Tuesday, September 6, 2022

Compare The Best Ecommerce Hosting Providers

Want to jump straight to the answer? The best ecommerce hosting provider for most people is Hostinger or Liquid Web.

You make several important decisions when building your ecommerce store. One is choosing the best ecommerce hosting provider that will help you deliver optimal shopping experiences. From thwarting sluggish websites and lack of optimal security to ensuring fast loading speeds and uptime, there’s a lot riding on your decision.

This guide presents the five best ecommerce hosting providers, along with a quick section to help you identify the best option for your needs.

The Top 5 Best Ecommerce Hosting Providers

  • Hostinger — Best for Online Sellers With a Budget
  • Liquid Web — Best for Managing High-Traffic Websites
  • Bluehost — Best for WooCommerce Websites
  • SiteGround — Best for Smaller Online Stores
  • InMotion — Best for Starting and Scaling an Online Business

Wondering what makes these service providers the best in the market? I’ve got you covered.

Hostinger — Best for Online Sellers With a Budget

  • One-click installations with diverse CMSs
  • 99.9% uptime
  • SSL and weekly backups
  • Highly affordable plans
Try risk-free for 30 days

Having an extensive budget isn’t a prerequisite to ecommerce success, especially when you have web hosting providers like Hostinger.

It offers user-friendly, one-click installations with several variety content management systems like WordPress with WooCommerce and PrestaShop, while SSL and weekly backups with firewalls and server monitoring ensure the best possible security for your online venture.

Your website is hosted on custom-built servers equipped with LiteSpeed web servers that are optimized to deliver blazing-fast page loading speeds.

Screenshot of Hostinger web page for Ecommerce Hosting

The fact that Hostinger has seven data centers around the world (the US, UK, Lithuania, Netherlands, Indonesia, Singapore, and Brazil) means you can host your website closest to your target audience. This allows you to reach optimal speed, eliminate any lag, and enjoy 99.9% uptime.

There is also an access manager feature to facilitate easy collaboration. Create separate accounts for your team members and have them help you run your online store.

Despite these fantastic features, Hostinger remains one of the most affordable ecommerce hosting providers on the market.

Pricing

Under Hostinger’s ecommerce hosting plans, you can choose from the following two categories:

WooCommerce Hosting

  • Woo Starter — $3.99 per month, and $7.99 per month when you renew
  • Woo Premium — $11.59 per month, and $12.99 per month when you renew
  • Woo Business — $23.99 per month, and $39.99 per month when you renew

PrestaShop Hosting

  • Premium Shared Hosting — $2.99 per month, and $6.99 per month when you renew
  • Business Shared Hosting — $3.99 per month, and $8.99 per month when you renew
  • Cloud Startup — $9.99 per month, and $19.99 per month when you renew

There’s also a 30-day money-back guarantee on all the plans.

Liquid Web — Best for Managing High-Traffic Websites

  • High-performance features
  • 100% uptime
  • Managed VPS hosting
  • 24/7 server monitoring
Try VPS hosting for 7 days free

If your website consistently has high traffic and downtime isn’t an option, Liquid Web is the ecommerce web hosting provider for you.

It’s packed with high-performance features and comes with a 100% uptime agreement backed by service level agreement (SLA). You essentially have the ultimate guarantee of speed and reliability when it comes to web hosting with this.

Expect a one-click installation process with popular CMS platforms like WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal. The fact that Liquid Web is a managed VPS hosting service means you don’t have to deal with complex VPS technicalities yourself and can focus on running your online store.

Screenshot of Liquid Web page with headline that says "A Platform For Every Kind of Store" and descriptions of how Liquid Web helps physical product stores and digital stores

It’s designed with a user-friendly and professional control panel for essential and advanced configurations and has no limits on the number of products you can sell. You also get website staging, no traffic limits, several premium features that help maximize sales, and top-notch customer support.

In terms of security, you get fully protected servers and SSL certificates to protect your website. Custom firewalls, 24/7 server monitoring, and off-site backups make Liquid Web one of the most reliable hosting providers on the market.

Admittedly, Liquid Web is priced higher than the industry average. But considering the features on offer makes it a worthy investment, especially if you run a world-renown website.

Pricing

Liquid Web currently offers the following three ecommerce hosting plans:

  • Dedicated Hosting — Starting from $169 per month for 16 GB RAM
  • VPS Hosting — Starting from $25 per month for 2 GB RAM
  • Managed WooCommerce Hosting — Starting from $13.30 per month for one store

A 7-day VPS free trial is also available.

Bluehost — Best for WooCommerce Websites

  • Fully managed WooCommerce hosting plans
  • Simple setup process
  • Free domain registration and SSL certificate
  • Prompt customer support
Try free for 30 days

For years, Bluehost has been the standard choice when it comes to web hosting—and it’s still an excellent option for your WooCommerce store.

Under its fully-managed WooCommerce hosting plans, WooCommerce comes pre-installed. Getting started is super easy too—simply set up the basics, install plugins, and add products. What’s more, you can also enlist the help of the Bluehost team to list your business on Google, so more customers can find your online store organically.

Screenshot of Bluehost website page for WooCommerce online stores with headline that says "Open your online store and welcome the world."

Bluehost offers users several useful freebies.

Expect free domain registration with domain privacy, a free IP address for setting up a custom SSL certificate, and CodeGuard Basic for easy backups. Many plugins also come pre-installed as add-on features, including Jetpack (backup, speed optimization, security), email marketing tools, and analytics-focused themes and modules.

Other features include a user-friendly dashboard, a customizable cPanel, and prompt customer support.

Pricing

Bluehost offers monthly, annual, and three-month plans under its WooCommerce hosting offering. Naturally, the longer your time commitment, the cheaper prices.

