Best Ecommerce Hosting (Feb 2023): The Ultimate Web Hosting Guide for Ecommerce Business Sites – Try Free

Are you ready to start your own ecommerce website? You have a wide selection of platforms to choose from, and an equally wide selection of web hosts that will house your chosen platform. Especially if you want to run your store on WooCommerce, you should look around for the best ecommerce hosting available.

In this resource, we compare some of the best ecommerce hosting options out there, point out their pros and cons, and tell you which one to choose based on your project’s specific requirements.

But first, do you even need ecommerce hosting? Is it mandatory to make your online store functional? 🤔

Who needs ecommerce hosting?

Some will be surprised by this answer, but a specific/separate ecommerce hosting setup isn’t always required to build an operational ecommerce store.

If you’re going to be building your store with an all-in-one hosted solution like Shopify, Squarespace, or Wix, then the platform will provide you with hosting as part of the main package.

However, if you’re going to be building your store on WordPress (WooCommerce), Magento, Presta Shop, Open Cart, or any other self-hosted system, then this is when getting quality ecommerce hosting is your individual responsibility.

Literally hundreds of ecommerce hosting providers are available for you to play around with, so keep reading to learn which ones are actually going to be the best for your specific needs.

⚠️ Before we begin,  if you’re in a hurry, here’s a quick summary of the best ecommerce hosting platforms available: 

Ecommerce hosting comparison

Best ecommerce hosting compared: Pricing

Let’s face it, the price tag is the most important factor no matter what we’re buying. Be it shoes or ecommerce hosting, price matters!

And for a good reason. Chiefly, more expensive doesn’t always mean better. You have to learn how to navigate the pricing labyrinth of these ecommerce platforms and find the best solution for your particular needs. In this section, we explain what each of these hosts charges and what’s included for the price.

First, let’s look at a quick comparison table:

Now let’s look into each platform one by one:

Pricing: SiteGround ecommerce hosting

SiteGround is a budget host like Bluehost, but the pricing is easier to understand with SiteGround.

You only have to choose from three plans, all of which are reasonably priced and set up so that you also get plenty of page visits, support for a CDN and some managed elements for an online store.

Having said that, SiteGround is one of those large budget hosts, so these lower prices only apply to the shared hosting. In addition, you can expect the prices to go up after the first year if you don’t commit to multiple years in advance.

If you’re looking for things like free domain names, and top eCommerce features, then you might need to pay a little bit extra for it in advance.

If you’d like to pay more money for premium hosting, SiteGround has cloud hosting, dedicated servers, and more.

Pricing: DreamHost ecommerce hosting

Although shared hosting might seem like the unprofessional option for a lot of online business owners looking into web hosting services, it’s actually a lot better than it seems. eCommerce web hosting comes in a range of different shapes and sizes for a reason. As you begin to build your website, you’ll find that you’re paying for everything from shopping cart software to the top eCommerce plugins and transaction fees. Some website builder tools also come with their own fees to consider.

If you can cut costs by switching to shared ecommerce web hosting, and still access a good page load time and a reliable shopping cart for your site, you can save some cash. However, shared hosting is usually recommended for smaller businesses.

DreamHost offers enough features to support a basic online store.

Pricing: Cloudways Hosting

Cloudways provides a wide range of pricing options that suit several types of customers. As a result, their pricing tiers are a little more challenging to wrap your head around.

The most important thing to remember is that you only pay for what you use. Cloudways charges you hourly, though you can easily review how much this amounts to in a month. This makes Cloudways a lot more flexible for short-term or spontaneous projects. In addition, there’s no annual billing, so you’re never locked into long contracts- even on the monthly billing option.

Next, you can choose which data centers you want to opt into. Cloudways offers Digital Ocean’s own data centers and Vultr, Linode, AWS, and Google Cloud. These come with slightly different pricing, with AWS at the most expensive, starting at $36.51 per month. In contrast, DO is the cheapest at $12 per month.

You can also choose between Standard or Premium pricing.

All premium plans come with the following:

• Free SSL
• Free migration
• 24/7 support
• 24/7 real-time monitoring
• Dedicated firewalls
• Team management (account permissions)
• Automated backups
• Staging environment
• http/2 enabled servers
• SSH and SFTP access
• Optimization through advanced caches
• Auto healing
• Regular security patches
• Unlimited application installation
• The Cloudflare add-on

Thecheapest plan for $12 per month comes with the following:

• 1GB RAM
• 1 core processor
• 25GB storage
• 1 TB bandwidt

For $26 per month, you get the following:

• 2GB RAM
• 50GB storage
• 2 TB bandwidth
• Free object cache Pro

For $50 per month, it’s:

• 4GB RAM
• 2 core processor
• 80GB storage
• 4TB bandwidth

And for $96 per month, you unlock:

• 8GB RAM
• 4 core processor
• 160GB storage
• 5TB bandwidth

You’re also charged $0.033 per GB per server for offsite backup storage.

Pricing: WP Engine ecommerce hosting

WPEngine pricing (as well as most all of the other host’s pricing on this list) is far more transparent than Bluehost’s, for example.

The Startup Plan is a reasonable monthly price and it never goes up unless you require more sites or visits per month. WPEngine is a managed WordPress host, so the pricing is reasonable and it’s an extremely easy host for scaling up your business.

Not only that, but a CDN and SSL are included with all packages, along with free migrations and plenty of visits per month. You’re also on a VPS from the start, so you don’t have to mess with slow shared servers.

Pricing: Flywheel ecommerce hosting

Pricing: Kinsta ecommerce hosting

The cheapest base package, for instance, is comparable with Siteground’s most expensive managed WordPress hosting plan. So, expect to pay at least $30 per month to host your site on Kinsta.

Thankfully, all the pricing plans offer a 30-day money back guarantee. Beyond that, you can only reduce your costs by choosing the annual subscription option. Paying on a yearly basis means Kinsta will only bill you for 10 months, but grant you 12 months’ usage.

That said, Kinsta provides is one heck of a dynamic pricing schedule. It offers ten different plans, which principally vary in the number of monthly visitors, amount of storage disk space, plus the number of hosted websites.

