WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce platform, with 68% usage distribution. It is specifically designed for the number one CMS, WordPress itself, and powers over 28.19% of all online stores or 22% of the top 1 million eCommerce sites worldwide.

WooCommerce itself is entirely free, meaning you can use the software whichever way you see fit on your website. However, if you want to set up an online business, you’ll need hosting. Fast forward, anyone can launch their online store with WooCommerce. However, the key to success is picking the best WooCommerce hosting provider. This way, the company will take over the technical aspects and maintenance while you get to focus on growing your core business.

Keep in mind that not all WooCommerce hosting is the same and suitable for the same people. In this article, you’ll assess our independent study and results based on expert opinion and thousands of user reviews. You’ll also learn what makes the best WooCommerce hosting services, how the hosts differ from one another, their pros and cons, and a few other exciting aspects.

If you are in a rush or eager to start your eCommerce store immediately, we won’t keep you longer. Here’s a shortcut to the results, i.e., the best alternatives for WooCommerce hosting.

Check Our Top WooCommerce Hosting Providers

1. HostArmada – Best WordPress WooCommerce Hosting
2. FastComet – Best WooCommerce Recommended Hosting
3. Cloudways – Best WooCommerce Hosting for Help and Support
4. Verpex Hosting – Best Managed WooCommerce Hosting
5. Kamatera – Best WooCommerce Web Hosting for Large Businesses

Specialized WooCommerce hosting is the best way to start your WooCommerce-powered online store. However, choosing the best provider for this purpose takes a lot of thought and understanding of the technical aspects. If you are a beginner in the WooCommerce world, you might feel lost and overwhelmed – what should you be looking at when selecting the best plan for your business?

Worry not; we are here to assist. At HostAdvice, we perform independent and category-specific testing to deliver you the best WooCommerce alternatives for your business. Our ranking consists of several steps. First, we develop lists with all significant factors in a given category. Then, we assign percentages to all elements according to their importance and contribution to the ideal WooCommerce host.

Once we have the criteria, we browse for all web hosts that might qualify for the category. If a company offers WooCommerce hosting, we test it out. HostAdvice professionals sign up for hosting plans as regular customers to test the performance, speed, uptime, customer support, and all remaining features included in the WooCommerce package.

Our practices are always up-to-date, using the latest technologies. More importantly, even, we give weight to user reviews. However, we put our efforts towards eliminating biased or paid ads. Customers are the only third party we rely upon, so it’s only fair to leave the objective and accurate comments and remove the rest.

Let’s take a closer look at the factors our experts used to select the top 6 WooCommerce hosting solutions:

