Embarking on an ecommerce journey? You’ve probably already considered WooCommerce, the most commonly used ecommerce platform around. While setting up a store is simple enough, the journey doesn’t actually start there. The key to setting your store up for success lies in choosing the best WooCommerce hosting provider available.
Amid the sea of hosting plans and firms, finding the right fit can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. But here’s the good news: focusing on WooCommerce-dedicated hosting can streamline your operations, saving you time better spent on business growth rather than technical challenges.
In this post, we aim to shed light on the advantages of hosting plans tailored for WooCommerce. Then, we’ll also walk you through some of the best WooCommerce hosting providers out there, guiding you towards an informed choice that fits your specific needs. Ready to simplify your ecommerce journey? Let’s dive in.
In a hurry? This is our shortlist of the best WooCommerce hosting services available:
Benefits of WooCommerce hosting over generic hosting 📝
The big benefit of WooCommerce hosting is that it can handle a lot of basic website maintenance, setup, and security for you. That means you can focus on the fun part – growing your store.
With WooCommerce hosting, you’ll typically get:
- Automated WordPress and WooCommerce setup so you can get right to work on your store.
- Daily backups, so your data is always safe.
- Increased security so you can protect your user information.
- Support staff who are experts when it comes to WooCommerce.
Those are just a few of the criteria you should look out for when you’re shopping around for the best WooCommerce hosting. In practice, each host brings something unique to the table, which brings us to the next section.
Best WooCommerce hosting providers compared 🤜🆚🤛
For this breakdown, we’re going to focus on the best WooCommerce hosting providers. We’ll talk about the features they provide, how intuitive they are to use, and the all-important pricing. So let’s dive right into it!
1. SiteGround (www.siteground.com)
SiteGround is one of our favorite all-around WooCommerce hosting options. They offer great support, data centers around the world, great performance, and competitive pricing. They also help you get started quickly by offering easy WordPress and WooCommerce installs, plus WooCommerce-specific features to make your life easier on an everyday basis. Let’s take a closer look.
WooCommerce-specific features ⚙️
SiteGround’s WooCommerce plans offer all the same features as their basic shared options. However, they do pack in a bit of extra functionality, including:
- WooCommerce (plus the Storefront theme) set up out of the box.
- A Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate to keep your shoppers’ information secure.
- Integrated Cloudflare Content Delivery Network (CDN) to speed up your store’s load times.
- PCI Compliant servers, on the highest tier.
- Free shopping cart installation for setting up your new store.
- Award-winning customer support team.
What’s more, the higher tiers provide even more features (as you’d expect), such as free backup restores and caching functionality.
Ease of use 🚦
Getting a WooCommerce store running with SiteGround is simple since they automatically set up the WooCommerce plugin for you, as well as a WooCommerce theme. This means you can hit the ground running and get to work on adding products right away.
However, SiteGround’s hosting control panel is a bit disappointing. While it does offer most of the features you need to manage your store, it is subjectively ‘clunky’. As such, finding the specific options you need can be difficult compared to other providers.
Pricing and plans 💳
SiteGround’s WooCommerce plans start at $2.99* for the StartUp option and go up all the way to $7.99* if you want the GoGeek plan. Those prices make it the best WooCommerce hosting option if you’re on a tight budget, and a steal for the service overall.
*Prices reflect the monthly rate if you purchase 12 months in advance. After that, the Start Up plan renews at $14.99 per month, and the Go Geek plan renews at $39.99 per month.
2. Bluehost (www.bluehost.com)
Bluehost is a popular WordPress website host that’s officially recommended by the WordPress.org team. Bluehost offers affordable plans dedicated for WooCommerce that come with pre-installed WooCommerce (no hassle), a free SSL, and more.
WooCommerce-specific features ⚙️
Because Bluehost has dedicated plans for WooCommerce, you’ll get a bunch of great features to make your ecommerce store a success:
- A free online setup call to help get your store up and running.
- Preinstalled WordPress and WooCommerce, along with the official Storefront theme.
- A free SSL certificate to help keep your shoppers’ data safe.
- A dedicated IP address all to yourself.
- A free domain name for the first year.