The Starter plan, for example, provides 10 GB of storage space and accommodates only one WordPress site for $30 per month- while Pro costs double for twice the amount of feature allowance. Both of these plans, however, offer solid features for small businesses- although I find 10GB and 20GB to be a bit on the low side of the disk space spectrum.

Mid-sized enterprises, on the other hand, have 4 different Business plans to choose from. The cheapest offers 30GB of disk space and 100,000 monthly visits for 5 managed WordPress sites at $100. The highest you can pay in this category is $400 per month, after which is the large business zone.

Just like their mid-sized counterparts, the largest players have 4 hosting options to choose from. But, they don’t come cheap. Enterprise 1 costs $600 per month while Enterprise 4 will set you back a cool $1,500 every month.

Whichever you pick, the fact is, all Kinsta Hosting pricing plans come with free SSL certificates, CDN options, plus access to the Google Cloud Platform.

And in case you exhaust your monthly visits allowance, you can simply purchase an extension at $1 per 1,000 extra visits. Another feature that attracts overage charges is CDN access, which costs $0.10 per GB.

Pricing: Nexcess ecommerce hosting

This gives you a nice opportunity to test out their platform without making a big investment. After those first six months are up, you’ll know if Nexcess is right for you and if you want to continue hosting with them. On top of that, there’s also a 14-day free trial.

Here’s what you get with Nexcess WooCommerce hosting plans at each price point:

One interesting thing you’ll notice here is that Nexcess tells you what’s the recommended sales volume for each of these plans. For example, the entry-level Starter plan is rated for 500 orders per hour, which comes down to roughly one order coming in every 7 seconds. This is still the kind of volume that most new stores will be okay with.

Apart from that, all plans come with:

• automated WordPress core updates and plugin updates,
• visual regression testing tools,
• one-click staging sites,
• free SSL certificates,
• daily backups,
• iThemes Security Pro included,
• CDN included,
• integrated image compression and lazy loading,
• the Astra Pro theme included.

Pricing: Pagely ecommerce hosting

All of the plans run on high-powered VPS machines, all of which support at least 10 sites. So, it might seem like Pagely is far more expensive than the other options, but that’s because it’s for a niche group of ecommerce professionals.

To start, Pagely provides managed WordPress hosting, meaning that backups, updates, and all WordPress-related tasks are done by Pagely. Also, Pagely makes the most sense for enterprise-level organizations or agencies with numerous clients.

Heck, the cheapest plan supports 10 websites, so you should really be running 10 websites for that price. You at least know that all of the sites are going to be blazing fast and secure.

Pricing: Bluehost ecommerce hosting

The only problem is that you have to commit to Bluehost for at least three years. This is a long time to be on a shared server, especially if you plan on growing your company rapidly.

If you don’t commit to Bluehost, the monthly pricing is more like $4.95 per month, and it can jump to more than $10 per month after that first year.

The VPS hosting (which is what most of the other managed WordPress hosts offer) starts at $18.99 per month (and gets higher after the first year)–this is more expensive than Flywheel, SiteGround, and WPEngine.

The WooCommerce pricing is listed at $6.95 per month, but Bluehost doesn’t offer much more than a quick installation. And the WordPress hosting is $19.99 per month, which isn’t that much of a steal.

Overall, Bluehost is one of the best budget hosts out there. The only problem is that after a few years you end up paying the same amount as a much higher quality host like Flywheel. And you’re stuck on the shared servers of Bluehost.

Pricing: Bluehost ecommerce hosting

The only problem is that you have to commit to Bluehost for at least three years. This is a long time to be on a shared server, especially if you plan on growing your company rapidly.

If you don’t commit to Bluehost, the monthly pricing is more like $4.95 per month, and it can jump to more than $10 per month after that first year.

The VPS hosting (which is what most of the other managed WordPress hosts offer) starts at $18.99 per month (and gets higher after the first year) – this is more expensive than Flywheel, SiteGround, and WPEngine.

The WooCommerce pricing is listed at $6.95 per month, but Bluehost doesn’t offer much more than a quick installation. And the WordPress hosting is $19.99 per month, which isn’t that much of a steal.

Overall, Bluehost is one of the best budget hosts out there. The only problem is that after a few years you end up paying the same amount as a much higher quality host like Flywheel. And you’re stuck on the shared servers of Bluehost.

A quick word about ecommerce hosting prices

It sure is tempting to jump for those budget hosts! Yes, you might be able to run a smaller site on a super cheap shared server, but most online stores need more power and security. For instance, the best ecommerce hosting offers backups and SSL certificates – you should have both of these for an online store. The budget hosts most likely skip out on these.

I’m not saying that an ecommerce hosting company is bad simply because it offers some cheaper plans. What I am saying is that you should definitely consider one of the more expensive, powerful plans from that company if you’re running an online store. For example, Bluehost actually has some nice ecommerce hosting features at the $10 to $15 per month range. Any of the plans below that are best for small hobby blogs.

Furthermore, you typically don’t have to start out paying hundreds of dollars per month for hosting. If you plan on growing somewhat quickly, I like to recommend a managed ecommerce hosting plan. This might put you around the $30 per month range, and you can grow into your business. Not only that, but all of the ecommerce hosting functions are taken care of by customer service.

Ecommerce hosting: ease of use

When evaluating the ease of use for an ecommerce hosting company, we start by looking at the dashboard or cPanel. This is where the magic happens, and where you’ll often install things like WordPress or Magento. The dashboard also comes in handy for managing your email addresses, databases, domains, and more.

Most older, larger hosting companies have awful dashboards, so this is usually one of the areas where the smaller hosts win.

Ease of use: SiteGround ecommerce hosting

The interface from SiteGround is pretty outdated, so you’re working with the same type of control panel as you would with Bluehost. However, SiteGround is known for its speed (even as a shared hosting provider,) and you’re able to sign up for a complete WooCommerce package (you will get both WooCommerce and their Storefront theme preinstalled). The GoGeek plan is designed especially with ecommerce stores in mind. GoGeek plans are hosted on separate servers with fewer accounts to guarantee even better performance and come with free SSL and are PCI compliant.This provides premium ecommeerce features like PCI compliance and a free SSL.