• Type of WooCommerce Hosting (3%): First, you must decide whether you are more comfortable with managed or unmanaged WooCommerce hosting. If you are a newbie with no experience using security and backup plugins, you should select a managed solution. If, however, you don’t need pre-installed plugins, extra security layers, or technical support, you can get an unmanaged WooCommerce hosting plan.
• PCI Compliance (5%): Your server must be PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant if you want to do anything with your customers’ credit cards. The PCI Compliance Security Standard Council imposes this rule on any merchant that wants to process, store or transmit credit card data. This process secures customer card data, and it’s necessary even if you process a single transaction per year. Shared servers usually don’t run in such environments, meaning the bad guys can get in quickly. On the good side, modern payment gateways present a workaround for this rule because they don’t store or process credit card data but send it straight to the payment processor.
• Dedicated IP Address (3%): An IP address identifies your website on the Internet. And it’s a thing you don’t want to share with other online stores. Usually, cheaper plans will grant you a dynamic IP address. But the better alternative for SEO and eCommerce is a private IP, included in all quality WooCommerce hosting plans.
• SSL Certificate (3%): If you need encryption and authentication for your business on the web, you need an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate, which you can purchase from the web host or a third-party source. The purpose of an SSL is to keep user data secure, verify website ownership, prevent malicious parties from creating a fake version of the site, and reassure users of your quality. WooCommerce recommended hosting plans usually include a free Let’s Encrypt certificate and allow you to upgrade to more advanced versions.
• Extra Security Layers (10%): Quality WooCommerce hosting providers are entirely transparent regarding their security infrastructure and the security measures they have in place regarding your online store. It would be best to opt for a provider with firewalls, threat detection, vulnerability fixes, and other security mechanisms.
• Automatic Updates (5%): Outdated plugins frequently present vulnerability issues that hackers can easily exploit. WooCommerce recommended hosting provider will auto-update your WordPress core and all installed plugins as soon as new versions are available. If not, you’ll constantly have to track new releases and update the WP core software and WooCommerce plugins, which is not really efficient or easy. You’ll also need to watch compatibility issues with the latest updates.
• Backup Policy (6%): If anything goes wrong, you’ll want to restore your eCommerce store to the most recent version. It would be best for the provider to handle this, performing frequent, automated backups at least once a day, if not every hour. At the same time, it should be reasonably easy and fast to restore data.
• Uptime and Speed (15%): Customers worldwide expect your shop to be functional at all times. Downtime translates to loss of customers, SEO, and profits in the WooCommerce world. The same applies to speed – no one likes waiting around for your online store to load. If it takes a bit longer, customers can leave and turn to your competitors in a blink of an eye. Ideally, you should opt for Tier 3 or Tier 4 data centers. The higher the tier, the less downtime. However, the better the tier, the higher the price. In practice, you should avoid uptime of below 99.9% and opt for anything above 99.95% up to 100%. As for the speed, search for the fastest response times possible. You can ensure this by choosing a company with good servers, fast specifications, and lots of RAM. Also, check for SSDs instead of HDDs and server locations close to your target market to reduce latency. The closer the server is to a customer, the faster load times they will experience. If you have a global audience, opt for a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to improve the user’s experience.
• WooCommerce Expert Support (10%): A reliable technical support can save the day if you have a WooCommerce store. You should be able to easily reach the agents via live chat, phone, or ticket-based email. More importantly, customer service should be online 24/7, not only during work hours. Every minute your store is down, you are losing money. So, you won’t like waiting till the morning for someone to fix a bug. Instead, you’ll need help immediately. Ensure you are signing up with an experienced team of professionals with incredible knowledge of the plugin and its ins and outs. Extensive documentation and self-help articles that can walk you through the aspects of WooCommerce are also a plus.
• Other Hosting Extras (5%): It’s always nice getting some free goods instead of paying for every add-on. Consider auto-installation of WooCommerce, free domain, PHP 7+ and HTTP/2 support (for speed), professional email address and email storage, free marketing offers for advertising and attracting new customers to your store, bandwidth limits, etc.
• Pricing (5%): The cost of the hosting solution is vital for any business looking to ‘stay in the game.’ You want to obtain the best possible value for your money, meaning the service should be affordable and offer reliability and features that justify its cost. It would be best to consider introductory vs. renewal rates. While you can initially benefit from incredible discounts, with most providers, these prices don’t last forever; it’s just a way to attract your business. Also, what about the refund policy? Read the fine print to avoid a WooCommerce hosting company with high cancellation fees.
• User Reviews (30%): Finally, read what other customers say about the company. They are your best indicator of its quality and consistency. If others continually report downtime and similar issues, avoid that provider at all costs! If, however, the WooCommerce hosting provider has a good reputation and positive comments from reliable sources, you should give it a go.

What Is WooCommerce Hosting, and Who Is It For?

WooCommerce is an open-source WordPress extension that enables you to set up and deploy a fully-featured eCommerce platform. The plugin has gained immense popularity since its establishment in 2011, primarily due to its ease of use and market position as freeware.

There are many similar WordPress extensions and plugins to WooCommerce. However, none can compete. Since the same company backs WooCommerce and WordPress, it’s effortless to integrate plugins, customize your eCommerce store and address any related issues, including sales, marketing, or analytics.

WooCommerce users can also benefit from thousands of WooCommerce-specific themes and plugins offering additional functionality. You can find dozens of free WooCommerce extensions but also plenty of premium ones that cost over $30.

WooCommerce hosting is an optimized hosting solution for the plugin, equipped to handle WooCommerce stores out of the box. Unlike a shared hosting plan, WooCommerce hosting packages offer a robust environment with extensive security and SSL certificates. They can support a lot more traffic, provide scalability without downtime, streamline payments, and deliver WooCommerce-specific support from trained staff for the plugin daily.

With a WooCommerce-specific hosting plan, you’ll get an army of hosting engineers working in the background. At the same time, you get immense freedom and flexibility to work on your core business idea.

WooCommerce hosting is suitable for any small or large business worldwide willing to set up their online store using WordPress, especially beginners unfamiliar with the technical side of installing and setting up WordPress and WooCommerce. It’s a hassle-free and time-saving way to set up an eCommerce shop. This choice makes sense when you want to start selling quickly without having to hire a professional to manage the tech staff (which you’ll probably end up overpaying).