You also get tons of general features like unmetered bandwidth, unlimited SSD storage and server resources. Plus, their platform provides a great user experience overall.
Ease of use 🚦
Setting up a WordPress and WooCommerce website is super simple because Bluehost can pre-install both of those tools for you. That means you can get started building your store and adding products right away.
For additional actions, Bluehost has its own custom web hosting dashboard that makes it easy to manage things like updates and caching/performance. They also still give you access to cPanel, as well, for more advanced tweaks.
Pricing and plans 💳
Bluehost’s WooCommerce hosting plans start at $7.95* per month for the cheapest plan, aptly titled Online Store. That plan lets you create one store with Unlimited SSD storage and unmetered bandwidth.
The next tier up – the $9.95* per month Online Store + Marketplace plan – lets you host unlimited stores with unlimited storage and unmetered bandwidth.
When comparing the two hosting plans, unless you plan on running more than one WooCommerce store, there’s really no reason to upgrade to the higher plan. Although the price difference initially is very small, once the promotional period is over and you start paying the regular rate, the difference between the two is $15 per month.
Since the features are virtually identical between the plans, the extra monthly cost isn’t really worth it if you only have one WooCommerce store. The only other exception would be if you had an extremely large inventory that required extensive storage space and multi-channel inventory management, which are two of the highlights offered by Bluehost’s pricier WooCommerce hosting plan.
*Prices reflect the monthly rate if you purchase 12 months in advance. After that, plans renew at their regular rate. Check out the Bluehost website for more information.
3. InMotion Hosting (www.inmotionhosting.com)
InMotion is one of the best WooCommerce hosting providers on the market when you look at what it offers and how much you have to pay to get it.
(Spoiler alert: Not that much)
WooCommerce-specific features ⚙️
Since InMotion has a set of hosting plans that are solely dedicated to WooCommerce, you’ll see a whole buffet of WooCommerce appetizers on their menu, including:
- Choose from hundreds of WooCommerce Themes and storefronts.
- Enjoy unrestricted customization. Make your WooCommerce store your own.
- Easily create online coupons.
- Use shopping cart customization options for taxes and payments.
- Track cash flow and stay on top of disputes with an integrated payments dashboard.
- Shipping features are built into the WooCommerce Dashboard, including USPS and DHL integration.
- Enable the Stock Management feature to track on-hand quantities, backorders, and out of stocks.
- Run your store from anywhere using the WooCommerce mobile app.
In addition to the above, InMotion also serves up other, more standard features. These include DDoS protection, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email addresses, and automatic backups.
Ease of use 🚦
Building a WooCommerce site with InMotion is a piece of cake. They offer a drag-and-drop WordPress Page Builder called BoldGrid, which means you don’t need to know any code to get it up and running.
Once you have the basic WordPress infrastructure set up, you just download the free WooCommerce plugin from your WordPress dashboard, and install it directly from there. You can then use the plugin to add products and information about your store to your website.
All plans also include a staging environment to test out ideas before going live with them on your actual WooCommerce site.
As an added bonus, they have 24/7/365 customer support (based in the U.S.), so if you ever do get stuck on anything, help is only a phone call away.
Pricing and plans 💳
InMotion’s WooCommerce hosting solutions start off with the entry-level WP Launch plan, which clocks in at $6.99* per month. Although it’s technically their entry-level plan, it could easily be presented as a premium WooCommerce hosting solution. That’s because quite simply, as you saw above, it overdelivers. They even throw in $150 worth of advertising credits!
However, if the entry-level plan is not adequate for your WooCommerce needs, the plan one up from that might be even more enticing. For the same exact $6.99* per month, the WP Power plan gives you double the email storage per inbox (5GB vs 10GB), and support to handle more than double the amount of monthly traffic (50K visitors vs 125K visitors).
Those two plans alone are going to be enough for most people’s WooCommerce hosting requirements, but if you’re already at a point where your online business has scaled considerably, then InMotion has even higher tiers, including VPS hosting solutions.
*Prices reflect the monthly rate if you purchase 36 months in advance. After that, WP Launch renews at $14.99 per month, and WP Power renews at $19.99 per month.