💡 SiteGround also has a somewhat watered-down form of managed WordPress hosting, so you receive WooCommerce, a storefront theme installed, auto-updates, daily backups, and more.

You’ll see that the pricing is pretty much the same for SiteGround as it is for Bluehost, but the ecommerce offerings from SiteGround seem to stand out.

Ease of use: DreamHost ecommerce hosting

💡 DreamHost offers ecommerce hosting through a rather uniquely-optimized interface providing all the essentials you need to get your online store up and running, as well as manage the consequent business framework.

Now, if you’ve used the cPanel before, you should be able to notice right off the bat that things are different on DreamHost. In essence, you get to manage your ecommerce hosting account through a custom DreamHost control panel.

That might sound like an exciting shift from the same old cPanel we find on other hosting platforms. But then again, its overall usability could be a problem.

The thing about the cPanel is that it’s a universal interface for standardizing everything across the board. You don’t have to learn the ropes over and over again when you migrate from one web host to another.

In contrast, it might take you some minutes to get used to DreamHost‘s panel. But, ultimately, you’ll notice it’s seemingly built to offer a simple and streamlined way of managing your hosting features. So much so that it comes with fewer functionalities than the cPanel. And that translates to less power plus fewer capabilities.

Nonetheless, you still get a WordPress one-click installer. But then again, you might not even need it since DreamHost’s WooCommerce ecommerce hosting comes with WordPress plus WooCommerce pre-installed. You can skip all the usual preliminaries and jump right into the web design process.

Speaking of which, DreamHost also avails a custom click-to-edit web builder known as Remixer. It handles the underlying coding for you while you get to customize site elements through a graphical editing window. Plus, it’s super responsive in case you want everything done in minutes.

If you have a website on a different platform already, DreamHost can migrate all the files to its servers. But, unfortunately, this service doesn’t come free. Each site will cost you about $99, which could prove to be a bit costly when you’re dealing with multiple sites.

Ease of Use: Cloudways Hosting

Cloudways has a dashboard from which you can easily manage your various servers, caching, backups and restorations, and more.

You can create a new server in just a few clicks or clone an existing one to replicate your previous installations the way you like them. This also makes it quick and easy for agencies to work with Cloudways!

Migrating WordPress sites is also a breeze. The platform comes with a free migrator plugin that moves all your content across without interruption. You can also add more websites to the same server and scale resources as needed, so you don’t need to upgrade your account to add additional sites.

The dashboard also has simple team management tools that you can utilize to assign user permissions.

You can also easily change which data centers you work with. So that if you’re experiencing speed issues with one, you can quickly transition to another. With hourly pricing, your plan is updated flexibly depending on which data centers you use.

Finally, the dashboard allows you to create staging environments and quickly push or pull changes.

All in all, Cloudways comes with everything you need to manage your servers from one interface. However, some customers have said that the UI feels a little complex and outdated.

Ease of use: WP Engine ecommerce hosting

As for the interface, it’s definitely more modern than hosts like Bluehost and SiteGround, but it’s really just a list of links. It makes for a simple navigation process around the dashboard, and you can locate all sorts of information about your DNS, bandwidth, and storage. Your site migrations are also done through the dashboard, and they have an SSL page for understanding if your transactions are secure.

Ease of use: Flywheel ecommerce hosting

In terms of integrating with WooCommerce, the platform works perfectly, but getting it all setup still requires you to let the company know that you have the plugin. Why is this the case? Because the company wants to exclude certain WooCommerce pages from the cache to ensure that you get the best performance possible. Overall, you can scale up quite well with your ecommerce site, but you may find the setup process a bit tedious.

As for setting up a WordPress site, Flywheel is, in fact, a managed WordPress web hosting platform. Therefore, it does much of the dirty work for you. This includes any migration you might need, a full local development area, backup creation, and site updates.

But like we talked about before, there aren’t many tools right on the dashboard for configuring your online business and eCommerce store.  This might seem like a pain to some, but you’re typically able to contact the support team and have them do everything for you–whether it’s installing an ecommerce plugin or setting up an SSL.

Ease of use: Kinsta ecommerce hosting

And that includes updates, patches, plus site migration, which is offered as a free complimentary service.

You can also access a domain name, shopping cart, and everything else you need to take credit card purchases for your online business. That’s pretty similar for a lot of eCommerce platform web hosting solutions, including those provided by Shopify, OpenCart, Prestashop, A2 hosting, Immotion and many others.

But, if you don’t have a website already, Kinsta Hosting comes with a one-click WordPress installer to help you set up one. The whole process of choosing a plan, setting up a domain, and installing WordPress should only take you a couple of minutes.

Site migration, on the other hand, basically requires you to submit your website’s details through the Migrations tab, and voila! Kinsta’s developers will take it from there.

Well, as you work all that out, you’ll notice that Kinsta Hosting doesn’t come with the standard cPanel. Instead, it has developed its own custom panel, which I found to be considerably clean and user friendly.

It’s worth noting, however, that it revolves around typical website customization functionalities, as opposed to server administration. More specifically, you should be able to access your sites, site migrations, DNS settings, and analytics.

Now, you can bet the “sites” tab deals with the whole process of tweaking your domain and website. After installing WordPress, you can proceed to acquire plugins like WooCommerce to enhance your ecommerce capabilities. It’s also possible to shift the whole site from live to staging instances in case you need to countercheck its overall user experience.

Then to troubleshoot or follow up on your ecommerce site’s performance, you can always use the Kinsta Hosting “Analytics” tab. It provides critical details about page views, unique views, bandwidth, cache response HITs, client IPs, and much more.

Ease of use: Nexcess ecommerce hosting

The company behind Nexcess has been known for their great onboarding sequences and optimized day-one setups. What this means in plain English is that Nexcess makes your early moments interacting with the platform easy to grasp and not intimidating.

First off, all ecommerce hosting plans with Nexcess include access to a StoreBuilder module. It’s an intelligence engine tool that creates an optimized storefront structure based on questions it asks you.

