Choose WooCommerce hosting. How to avoid common mistakes.

WordPress is one of the most in-demand CMS in the world, with almost 40% of all websites built on it according to W3techs. The system is well suited for creating a simple one-page site, a blog, forum or even an online store installed as a WooCommerce plugin on any WordPress version. Today let's speak about the best WooCommerce hosting.

What is WooCommerce Hosting?

Whether you get started with a new online store or manage a website that processes millions of orders, finding a reliable and fast WooCommerce hosting solution to suit your needs is a number one concern of each WooCommerce owner. In this article we’ll describe the basic server requirements and give a couple of tips on how to avoid common mistakes.

Basically, to choose an ideal hosting for your store you will need to:

• Read the official WooCommerce server requirements for hosting
• Decide on the type of hosting and location of the data center
• Choose the desired rate and type of hosting subscription
• Choose a hosting provider.
• Order a service

Server requirements for fast WooCommerce hosting

Like any content management system, WordPress has certain technical installation requirements. Hosting providers must comply with these requirements, otherwise there will be problems with the configuration and operation of the CMS. Some plugins or integrations (including possibly the core WooCommerce plugin) won’t function as expected.

The official WooCommerce documentation lists the general requirements that you should follow in order for the CMS to work well:

• PHP version 7.4 or greater
• MySQL version 5.6 or greater OR MariaDB version 10.1 or greater
• WordPress memory limit of 256 MB or greater
• HTTPS support

However, this is not all. There are additional requirements for the best work of the shop script. For some users, they may not be required. Other optional things may include:

• CURL or fsockopen support used by WooCommerce and some integrations, e.g., PayPal IPN
• Some WooCommerce.com extensions require SOAP support
• Multibyte String support if you’re running a non-English store

Frankly, the listed additional requirements may not be checked when choosing a hosting. Servers preconfigured to work with WooCommerce usually have these settings by default.

After installing WooCommerce you will have a tab in the console called "Site Health". Here you will find the shortcomings of your server if any.

WooCommerce Hosting Types

This is the next important step when choosing a WordPress hosting. Its key difference is that you need to look not at what is offered, but at what you need. Formulate your goals and objectives for the project. After that, you can start choosing the right type of hosting. There are 3 main types in total:

The most popular option for cheap WooCommerce hosting. This is your choice if you are looking for a budget option for a site that requires a small amount of server resources. Ideal for beginner bloggers or business card sites.

An ideal option for those who lack the capacity of shared hosting, but it's too early to think about buying a tariff for a dedicated server. You are allocated space on the server, so the problems of other users will not affect you.

Here the client is assigned a separate server that works only for your site. The main type of hosting for large projects with huge traffic. With dedicated severs you get the fastest WooCommerce hosting. We haven't broken it down to the main types, but this hosting service has been gaining popularity lately - managed hosting for WordPress.

Most hosting companies give you a server with PHP and MySQL and let you do the rest. In the managed hosting solutions the providers themselves monitor the underlying infrastructure, manage WooCommerce, optimize WooCommerce, and provide support for everything related to your online store.

Read more: Managed Hosting for eCommerce: Important Things to Know

Location of data centers

The closer the better. This rule should be followed when choosing the location of server hardware. If your project and target audience are from the same country, then you should choose the same country as the location. The proximity of data centers will allow you to instantly receive a response to any problem. It also ensures a high loading speed of the site.

Read more: Why we host projects in 15 different data centers

HTTPS Hosting for WooCommerce

From the very beginning, it is important that your website is accessible over secure HTTPS. It is important for both SEO and store security. That's why you should choose a hosting option with an SSL certificate and immediately launch it on the entire site. And here is the main hitch in choosing a hosting:

✔️ You can find hosting that gives a free and auto renewable SSL certificates, no headache and missed deadlines.

Customer Support

I would like to call this point the key one. If the hosting provider does not have a 24/7 support service with convenient communication methods, then it is better to pass by. Always choose a resource where there are several main ways of communication. We would recommend the following set: online chat and ticket system in the control panel. We also recommend testing the support service. This way you will understand the true level of customer service. This method will allow you to check the integrity of the hosting providers themselves, who like to embellish the efficiency of their employees.

Read more: How to Choose a Web Hosting Provider for Your Business

Even though WordPress and WooComemrce are focused on usability, it is a complex system. It needs to be well tuned to work at optimal speed and efficiency. You have to do it yourself or hire a developer or buy managed hosting to maintain your website.

For those who do not have time to deal with the technical side of things, we have designed a fully managed and dedicated secure hosting optimized for WooCommerce.