That said, you can choose between two categories:

Online Store

  • One month — $29.95 per month
  • 12 months — $9.95 per month
  • 36 months — $9.95 per month

Online Store + Marketplace

  • One month — $49.95 per month
  • 12 months — $12.95 per month
  • 36 months — $12.95 per month

Your plan will auto-renew at the regular rate once the subscription expires.

Bluehost also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee and a 30-day free trial.

SiteGround — Best for Smaller Online Stores

  • Auto-installation included
  • 99.98% uptime
  • 24/7 customer support
  • Free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate
Try free for 30 days

In addition to offering tailored hosting for major ecommerce platforms like WooCommerce, Magento, and PrestaShop, SiteGround also takes customer satisfaction to the next level.

Auto-installation makes setup easier than ever, while content discovery networks (CDNs) like Cloudflare help improve loading speeds to keep visitors happy. Choose between 18 shopping cart apps, and get a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate on all plans.

You get exceptional 24/7 customer support through live chat, phone, and ticketing. Other business essentials are also covered, including email accounts for marketing, free eShop transfer, and unmetered bandwidth.

In a nutshell, you get everything you need to start your ecommerce business.

Screenshot of SiteGround web page for Managed WordPress Hosting

SiteGround is also one of the most security and speed-focused services on the market. A custom PHP setup, Nginx web server, 3-level caching, and onsite optimization significantly improves speed, whereas web-application firewalls (WAFs), daily backups, and constant monitoring enhance security.

Plus, the guaranteed uptime is around 99.98%, which converts to just about one hour and 45 minutes of downtime every year.

Pricing

SiteGround offers the following three hosting services:

Web Hosting

  • StartUp — $3.99 per month
  • GrowBig — $6.69 per month
  • GoGeek — $10.69 per month

WooCommerce Hosting

  • StartUp — $2.99 per month
  • GrowBig — $4.99 per month
  • GoGeek — $7.99 per month

WordPress Hosting

  • StartUp — $3.99 per month
  • GrowBig — $6.69 per month
  • GoGeek — $10.69 per month

Every plan comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, too.

InMotion — Best for Starting and Scaling an Online Business

  • One-click shopping cart installations
  • Unlimited bandwidth
  • Pre-equipped with SSD space
  • Automatic backups
Get started now

InMotion’s ecommerce web hosting service is an excellent option for those looking to build or scale their online businesses.

Its basic shared plans come with unlimited bandwidth and free SSL certificates. Premium plans include unlimited storage and websites. One-click shopping cart installations and multiple ecommerce apps further make starting an online store quick and hassle-free.

Screenshot of InMotion pricing page

One significant advantage of InMotion is its top-notch security.

Alongside SSL certificates, you can schedule automatic backups to secure your data and get regular malware protection. Note that the security offering isn’t very advanced but adequate to protect your store optimally.

All InMotion accounts are pre-equipped with SSD space to optimize loading speeds. In fact, SSD-powered servers are 5-20 times better performing compared to traditional HHD sites.

InMotion also offers prompt customer support, where the staff is required to undertake 160 hours of customer support training before starting the job. Other than that, expect informative answers through its 24/7 live chat, phone, and email support.

Pricing

InMotion offers the following ecommerce hosting plans:

SSD Shared Ecommerce Hosting

  • Core — $2.99 per month
  • Launch — $5.99 per month
  • Power — $5.99 per month
  • Pro — $13.99 per month

SSD VPS Ecommerce Hosting

  • VPS 4 GB RAM — $19.99 per month
  • VPS 8 GB RAM — $39.99 per month
  • VPS 12 GB RAM — $49.99 per month
  • VPS 16 GB RAM — $59.99 per month

Note the above prices are a part of InMotion‘s bi-yearly offering. You can also choose between monthly, annual, and triannual plans.

How to Find the Best Ecommerce Web Hosting Provider for You

Affordability shouldn’t be the only criteria when evaluating ecommerce web hosting providers. Look for an option that can not only grow with you but also adequately meet your unique requirements.

Here are the criteria I use to choose the best ecommerce web host for my needs:

Development Experience

Do you have a lot of web development experience? Would building and maintaining your website distract you from the actual selling?

If you have adequate web development experience, you can consider purchasing your hosting, ecommerce platform, and extensions separately. If not, it makes more sense to look for all-in-one hosts.

Similarly, you must decide the level of control you want.

For instance, if you want to customize a website with unique enhancements or offer a non-standard business model, choose a premium platform with an extensive feature site. Alternatively, a standalone hosting plan that allows you to build your online store from scratch will also make a feasible option.

Reliability

To check how reliable a hosting service is, look up their uptime.

Ideally, you want an ecommerce hosting provider that assures you 99.95% or higher uptime. Otherwise, you’ll be left hanging when you experience large spikes in traffic and miss out on huge sums of revenue during Black Friday or the last-minute Christmas shopping rush.

Also, read customer reviews to get a better idea about a prospective solution’s uptime.

Level of Support

Think about your level of IT knowledge.

If you would describe it as basic, choose an ecommerce host with a user-friendly interface and resources. Make sure they also offer a high level of support to help you troubleshoot issues when needed.

Even generally, you should pick hosting providers that have customers raving about their customer support. I immediately veto companies that don’t offer 24/7 chat features, ticketing, and email support.

The Top Ecommerce Web Hosting Providers in Summary

After weighing the pros and cons, Hostinger and Liquid Web are my top choices for the best ecommerce web hosts. Not only do they have excellent uptime but also offer diverse web hosting options and features that will help you run your online business successfully.

As your website goes, you also want a hosting provider that can accommodate your growing needs. Always remember to factor in your long-term plans alongside your immediate needs to make the right choice.



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