For example, if you’re selling pet care products, StoreBuilder will ask you some questions about your products, market, business goals, and then propose a homepage structure based on the insights it identifies.

Once you have your site set up, Nexcess will also give you access to video tutorials about WooCommerce provided by WP 101 – a leader in WordPress training. This will help you get started and learn the interfaces quickly.

Ease of use: Pagely ecommerce hosting

The only problem is that you need to get the Professional plan for it to work effectively for a WooCommerce website.

The main reason for this is because Pagely assumes you want to scale up quickly, but in general, they only offer solid support for WooCommerce with that plan.

This is one of the easiest platforms for enabling a DNS, which is solid for making your site run quickly. In addition, you shouldn’t have any problems working with the CPanel since there are tools and buttons for handling files uploads, domains and emails.

In addition, Pagely provides managed WordPress hosting, so things like backups, security, and updates are all managed for you. Although the Pagely dashboard is great for handling billing, sites, and your stats, the fact that Pagely is a managed WordPress host means you won’t be doing most of the work yourself.

The pricing for Pagely is another thing altogether.

Ease of use: Bluehost ecommerce hosting

The Bluehost ecommerce hosting backend is easy to move around in, so you can manage email accounts for keeping in contact with your customers, and all the databases are right on the dashboard. The CPanel offers some quick buttons for creating subdomains and domains, which is wonderful for expanding upon your ecommerce empire and making other websites that may help you along the way.

That said, it’s still an ugly dashboard that can be confusing to newcomers to the ecommerce hosting game. However, you shouldn’t have a problem if you’re able to hire someone who knows what they’re doing or if you take the time to learn about Bluehost through articles and videos.

Ecommerce hosting: customer support

Customer support quality is one of the key factors when picking your ideal ecommerce host. However, this is not immediately apparent. The thing with customer support is that you’re not aware how important it really is until you actually need it.

Here’s how the customer support options compare with our hosts:

Customer support: SiteGround ecommerce hosting

SiteGround support provides 24/7 support through the phone, live chat, and email for all plans. Submit your ticket or go through the knowledge base to solve your own problems. Connecting with them on social media isn’t that bad, but I would recommend going through the knowledge base first, then trying for a live chat if that doesn’t work out.

Customer support: DreamHost ecommerce hosting

Running your business on DreamHost‘s ecommerce hosting should be a breeze. Going by the numerous tests we’ve conducted against DreamHost’s 100% uptime guarantee, this is one platform where you’ll eventually grow old without ever experiencing downtimes.

But, in the unlikely event you do, or maybe you find yourself facing other types of technical difficulties, DreamHost provides 24/7 customer support. Its in-house agents have the requisite technical knowledge, and you can access them via several channels.

My personal favorite, I have to say, is live chat. I’ve tried it out a couple of times on DreamHost, and the response so far has been great. The support staff here is pretty responsive, and their WordPress skills are seemingly advanced. A typical issue should take you only a few minutes to resolve.

And in the event you don’t require urgent assistance, you can alternatively raise a ticket via the DreamHost control panel. This option is particularly handy for long-form inquiries or anything that might require a lot of typing.

But, I guess that’s rarely the case since DreamHost has a very extensive knowledgebase. It offers in-depth insights about getting started, as well as troubleshooting and managing your DreamHost account.

Then for the few details you fail to get there, you might want to check out the DreamHost support forum. It’s a rich source of all sorts of tech info, stretching back several years.

However, if you feel a little chatty, you can always reach out to DreamHost through Twitter. Its social media team is fairly active in both sales and technical assistance.

Now, for a more personalized experience, you might consider speaking with the agents directly via phone.

Here’s the kicker though. You won’t find a dedicated telephone number. As a matter of fact, you’re not even the one who’s supposed to do the calling. Your job is essentially requesting a callback and subsequently waiting for DreamHost’s support staff to get in touch with you.

Customer Support: Cloudways Hosting

Cloudways offers both standard and expert support. Standard support is available 24/7 all year round via live chat. Here you can get assistance with any operation on the platform. Every request puts you in touch with a trained member of the Cloudways support team.

If you require additional support, you can purchase an advanced support add-on. This comes with faster response times, deeper application troubleshooting, customization support, and proactive monitoring. Advanced support costs $100 per month.

Premium support offers even more features, like a dedicated account manager, a direct phone support line, and a private Slack channel. Premium support starts from $500 per month.

Customer support: WP Engine ecommerce hosting

Support is offered 24/7 through email, but you won’t have any access to a live chat area. You can also connect via social media or consider going through the award winning knowledge base. Although the company lacks a chat box, we would argue that WPEngine has one of the the most friendly and helpful support team in the industry.

The support team also offers a phone number.

Customer support: Kinsta ecommerce hosting

The prices we’ve seen Kinsta charging for its managed hosting mean one thing- that you certainly won’t be accepting anything less than exceptional customer support.

Now, fortunately, the Kinsta Hosting support agents live up to their end of the bargain- since they are accessible 24/7 via live chat and email ticketing. I’ve tried them out a couple of times, and I was quick to notice that they know their stuff.

It’s evident that Kinsta Hosting has invested immensely in technical expertise. All the agents I’ve interacted with so far are not only responsive, but also very committed when it comes to providing quick resolutions. You can rely on them to sort out your site’s technical problems at any time of the day or night.

But, to be honest, I don’t think you’ll experience any major issues with Kinsta. Its developers have proven to be thorough at their job. The only difficulties you might face along the way are typical things relating to account management.

And thankfully, Kinsta offers a comprehensive knowledge base to help you with that. Apart from simple tutorials and clear troubleshooting guides, you get an understandable glossary with pretty much all the technical terms you might come across.

Overall, the only drawback is the fact that Kinsta is yet to set up phone support. But then again, I guess that’s debatable, considering Kinsta’s argument that their live chat and ticketing channels have been optimized to resolve issues much faster than phone.

Customer support: Flywheel ecommerce hosting

When contacting support for Flywheel you can look through the help articles, use the live chat, send in an email or call the support team. This is one of the more personable teams, so you shouldn’t have any problems with them.