4. A2 Hosting (www.a2hosting.com)
A2 Hosting is an award-winning hosting company, that has consistently been highlighted by the industry as being one of the fastest hosting providers available. Their managed WordPress hosting solutions have dedicated WooCommerce functionality, and their friendly and knowledgeable support team is available 24/7/365 to help you.
WooCommerce-specific features ⚙️
A2 hosting is committed to helping its customers achieve success with their WooCommerce stores. Some of what they offer includes:
- 99.9% uptime guarantee so you won’t lose sales due to outages.
- Product pages that can be customized to sell anything from anywhere.
- Built-in automation to process orders, handle billings, and manage tax calculations.
- Multiple secured payment options, including credit card processing, order requests, account processing (such as tax and shipping rates), and shipping rates.
- A mobile app for managing and monitoring orders on your online stores while you’re on the go.
If that’s not enough for you, A2 also has a proprietary WordPress plugin called A2 Optimized. It takes care of your WordPress setup, so that all of the important variables regarding speed, security, and performance are pre-configured. This means you can dive into more of the things you want to be doing. For example, growing your business instead of worrying about mundane (but important) tasks.
Ease of use 🚦
Setting up a WooCommerce shop with A2 hosting is a breeze. They offer one-click deployment on WordPress sites, which significantly speeds up the process of getting your online store up and running.
Pricing and plans 💳
A2 offers four different hosting plans, creatively titled as run, jump, fly, and sell. The run plan is priced at $11.99* per month. It gives you one WordPress site that you can install WooCommerce on, a free SSL certificate, 50GB of NVMe SSD storage, free migration from another hosting service, backups, staging, and more.
The jump plan kicks things up a few notches, with the ability to set up five websites and 250GB of NVMe SSD storage. Plus you get a few other perks like automated daily backups. If that sounds exciting to you and you want to “jump” at it, then it’ll run you $18.99* per month.
*Prices reflect the monthly rate if you purchase 36 months in advance. After that, if you purchase another 36 months, the run plan renews at $22.99 per month, and the jump plan renews at $32.99 per month. Check out the A2 website for more details.
5. DreamHost (www.dreamhost.com)
DreamHost is a managed web hosting provider that shines when it comes to WordPress. The company offers plans dedicated to taking care of a WordPress site, and of course, separate options if you’re running a WooCommerce store.
WooCommerce-specific features ⚙️
Since we’re talking about managed WordPress hosting, DreamHost doesn’t skimp when it comes to WooCommerce-specific features. Some of the highlights are:
- Having WooCommerce and Storefront pre-installed and configured for optimal performance.
- Server-side protection against traffic spikes, slow site speeds, and hacking attempts.
- VaultPress backups that automatically protect your store’s data, and you get more than enough disk space to store them.
- You get the Jetpack Professional plugin for free, which includes some top store-enhancing features like authenticated customer logins, downtime monitoring, shipping rate calculations, and more.
- Up to three calls per month with DreamHost’s dedicated concierge support (and full access to regular channels).
- Free SSL certificate to keep your and your shopper’s data safe.
- A free domain name for the first year.
Combine those features, and it all adds up to a well-rounded WooCommerce plan.
Ease of use 🚦
Just as with SiteGround, you can get to work on your store right away after signing up with DreamHost thanks to the pre-configured WooCommerce.
As far as the DreamHost interface goes, it’s one of the most unique control panels we’ve seen so far. It includes a lot of options and is also easy to navigate. If you feel comfortable tinkering with your store’s back end settings, you’ll like DreamHost.
Pricing and plans 💳
Compared to some other hosts, DreamHost is rather expensive. It starts at $16.95* a month for up to ~100k visitors and goes up to $71.95* a month for ~1M+ visitors. While you will pay a little more, it’s a robust and stable hosting service that can handle practically anything you throw at it in our experience.
If you’re looking for a more entry-level solution for a small business, DreamHost offers an affordable shared hosting plan as well.
*Prices reflect the monthly rate if you purchase 12 months in advance. However, unlike some of the other WooCommerce hosting providers featured here, Dreamhost will not raise the price on you when it’s time to renew. Check out their website for more information.
