If you're on the hunt for the best WooCommerce hosting for your fledgling store, you've found your way to the right blog post.
In this post, you'll find a detailed comparison of three great managed WooCommerce hosting providers for all budgets.
Whether you're just getting started and looking for something that will only cost $5 per month, you've got a high-traffic store and are ready to splash out $250+ per month, or you're anywhere in between, you're going to find a great option on this list.
What Does the Best WooCommerce Hosting Need?
While WooCommerce hosting is, at a basic level, just WordPress hosting, there are some unique requirements for WooCommerce, especially for larger, high-traffic stores:
- Security – you'll want an SSL certificate, as well as firewalls and tweaks to keep your store's data safe.
- Database optimization – busy WooCommerce stores are quite database-intensive, which is why the best WooCommerce hosting providers will include built-in database optimizations for better performance.
- Easy WooCommerce install – if this is your first store, a good WooCommerce host will help you start with pre-installed WordPress and WooCommerce.
- WooCommerce-compatible caching – while caching is a great way to speed up your site, it can cause issues with some parts of WooCommerce. A good host should help you implement caching…without negatively affecting your store's functionality.
The Three Best Managed WooCommerce Hosting Providers
1. Liquid Web.
In terms of what you get for your money, Liquid Web offers some of the most feature-rich managed WooCommerce hosting, which is why this mini Liquid Web review is first on the list.
See, Liquid Web has built a service that doesn't just host your WooCommerce store, but also provides you with managed features and value-added tools to make your store more successful.
In a way, it's trying to be more like a platform – blending the ease of use of something like Shopify with the flexibility of WordPress and WooCommerce.
Starting off with the core hosting features, though, Liquid Web offers scalable plans that can handle anything from a small store with ~150 monthly transactions to an enterprise store getting 75,000 transactions per month.
To help your store scale, Liquid Web includes its own set of database tables to help you store product data, which can reduce query loads by 95%. Again, database queries are one of the most intensive parts of a WooCommerce store, so having this done for you is a huge value-add (and it ensures you don't have to hire a pricey developer to optimize things for you as your store grows).
Beyond optimizing your store for performance, Liquid Web includes a free SSL certificate to safely process payments and build trust with your shoppers.
Value Adds
One of the most unique things about Liquid Web WooCommerce hosting is that, beyond the custom performance optimizations, it also comes with a ton of value-added WooCommerce themes and plugins to help you improve your store.
These are premium, well-regarded tools that you would normally need to purchase separately. Here's what you get, at no extra cost:
- Jilt – send abandoned cart emails to recover lost sales. The average eCommerce abandoned cart rate is almost 70%, so this is super important.
- IconicWP – this is a suite of WooCommerce plugins that can help you improve your store in a number of ways.
- Astra Pro – this highly customizable WooCommerce theme lets you make your store look pixel-perfect.
- Glew.io – Glew's premium eCommerce analytics to help you understand and optimize your store.
The Bottom Line + Prices
If you want a truly managed WooCommerce hosting experience, Liquid Web is probably the best option for you because Liquid Web will both host and optimize your store, as well as provide you with tons of otherwise-premium plugins and themes for free.
Plans start for as little as $39 per month and go up from there depending on your store's needs. You can also save 33% if you go with an annual plan.
It's important to note that the cheapest plan – the $39 one – limits you to 150 monthly transactions or unlimited transactions for 15 products.
2. WP Engine.
WP Engine is one of the most well-known managed WordPress hosts out there.
While they don't offer quite as many WooCommerce-specific features and goodies, WP Engine's general managed approach makes it a great, low-maintenance spot to host your WooCommerce store.
Beyond that, WP Engine has also created its own WP Engine ECommerce Toolkit for WooCommerce stores. This plugin will help you optimize your WooCommerce store with features like:
- One-tap payments via Stripe
- Optimized database queries
- Auto-logout to improve performance (at the expense of personalization)
- Option to disable cart fragment JS for better performance
- KPI analytics to see important store metrics, like add to carts and processed orders
WP Engine will also automatically configure its server-level Varnish caching to avoid causing issues with your WooCommerce cart and checkout pages.
When you combine this WooCommerce-specific toolkit with WP Engine's platform-wide features like easy staging, included SSL certificate, and integrated CDN, you get a great place to host your WooCommerce store.
Starting at $35 per month, WP Engine is priced similarly to Liquid Web. You can also get two months for free if you pay for a year upfront.
Unlike Liquid Web, there are no hard caps on the numbers of transactions or products, though you'll naturally be limited by the infrastructure of your plan.
Read the full review of WP Engine here.
3. Cloudways.
Cloudways is an affordable option for Woo hosting. They offer five diffeernt platforms, including Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, with several pay-as-you-go plans.
The real value add is the simplicity of the platform. You just get high-quality hosting with great support as they remove the shiny objects of domain registration and email so that the support team can focus on maximizing uptime.
The Woocommerce service keeps site load times on-par with WP Engine and Liquidweb.
Pricing
Much cheaper that WP Engine and LiquidWeb. Pricing is very customizable, with five differnt platforms and level of service.
Also, they offer a free 3 day trial of the service with using a credit card!
4. SiteGround.
SiteGround is not quite at the same level as the previously listed hosts in terms of features and power, but it is the most affordable option.
For example, SiteGround doesn't have those built-in features to optimize WooCommerce database queries, so you might need outside help for that as your store grows.
That's only a problem for a high-traffic store, though, and if you're just getting started on your journey, SiteGround gives you all the important stuff for your WooCommerce store like:
- Easy WooCommerce install
- Free SSL certificate
- Smart caching that won't cause issues with key WooCommerce pages
- Daily backups
- Easy staging
- PCI-Compliant servers
Pricing
SiteGround's promotional WooCommerce hosting prices start at as little as $3.95 per month.
What's the Best WooCommerce Hosting for You?
If you want the best bang for your buck, Liquid Web is the best overall WooCommerce hosting solution because of its:
- Managed environment that handles the important tech stuff, including optimizing WooCommerce's database queries.
- Huge array of value-added tools, like Jilt, IconicWP plugins, Astra Pro, Glew, and more.
- Competitive price.
If you want a host that offers something close for a cheaper price, WP Engine and its WP Engine ECommerce Toolkit is another great option.
And if you're just getting started and looking for something even more affordable, give SiteGround a look. You won't get all the goodies, but it's a fraction of the price and still offers a high-quality service.
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