We also enjoy that you gain access to a wide range of resources such as eBooks, videos, and a fun creative toolbox. I’ve worked with all of the support teams on this list, and I’d argue that Flywheel is the most accommodating. If you ask a ridiculous question, they’ll find an answer and not simply send you to a link in the knowledgebase. This is crucial when you’re running an online store.

Customer support: Nexcess ecommerce hosting

The guys at Nexcess sure do know the value of quality customer support, especially in a market like ecommerce where stakes are usually higher.

No matter what, whenever you’re facing any difficulties at all with your online store setup, you want to be able to reach support as fast as possible. Nexcess gives you that option.

Firstly, customer support is available 24/7/365. More importantly, Nexcess has support representatives that are knowledgeable about WooCommerce and will be able to handle the common issues. The same thing goes for their Magento hosting setups as well.

And it’s not just me saying that Nexcess knows what they’re doing. At the time of writing this post, they had a 4.6/5 rating on Trustpilot.

Apart from direct support, you also have access to Nexcess’ huge knowledge base, FAQs, plus there’s even a Store Builders Podcast where you can learn what works in ecommerce right now.

Customer support: Pagely ecommerce hosting

Pagely provides a support desk that is open 24/7. It’s not the easiest of the bunch to work with, but the company has a Live System Status monitor for checking how the servers are holding up.

This makes it standout in terms of support. I would recommend creating a ticket when getting started with Pagely support, since the knowledge base isn’t as powerful.

Customer support: Bluehost ecommerce hosting

Bluehost offers live chat, phone, and email support, and the wait lines are usually manageable. I tend to have problems with the chat module, but you can always turn to the extensive knowledge base if anything goes wrong.

Send in a ticket if you have your own problem, or complete your own research in the various documents they have available. I wouldn’t say it’s the best support team on this list, but it’s always available.

A word about ecommerce hosting customer support

You’re typically going to receive the best ecommerce hosting customer service with managed hosting plans. Many of these services are marketed as “Managed WordPress Hosting.” The reason for this is because you’re paying extra money for them to manage all of your ecommerce hosting, from backups to security, and updates to server maintenance.

Essentially, customer support teams are there to help you fix any problems with your website. Some of these support reps are even willing to give you tips with coding, plugins, and themes.

The best ecommerce hosting support usually happens when the customer service reps are in-house employees. These are people who are thoroughly trained about the servers, so they know pretty much everything. I personally like that better than a 24/7 support team, but others are different.

The 24/7 ecommerce hosting support teams are often outsourced. So, just keep in mind that they might not be as knowledgeable as you think.

Ecommerce hosting: security

Security: SiteGround ecommerce hosting

Some of the higher ecommerce hosting plans have SSL security and PCI compliance. An anti-hack and anti-spam system is included with all plans. The company closely monitors the servers for any security risks, and often fixes the problems before you know anything happened. The security is solid with SiteGround, but it’s a pain that you have to upgrade to some of the higher plans in order to gain SSL security and PCI compliance.

Security: DreamHost ecommerce hosting

Unlike what we’ve seen with most hosting providers, DreamHost treats comprehensive site security as a necessity. Web hosts typically offer the bulk of their protective tools as add-ons, or choose to reserve them for advanced users. DreamHost, instead, prefers availing most of them to all users for free.

In fact, the free Let’s Encrypt SSL/TLS certificate that is now a standard provision in the ecommerce hosting space began with DreamHost, among other providers. This trend has since spread to other hosts, with sites leveraging SSL for specialized data encryption.

Despite the security that comes with that, DreamHost takes additional precautions just in case someone infiltrates and snoop around its systems.

More specifically, the ecommerce hosting provider has implemented a well-reinforced firewall that runs on ModSecurity. And if you haven’t heard about it already, ModSecurity is a specialized firewall system developed for Apache servers. DreamHost has managed to make it even stronger by tweaking a couple of rules on its open-source framework.

And that’s not all. DreamHost has further supplemented its firewall with a custom malware removal tool called DreamShield. But sadly, it doesn’t come free. Rather, DreamHost charges you $3 a month to enable the DreamShield tool.

Although that sounds like a fair price, free is always better. Either way, DreamShield is extremely effective when it comes to scanning and cleaning. So, in short, while typical malware tools stop at scanning, DreamShield goes above and beyond that to remove all malware from your site.

Then to top it off, DreamHost provides domain privacy for free. If you’ve used this feature before, you might have noticed that the option of withholding your personal information during domain registration comes usually comes at a price. DreamHost, however, chooses to grant you all the accompanying privacy privileges without charging extra.

Security: Cloudways Hosting

Advanced security features are built into each Cloudways hosting plan. For example, every plan comes with free SSL security and automated backups.

Additionally, here are some other noteworthy security features:

• Bot protection for your WordPress site, ensuring uncongested traffic
• User role management to control who has access to your data.
• GDRP compliance
• Suspicious device login control. Whenever someone logs in from a new device, you’ll be notified and can react.
• Two-factor authentication
• Application isolation. Each application launched is independent of the others, thus preventing application-level issues from threatening the server.
• Login security with SSH and SFTP
• Cloudways firewalls that only allow access from specific ports. This firewall analyzes millions of sites and over 32 million requests per second to identify and block attackers and emerging threats.

Cloudways also regularly offers security patches in preparation for new cyber dangers.

Security: WP Engine ecommerce hosting

We like WP Engine in the security category, because the company provides a more personalized approach to potential problems. Not to mention, it focuses most of its security on the WordPress platform, which is not going to be the case with companies like Bluehost. Whenever a minor patch is released or a new WordPress version comes out, WPEngine completes the upgrades for you. This closes holes in your infrastructure and keeps out the bad guys. They also have real-time threat detection, keeping an eye on the health of your site at all times. The enterprise grade infrastructure is used by Fortune 500 companies, and the Enterprise plans use dedicated servers so you don’t have to share with others.

Along with security audits, code reviews and a guarantee that WPEngine will fix your site if it gets hacked, we would put this ecommerce hosting provider as the number one spot in terms of security.