6. Liquid Web (www.liquidweb.com)
Liquid Web is a more expensive WooCommerce hosting option than the previous ones. In exchange for the higher price tag, it offers great features and some value-added plugins and services. All of it together makes the price a lot more palatable.
WooCommerce-specific features ⚙️
When it comes to the number of WooCommerce-specific features included, this managed WooCommerce host takes the cake. Here are a few of our favorites:
- WooCommerce set up out of the box, including the Astra Pro theme, and the Beaver Builder page builder plugin.
- Mobile optimization for all of your pages.
- Free SSL certificate to keep your store’s data secure.
- Abandoned cart technology via a partnership with Jilt. You can engage 50 shoppers for free.
- Value-added plugins from IconicWP included with your hosting for free, which add a variety of functionality to improve your store.
- Expert help to set up any parts of your store.
- Optional automated PCI compliance scans (for an extra fee). Plus, there are also managed firewall options available.
Of course, the wealth of features here don’t come for free, and we’ll discuss this more in a minute.
Ease of use 🚦
The Liquid Web team will hold your hand through the entire process of configuring your WooCommerce store, which is a welcome feature.
They can help you set up additional payment gateways, add new products, and much more.
This means the platform is perfect if you need an extra bit of help to get things optimized and ready to roll. Plus, it comes with a pretty streamlined control panel that’s a pleasure to use.
Pricing and plans 💳
Liquid Web offers plenty of options when it comes to plans.
The most basic WooCommerce offering starts at $17.50* per month. The higher up you move along the scale, the more traffic you’ll be able to handle – but plans can (and do) get expensive very fast, topping out at $832.50* per month.
*Prices reflect the promotional monthly rate when you pay up front for the year. Month-to-month plans are structured differently. See Liquid Web website for more details.
7. Kinsta (kinsta.com)
Kinsta is a premium managed WordPress hosting provider powered by Google Cloud Platform and its premium network that’s great for scalability (similar to Amazon AWS). Their infrastructure is heavily optimized for e-commerce solutions such as WooCommerce and is ready to handle traffic surges. Their plans come with an extended set of features and speed-focused architecture.
WooCommerce-specific features ⚙️
Here are a few features that make Kinsta’s WooCommerce hosting solution optimal for this purpose:
- One-click auto installer for WooCommerce in their MyKinsta dashboard.
- Six different types of backups: automatic backups every 24 hours, manual backups with one-click restore, environmental backups, full downloadable .zip backups, and add-ons for additional backups.
- Auto-scaling. Kinsta uses isolated software container technology so that resources are allocated to each site container automatically as needed.
- Free SSL, which you can install with a single click and the ability to upload your own custom SSL certificates.
- 24-hour support. Every site is monitored for uptime with 720 checks per day, and there’s hack and malware removal.
- Fast server-level caching in place (no plugins needed) with rules to ensure proper WooCommerce functionality.
Ease of use 🚦
Kinsta provides a custom-made site management dashboard, which is easy to handle for beginners. You can easily launch a store in a matter of seconds using the one-click auto installer for WooCommerce in their MyKinsta dashboard.
If you have an existing WooCommerce site with another provider you want to move from, they include free white-glove migrations. This means the Kinsta team will handle everything on regarding migration on your behalf. Simply fill out the migration form and they’ll let you know when it’s ready to go live.
Pricing and plans 💳
Kinsta offers many tiers starting from $29.17* per month, going all the way up to their Enterprise tier. However, unless you have a low-traffic WooCommerce site, they recommend starting on their Business 1 plan or higher for optimal performance (which is great for SEO). That particular plan will cost you $95.83* per month, which may or may not be worth it. It really depends on where you are with your WooCommerce business.
Optional add-ons are available on all hosting plans. They have a 30-day money-back guarantee, with no long-term contracts. Every WordPress installation also includes a free staging environment for testing plugins, themes, and updates.
*Prices reflect the promotional monthly rate when you pay up front for the year. Month-to-month plans are structured differently. See Kinsta website for more details.