Ranking comparison between the Top Providers

Why Should You Choose WooCommerce Hosting Over Generic Hosting?

Using the best WooCommerce hosting will help you construct appealing storefronts for your online business. You may choose from a wide range of themes spanning a variety of sectors.

Customizing a WooCommerce theme is very simple, allowing you to create a distinctive and unique design for your e-commerce business. It also has all of the features you’d anticipate from a shop, such as support for real or virtual items, and you can use extensions to add extra features like memberships, subscriptions, price optimization, and so on.

Payment security is a serious concern for both users and organizations. WooCommerce recommended hosting comes with PayPal and Stripe, but you can also use add-ons to take payments via additional payment methods such as credit cards, money transfers, mobile wallets, and so on. Depending on your area and needs, you may also be able to offer payment support through various regional payment gateways due to the diverse add-ons available.

Shopping cart abandonment is among the most frustrating issues for any online company owner. This happens when users add items to their shopping carts but leave the site before finishing the checkout process. Cart abandonment costs online retailers more than 60% of their sales. That’s over 60% of your sales going down the drain. A mail recovery program is one of the most efficient techniques to reduce your cart abandonment rate.

Why Should You Pick WooCommerce?

There are several reasonable grounds why the best WordPress WooCommerce hosting is by far the most popular eCommerce platform right now.

Let’s look at some of the most captivating:

• More Than Just A Online Store – WooCommerce is more than an eCommerce platform. You may sell items and services, write consistent and engaging blog material, and advertise your business all from a single platform.
• Compatibility with WordPress – There is no doubting that the fact that WooCommerce is based on WordPress instantly boosts its reputation for dependability, trustworthiness, and flexibility. Not to mention that WordPress is incredibly safe at its core, ensuring that your online store is always protected from outside intrusions.
• Support – WooCommerce offers a sizable user base that complements the previously established WordPress community. You may contact WooCommerce customers from all around the world whenever you need online store inspiration, technical help, or a proposal of your own.
• Sell Everything – On the market, there are various important e-commerce platform rivals. WooCommerce, on the other hand, is constantly one step ahead, allowing you to sell anything, even physical things, solutions, digital downloads, and information. It even lets you schedule appointments.
• Developer-Friendly – WooCommerce is widely regarded as the most consumer-friendly eCommerce platform available. However, WooCommerce was designed with developers in consideration, so individuals with advanced expertise may also benefit from this plugin.
• Open Source = Customizable – Because WooCommerce is completely open-source, you have total control and ownership over anything and everything on your website. You can add an infinite number of goods and users, as well as process an unlimited number of orders. Furthermore, if you are technically skilled, you may edit and tweak everything you want.

Benefits of WooCommerce Hosting Over Generic Hosting

Typically, WooCommerce hosting includes:

• Quick WordPress and WooCommerce installation so you can start working on your shop straight away.
• Daily backups ensure that your data will always be protected.
• Increased security to keep your user information safe.
• Support personnel who are WooCommerce specialists.

Choosing a WooCommerce hosting package has several advantages, and here are the main ones:

• Additional Resources – To begin with, you’ll have more resources to manage an online business than you would with a standard shared hosting package. Because maintaining an online store requires more resources than running a smaller website or a blog, choosing a WooCommerce hosting package provides you with greater bandwidth. As a result, you can count on a more advanced, high-quality hosting service from the start.

• Maintain Simplicity – Because WordPress and WooCommerce are already installed on your hosting account, you don’t have to go through the extra procedures of installing them. As a result, WooCommerce web hosting makes it simple to build an online store, even for inexperienced WordPress users.
• Get a Free SSL Certificate – When you buy a WooCommerce hosting package, almost all companies provide a free SSL certificate. SSL is an industry-standard security technique that establishes an encrypted connection between your website and your visitor’s browser. Obtaining an SSL certificate is required if you wish to incorporate Stripe transactions into your WooCommerce shop in order to securely handle credit card payments. In fact, if you’ve incorporated an SSL certificate into your website, your clients are encouraged to trust it since it assures them that buying a product from your store is proven to be safe and protected.
• Strong Security – Because hundreds of websites are hosted on a single server, shared hosting plans have additional security risks. With a WooCommerce hosting package, you can be certain that your web host has undertaken enough security precautions to keep your site safe. Furthermore, you can be confident that your WooCommerce shop is running on safe servers and data centers.

