to compare these five WooCommerce web hosting providers based on our reviews. These are all highly competitive right now in the market and provide all the necessary features to run a WooCommerce based web shop properly.