Security: Flywheel ecommerce hosting

Security with Flywheel starts with the fact that some plugins are not allowed through the platform. This is because lots of plugins can open up security holes for hackers. A hacked site gets fixed for free, and since the company completes all security at the server level, you don’t have to install any security plugins. Password enforcement is strong, and the limited login attempts means that hackers are going to have a tough time. Along with automated backups, Sucuri scanning and intelligent IP blocking, you can’t go wrong with Flywheel security.

Security: Kinsta ecommerce hosting

The beauty of managed WordPress hosting is this- you don’t have to worry about applying patches and updates to seal developing loopholes. Kinsta has a team of developers that work continuously to protect your site from possible WordPress vulnerabilities. They not only update sites accordingly, but also blacklist harmful plugins.

Hosting your online store on Kinsta means you’ll get a protective layer of firewalls, malware scanners, and tight software restrictions. As a matter of fact, I was quite impressed that Kinsta continues to scan its sites in intervals of 60 seconds to pick up potential threats. Now, combine that with the free SSL encryption, and you have yourself a well-secured framework.

In the unlikely event you lose your site data, you can rely on Kinsta’s backup system to bail you out. While it’s possible to back up manually, the default platform is set up to back up your site automatically every 24 hours. Cumulatively, it can accommodate up to 14 backup instances.

That said, the corresponding restoration process is quite easy. It only takes a few clicks on the dashboard to select a specific backup instance and restore your data.

Security: Pagely ecommerce hosting

Since Pagely is another one of those hosts that put most of the focus on WordPress, it’s nice to know that the security measures are built just for that platform. They use a system called PressArmor, which hardens the network and hardware to prevent any attacks. Key based access and two-factor authentication is required for protecting ecommerce sites, and the plugin patching and malware scanning is always running. What’s more? If you get hacked, Pagely will fix your site for free. Not to mention, all plans get an SSL.

Security: Nexcess ecommerce hosting

Not a surprise at this point, but Nexcess is pretty on top when it comes to platform security as well as user-facing security features.

First off, you get free SSL certificates, which is a must for running an ecommerce store. Then, there are also automatic daily backups, which will give you peace of mind that you’ll always have a current version of your site you can go back to, no matter what. On top of that, Nexcess also has something they call their always-on security monitoring – preventing possible threats and/or attacks on your site.

Lastly, each plan comes with an integrated iThemes Security Pro plugin. This is one of the leading WordPress security plugins out there. It has some excellent features, like brute force protection, 404 detection, locking out bad users, and more. The price tag on this plugin alone is $199/year, if you were to get it separately.

Security: Bluehost ecommerce hosting

The first part of security that comes to mind is with backups. With Bluehost, you don’t have to worry much about whether you lose information during a crash, since the company makes daily, weekly and monthly backups for your information. Although the Bluehost servers are super secure for shared hosting, you’ll notice that you generally have to upgrade to a higher plan in order to gain the Site Backup Pro service, which is a more advanced way of ensuring that your content is kept intact.

Domain privacy is offered to keep your information anonymous from hackers and spammers, and the spam protection is great for keeping out harmful or unwanted messages through your email addresses. Ecommerce websites are going to need SSL certificates, so this is an option when you go through Bluehost. It encrypts data that flows through your website so that people trust you with their information. Along with unique IPs and Sitelock security, you really can’t go wrong with security on Bluehost. The only problem is that you have to upgrade as you scale up.

A word on ecommerce hosting security

You’ll find that security features are sometimes not marketed, or that transparent, from ecommerce hosting companies. This might be because their sites are too complicated or they know that customers are more interested in other features.

So, if you can’t find a page dedicated to ecommerce hosting security, simply contact the customer support team.

Ask them if they have a secure datacenter made for ecommerce hosting. What’s their uptime like and do they offer any backups for your site?

You’ll also want to know details about PCI compliance, SSL certificates, and if they offer special ecommerce hosting security such as RAID protection.

Ecommerce hosting: performance

Loading times and your overall site speed is not only a factor for your visitors but also for Google. The rules are simple; if your site is slow to load, it will also get a low position in Google.

Here’s how the top ecommerce hosts compare for site speed:

Performance: SiteGround ecommerce hosting

When you opt for the SiteGround WordPress hosting it gives you state-of-the-art WordPress performance, meaning that you have access to a one-click caching tool, which is ideal for improving your page speeds. Not to mention, the majority of the WordPress plans have free CDNs, which is something you can’t find in any of the other hosts on this page. We like SiteGround because it focuses on simplifying speed for you, yet they don’t skimp on quality.

Performance: DreamHost ecommerce hosting

DreamHost is a lot like SiteGround and Bluehost when it comes to performance optimization. Just like its counterparts, for instance, DreamHost spread out its data centers across multiple locations.

Don’t get too excited though, because all the DreamHost data centers are positioned in the US. It’s rather surprising that despite its extensive ecommerce hosting experience, DreamHost is yet to set up overseas data centers. DreamObjects is distributed globally from Irvine, California, while DreamCompute runs from the company’s Ashburn, Virginia data center.

Not bad for online stores that primarily focus on US-based shoppers. But, if you’re thinking of building a global ecommerce business, you’d definitely prefer additional options in other continents. Having all your visitors directed to US servers means poor loading speeds for some of them.

Or does it?

Well, on the bright side, it turns out you can avoid that completely. The thing is, instead of going through the trouble of building their own intercontinental data centers, DreamHost chooses to leverage Cloudflare’s expansive network.

So, don’t write them off just yet. DreamHost will hold your site’s base data on its US data centers, and then share the corresponding content files with Cloudflare. As a result, your site visitors get to load stuff from servers connected across more than 180 cities globally.

Now, while Cloudflare reduces the data transfer distance, DreamHost also does its part to achieve all-round acceleration. Its servers, for example, are not running on the outdated Hard Disk Drive technology. Instead, DreamHost uses Solid State Drives for data storage. They are much faster compared to HDDs

Then to turbocharge your online store even further, DreamHost supplements all that with a myriad of performance-enhancing tech. Some of the most notable ones include OPcache caching, PHP-7 support, and Gzip compression.

That said, I think DreamHost have purposely withheld the juiciest details about their performance features. Possibly to keep the likes of SiteGround in the dark. And I guess it’s all working because DreamHost is currently among the best performers, if not the leading provider, in the shared hosting TTFB speed tests we’ve conducted so far.