In a word, WooCommerce hosting services include all of the hosting options you’ll need to build your WooCommerce online store.

Pros and Cons of WooCommerce Hosting

WooCommerce hosting sounds fantastic, but it has its own set of benefits and drawbacks.

Pros

Cons

Bonus Features You Can Expect with WooCommerce Hosting

Regardless of the fact that WooCommerce has all of the pre-built functionality required to run a working online store, it is vital to realize that for those who want a bit more, there are a plethora of certified WooCommerce extensions available to meet your requirements.

• WooCommerce Memberships - Make a membership site, reserve unique items for current subscribers only, add invite-only parts to your web store, and even provide members with exclusive blog material.
• WooCommerce Bookings - It’s ideal for businesses that sell services since it allows visitors to make appointments.
• Dynamic Pricing - Conveniently create a mass or special discounts depending on pre-defined rules such as total product amount, total purchase in a cart, customer role, and more.
• Facebook for WooCommerce – Improve your customer interactions, attract a larger audience, and even directly sell from your Facebook account to take your marketing plan to the next level.
• Stripe – Accept payments with the well-known Stripe payment channel.
• WooCommerce Google Analytics – This plugin provides basic e-commerce analytics metrics.
• WooCommerce Subscriptions – Sell subscription-based items to secure a consistent source of money each month.
• Smart Coupons – To increase sales and decrease cart abandonment, create, distribute, and administer coupons, credits, and gift vouchers.
• Paypal by Braintree – PayPal, like Stripe, is among the most well-known and preferred payment methods for online retailers. This add-on allows PayPal, credit card, and direct debit payments and is available to both US and non-US shop owners.
• Name Your Price – Allow clients to set their own prices for certain items and services in your web store.
• Sensei – With the Sensei add-on, you can create online courses, publish lectures, and add engaging quizzes to your web store. You may also demand user registration, create course requirements, and, of course, fee for your content.
• WooSlider – WooSlider is a fully responsive slider plugin designed exclusively for WooCommerce businesses that allow you to emphasize your most gorgeous product photos, complete with numerous content kinds, animations, layouts, and more.

Another of the arguments WooCommerce is so fantastic is because it is more than just an eCommerce platform.

• PCI Compliance – If you keep, handle, or transfer credit card information on your site, regardless of size, you must host it with a PCI-certified hosting company. These security requirements are in place to safeguard sensitive data transmitted between your customer’s device and your website throughout a payment transaction. However, anybody processing payments through a gateway with its own servers, such as PayPal Standard, is exempt from PCI compliance since client data is already safeguarded and compliance is handled by the gateway. The merchant is responsible for PCI compliance. While WooCommerce is not PCI-compliant by nature, they do provide a variety of payment gateway add-ons that will take care of this important issue for you.
• SSL Certificates for Online Store Security – Online store operators should install an SSL certificate on their website to safeguard data exchanged between a customer’s browser and their website’s server. WooCommerce, like PCI compliance, does not give SSL certificates. Most WooCommerce hosting providers, on the other hand, sell SSL certificates and assist you in installing them on your website. In reality, several even offer free SSL certificates, so online retailers have no reason not to secure their online stores.
• Payment Gateways for Concluding Transactions – A payment gateway is required for all online stores so that customers may pay for their products and services. When selecting a payment gateway, it is critical to examine factors such as pricing, location, safety, and support.  I quickly mentioned two of the possible payment channels for WooCommerce: PayPal and Stripe.  Having said that, the adaptable WooCommerce platform provides online shop owners with over 100 payment gateways, allowing merchants from all over the world to quickly process cash on their online store. Some of the most popular are: Authorize.net, 2Checkout, Amazon Pay, PayFast, Square, Braintree, FirstData, WorldPay, SagePay, and Klarna.

Best WooCommerce Hosting Services: Final Recommendations

Finally, data shows that WooCommerce is a clear front-runner among eCommerce systems on the market today. Aside from that, there are other factors to consider while establishing an online store, like which WooCommerce hosting company you will choose.

Remember that most hosting companies include a cash-back guarantee so that if the one you pick isn’t functioning for your WooCommerce business, cancel it and try again. There are several alternatives available. When it comes to selecting an eCommerce platform, though, WooCommerce comes highly recommended!