8. WP Engine (wpengine.com)
Like Kinsta, WP Engine is a premium managed WordPress host that makes a great option for hosting a WooCommerce and/or WordPress site. WP Engine’s infrastructure is able to handle large, high-traffic stores, and it offers tons of features to keep your site and its data safe.
WooCommerce-specific features ⚙️
WP Engine’s cloud hosting plans come packed with helpful features for your WooCommerce store:
- Free access to the Genesis framework and all the StudioPress child themes, which make a great option for a WooCommerce store. These themes are optimized for SEO and fast.
- Smart Search to get better suggestions when visitors search for something in your store. It’s similar to the search system on Amazon.
- Evercache to make your store load faster.
- Stripe integration to add Stripe as a payment method directly from the hosting portal.
- Free SSL certificate to keep your store’s data safe and secure.
- Integrated CDN for faster global performance.
- Built-in staging environment to safely test changes to your store before you push them live.
- Automatic backups to make sure you never lose your store’s data.
In addition to lots of general WooCommerce features, WP Engine also has its own WP Engine Ecommerce Toolkit plugin that helps optimize your store’s performance and give you access to key performance indicators (KPIs). It also adds other goodies like one-tap payments, auto-logout, and more.
Ease of use 🚦
WP Engine uses its own custom hosting dashboard that, while it might not be the most beginner-friendly dashboard in the world, still makes it pretty easy to perform key actions on your ecommerce site.
Additionally, WP Engine does a great job of going above and beyond to make your store a success. This is thanks in part to its features like the WP Engine Ecommerce Toolkit, as well as its page performance tools and the included Genesis framework.
Pricing and plans 💳
WP Engine’s WooCommerce hosting plans start at $20.00* per month and go up from there. Their entry-level plan supports one store and up to 25,000 visits per month.
Higher-tier hosting plans raise those limits, and WP Engine also offers custom plans if your needs go beyond what their pre-made plans offer.
*Price reflects the promotional monthly rate when you pay up front for the first year. Renewal rate is higher and month-to-month plans are structured differently. See website for more details.
WooCommerce hosting FAQ 🙋♂️
Does WooCommerce offer web hosting?
WooCommerce itself does not provide web hosting services. It is a free plugin designed for WordPress, which requires a hosting plan from a third-party provider to run your website.
Do I need WooCommerce hosting?
While it’s not mandatory to have WooCommerce specific hosting, it is highly recommended if you plan on running an online store using WooCommerce. These hosting plans are optimized for WooCommerce’s features, ensuring better performance, security, and a smoother user experience.
Is WooCommerce hosting free?
WooCommerce is a free plugin for WordPress, but to run your website, you’ll need a hosting plan from a hosting provider. While free hosting options do technically exist, they are mostly used for simple “fun” projects and not for running a real website, much less a WooCommerce store (which is even more demanding than a regular site). It’s advisable to opt for a specialized WooCommerce hosting plan to ensure optimal performance, security, and support for your online store.
How do I host a WooCommerce website?
To host a WooCommerce website, you’ll first need to choose a hosting provider and plan. Once you have a hosting plan, install WordPress, followed by the WooCommerce plugin. From there, you can set up your online store, customize your theme, and add products.
Which WooCommerce hosting provider is right for your store? 🤔
As you might suspect, there’s no single WooCommerce web host that fits the bill for every user.
💰 SiteGround is a good option if you’re on a budget. It offers all the core WooCommerce hosting features you’ll need for under $10 per month in your first year.
💸 InMotion is a great second place budget choice, since both SiteGround and InMotion’s entry-level plans are the same price once the promotional period ends. That price is also the lowest post-promotion option among the WooCommerce hosting solutions on this list.
🤩 In contrast, DreamHost and Bluehost strike a great balance between price, performance, and the number of WooCommerce-specific features they offer. This makes them good middle ground between the other options.
🏎️ Finally, Liquid Web takes the crown when it comes to sheer functionality and ease of use. You also get a lot of extra WooCommerce functionality via the bundled IconicWP plugins and Jilt abandoned cart tools. However, it’s a more expensive option up front, which is something to consider.
Do you have any questions about how to choose the best WooCommerce hosting for your store? Ask away in the comments section below!
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