Performance: Cloudways Hosting

Cloudways boasts an uptime of 99.99%, like many other eCommerce hosting providers. But it can also help you with faster loading speeds up to 400 to 600 milliseconds.

Each plan comes with generous bandwidth, which means your website won’t slow down easily based on the resources you upload to your server.

But most importantly, Cloudways is very flexible in allowing you to access different data centers. So, if you notice speed issues with a CDN, you can transfer your server over to another. This is possible because of the hourly, flexible pricing scheme.

Performance: WP Engine ecommerce hosting

WPEngine is known for serving up websites really fast, which is a must-have for online shops that expect traffic surges throughout the year. The dedicated hardware spreads out web requests and database queries to ensure that your pages are coming up quickly. The best part is that they use a WordPress-specific Evercache system, which is known to present pages in 150 milliseconds. Compared to Bluehost, you gain better speeds from the start, which is nice for small companies who plan to scale quickly. Bluehost has the speeds as well, but you may have to upgrade along the way.

Performance: Flywheel ecommerce hosting

No configuration is required to get blazing fast speeds with Flywheel. You can add a CDN for a small fee or get it for free when going with the Professional plan. Caching plugins are not required, since it’s all done on the server level, and they even have specialty dynamic caching included with the ecommerce hosting.

Performance: Kinsta ecommerce hosting

The one thing that sets Kinsta apart from the rest of the hosting providers is its partnership with the Google Cloud Platform.

If you don’t know by now, the Google Cloud Platform is currently the most expansive server network in the world. It’s built on more than 9,000 kilometers of high–capacity Trans-Pacific undersea cable.

Now, Kinsta leverages that and many other resources on the Google Cloud Platform to deliver high-grade performance. And you can bet Google is reliable when it comes to maintenance and optimization of its infrastructure.

While many hosting providers boast of only a handful of data centers, Kinsta provides access to about 20 different locations across the globe. In fact, Google has built each of them using state-of-the-art hardware to offer unparalleled speeds and extensive scalability.

As a user, therefore, you get the chance to choose your preferred server location based on your traffic sources. And if the subsequent flow of visitors exceeds the bandwidth threshold at any point, the servers will auto-scale accordingly to maintain smooth user experience.

The specific technologies we are talking about here include PHP 7, LXD containers, Nginx, self-healing PHP and automatic MySQL database optimizations – all of which work collectively to achieve some of the best hosting performance speeds in the industry.=

Nginx, for instance, comes in handy for delivery of static files such as png, jpeg, AVI, HTML, .zip, and pdf. Consequently, thanks to the resultant optimized speeds, you’ll be able to maintain a comparatively low bounce rate, plus favorable search engine ranking.

Interestingly, Kinsta Hosting doesn’t stop there. You also have the choice of boosting your site performance further by integrating the supplementary Kinsta CDN. It works hand in hand with the existing server network to minimize page loading times for visitors across the globe.

Then to cap it off, Kinsta also comes with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. And to safeguard that, the hosting provider monitors the entire network 24/7, looking out for possible issues that might cause downtime.

Now, guess what? From the numerous tests we’ve conducted so far, Kinsta Hosting has managed to maintain some of the best performance speeds, plus consistent server uptime.

Performance: Nexcess ecommerce hosting

Nexcess seems to be doing a lot to make their servers fast and reliable.

First off, there are the performance-oriented features and technologies that Nexcess servers all support. These include:

• compatibility with the latest versions of PHP,
• Nexcess CDN – an integrated content delivery network to make your pages load faster around the globe,
• integrated image compression and lazy loading – images are the heaviest type of content for most websites; these features make sure that they’re as optimized as possible,
• integrated Elasticsearch (on higher tier plans),
• compatibility with Cloudflare along with custom page rules to optimize performance by bypassing cache.

On top of all that, Nexcess servers can scale dynamically based on the load that your site is experiencing at the moment. There’s also automatic query optimization (useful for high traffic volumes), which can reduce query counts by even 75% (as claimed by Nexcess).

Lastly, you can take advantage of Nexcess’ on-demand performance testing. This can help you troubleshoot and improve site speed for specific areas of your site.

Performance: Pagely ecommerce hosting

Pagely uses Amazon Web Services, which is known to offer fast speeds. A CDN is provided with all plans, which is wonderful for quickly delivering your content to all parts of the world. When you get to some of the VPS plans, you start to gain tons of RAM and space, which is going to support all of your products and media elements. The only problem is that these plans are expensive.

Performance: Bluehost ecommerce hosting

Most small to midsized ecommerce websites can work on shared hosting through Bluehost. You get unmetered bandwidth for all plans, and a global CDN with the Plus and Business Plus plans. You can even upgrade to High Performance with the Business Plus plan. If you’re really looking for blazing speed, and your visitor counts are increasing drastically, consider VPS hosting, which uses up to 4 CPU cores to handle tons of traffic.

Finally, the most popular websites in the world are going to need dedicated hosting to keep up their speeds. This uses incredible CPUs, going all the way up to 4 x 3.3 GHz. You can’t get much faster than that.

A word about ecommerce hosting speed

It’s not always easy to understand how your site speeds are going to be when choosing your ecommerce hosting. Some hosts will tell you about data transfer and unmetered traffic or bandwidth. These are mainly ecommerce hosting buzzwords that mean nothing. The only way to realistically test host speed it to compare two exact websites on similar servers (from different hosts). Unfortunately, this is almost impossible, and you’re still not going to get perfect results (considering a server could be experiencing high volume). Anyways, your best bet when choosing your ecommerce hosting is to know that shared hosting is always going to be slower than a VPS or dedicated server. Also, most managed ecommerce hosting options give you better server resources.

Other than that, you might try going with one of the free trials, since many of the top ecommerce hosting companies offer these. Then, you could test the speed of your site without having to pay on for each host.

Ecommerce hosting FAQ

What is shared ecommerce hosting?

Shared hosting is the cheapest form of ecommerce hosting you can find. It’s only recommended for smaller stores, since you have to share a server with a wide variety of other websites and apps. Although shared hosting is usually extremely secure through the most reputable hosts, it can cause problems with performance. Essentially, you’re sharing all of the resources of that server with other companies that have websites. Therefore, some other websites could potentially take away from your website if they have increased traffic or bulky sites in general.

The advantages of shared ecommerce hosting

• Shared ecommerce hosting is the cheapest option you can find.
• It allows you to get set up with a website within minutes.
• You still get the opportunity to manage your own dashboard for full control over your site.
• Reputable hosts usually have secure servers.

The disadvantages of shared ecommerce hosting

• Many shared ecommerce hosting companies don’t care as much about security. This can be a problem since you’re sharing the server with other people you don’t know.
• Your site performance may suffer due to the shared resources on the ecommerce hosting server.
• You shouldn’t expect any type of managed assistance from the host.

Who should choose this type of ecommerce hosting?

Shared ecommerce hosting should only be chosen by businesses that are testing out a new website or only have to sell a handful of products. You can definitely go with shared hosting as your site grows, but you should upgrade to a more powerful (more expensive) shared hosting plan. Most fast-growing stores jump to managed or VPS hosting quickly.

What is VPS ecommerce hosting?

A VPS, or virtual private server, is a step up from shared hosting. VPS ecommerce hosting is a somewhat newer solution in the hosting game, and it provides a middleground between shared and dedicated ecommerce hosting.

A VPS works by still sharing resources from one server. However, your website accesses this server virtually, and it gets its own disc space, operating system, and bandwidth. So, you have a more secure, private section of the server, seperated from all of the other apps and websites with ecommerce hosting. This gives you far more control and better performance.

The advantages of VPS ecommerce hosting

• VPS ecommerce hosting is much cheaper than a dedicated server.
• It’s also offers more security, control, and customization options compared to shared hosting.
• Many ecommerce sites find it easy to scale with VPN ecommerce hosting. This is because you can simply call up your host and ask for more resources on that server.
• Many VPS accounts have root access, giving you far more control than with shared hosting.

The disadvantages of VPS ecommerce hosting

• It’s more costly than shared hosting.
• Some hosts don’t allocate space efficiently for VPS accounts.
• You often get the same customer service you would find with shared ecommerce hosting.

Who should choose this type of ecommerce hosting?

VPS ecommerce hosting is a wonderful middle ground between shared and dedicated servers. We like it best for ecommerce sites that plan on scaling rapidly. If you have dreams of growing to a high-traffic website with impressive revenue, a VPS is probably a good idea for you. Most ecommerce sites don’t have to start with a dedicated server, but in many situations it’s best to skip the shared host and go with VPS ecommerce hosting.

What is dedicated ecommerce hosting?

As you may have already realized, dedicated ecommerce hosting means that your website or app receives its own server with nothing else on it. This means it will be more expensive but better in terms of performance.

The advantages of dedicated ecommerce hosting

• You have the ultimate flexibility and customization control with dedicated ecommerce hosting.
• You receive options for fast processors and powerful hardware. It all just depends on how much you want to spend.
• With the right people working on the server, and suitable hardware, you can get the best performance out of dedicated ecommerce hosting.

The disadvantages of dedicated ecommerce hosting

• Most hosts are only responsible for maintenance of the servers. Sometimes this isn’t even the case.
• Your server reliability depends on your hardware and people working on it.
• Security also depends on you.
• It’s definitely not the easiest hosting option to use.
• Dedicated ecommerce hosting is by far the most expensive solution.

Who should choose this type of ecommerce hosting?

Large companies are mainly the ones using dedicated ecommerce hosting. You need lots of money and capable employees to make the thing work right.

Which ecommerce hosting provider is the most popular?

In your search for the perfect ecommerce hosting platform, there’s a good chance you’ve stumbled upon some of the names we’ve talked about so far.

For this particular review, we’re going to be looking at some of the biggest names in the market, but you may have noticed that Shopify, A2 hosting, Prestashop, immotion, and a couple of other titles are missing. If you think that we need to cover those, let us know.

Which regions are the most interested in these ecommerce hosting services?

For this, let’s examine the regions in which all of these ecommerce hosting providers receive the most Google searches. This helps us see which parts of the world are most interested in these hosting companies, and if this should affect your decision at all.

When looking at all of the hosting companies, it’s clear that Bluehost wins in most regions across the globe, followed by DreamHost, then SiteGround, and the rest come last.

Best ecommerce hosting: conclusion

So, how exactly do you go about choosing the best ecommerce hosting platform?

If you’re mainly interested in low pricing, go straight to Bluehost. If you’re looking for the best support team, go with Flywheel, or WP Engine.

Of course, for a lot of people, there’s a lot more to choosing an eCommerce platform for web hosting than pricing alone. There are a lot of companies out there that offer things like free domain names and website builder tools with their web hosting service. You can even find eCommerce platforms built into hosting providers, like Shopify offers with their robust shopping cart, domain name, and credit card processing tools.

Choosing the right eCommerce hosting product means not only choosing the top eCommerce business with the best load speeds and the lowest fees. You’ll also need to think about:

• Integrations with shopping cart software
• MySQL support and HTML customization
• Plugins and add-ons, like those offered by Shopify and WordPress
• SEO for your eCommerce platform and online business
• Page load times
• Free domain names
• PCI compliant performance and lets encrypt security

Integrations with shopping cart tools is a big point to think about, as if you can only use a certain piece of shopping cart software, your chances of high transaction fees go up significantly.

In terms of features and ease of use for your ecommerce hosting, we like solutions with one click installs and support for WooCommerce. Therefore, SiteGround, Bluehost, Kinsta and WP Engine standout.

I would say my overall favorite solution is Flywheel because of the combination of pricing, speed, CDN, and customer support. You really can’t ask for more.

However, SiteGround is my personal favorite for budget ecommerce hosting. WP Engine isn’t bad as an alternative to Flywheel.

If you have any questions about implementing or choosing an ecommerce hosting provider for your online shop, drop us a line in the comments below.

Lastly, here’s the main comparison table again to give you a good overview of the top platforms and their pricing: