Hosting is the most essential element for a stable e-commerce and dropshipping store. Still, many webshop owners underestimate the power of a good hosting provider and choose the cheapest option. However, the cheapest option can become the most expensive option very fast. Hosting is the engine of your WooCommerce store. For this reason, it is very important to make a well-considered decision based on infrastructure and not on price.
In this blog post, we’ll compare the best WooCommerce hosting providers and teach you what to take into account when choosing a hosting provider in combination with dropshipping.
Why do you need a hosting provider?
A hosting provider offers you a server and database. The code of your webshop is placed on the server, and the data of your webshop is stored in the database. Data includes the content of your webshops such as products, pages, blog posts, etc., but also orders, customer data, shipping information, and more. The combination of a server and a database is mandatory to make your webshop work at all.
Often when you move a website from one hosting provider to another, you will start with the code and connect the database later on in the migration process. Until your database is connected, you will not recognize your website.
What influences the performance of your hosting provider?
There are several things to consider when choosing the best WooCommerce hosting provider. How many visitors does your e-commerce site have? How many GB of data does your database have? How many external processes are taking place, and how often? How many internal processes are taking place, and how often? How many products does your store entail?
For example, we have connected a webshop with the BigBuy WooCommerce plugin from Woosa. We have 1,000 visitors per month and have imported 15,000 products from BigBuy. These 15,000 products are updating stock levels, prices, and other product information every 60 minutes. Webhooks are processed every 15 minutes. Finally, the database has a size of 2GB.
We instinctively think of a small hosting plan. After all, you “only” have 1,000 visitors per month. However, we often forget the processes that take place in the background. The speed of updating products in bulk depends on your hosting plan (CPU processor and space in data storage). Every background process leaves traces in the form of logs, which take up the temporary hole in your database and on your server and eventually can take more space than expected in the first place.
Types of website hosting
Let’s start by explaining the differences:
Shared Hosting
With Shared Hosting the Hosting Provider will make a server available for multiple and different webshops. This means multiple webshops make use of the exact same server and related resources, such as memory limit and time limits. Different webshops can therefore influence the performance of your webshop with a Shared Hosting plan.
In the case of a Dropshipping store, it is never advisable to choose a Shared Hosting plan.
VPS
VPS is short for Virtual Private Server. This means that you will receive your own digital server from the Hosting Provider, which only you and the hosting provider can influence. This not only gives you more security but also more flexibility. You can literally change every single configuration, cause it will only impact your own website.
A VPS is the best plan to choose in combination with a Dropshipping store. However, make sure to choose a “Managed VPS” solution. Otherwise, you will spend a lot of hours and euros on configuration and maintenance, which makes a VPS way less efficient.
Cloud Hosting
Last but not least, you can choose Cloud Hosting. Cloud Hosting is similar to a VPS but has less flexibility in configurations. On the other hand, Cloud Hosting is less maintenance for both the Hosting Provider and the webshop owner.
Cloud Hosting means the Hosting Provider will allocate a certain amount of resources on 1, 2, 3, or more servers. Cloud Hosting can be scaled automatically and every website has its own “Container” with its own resources on that same server. This means multiple websites run on 1 server and the Hosting Provider scales, when necessary so that the website will not affect each other’s performance.
Best Hosting Provider for Dropshipping
Are you planning to start with Dropshipping and WooCommerce? In that case, we advise you to go for a Managed VPS at all times.
A Dropshipping store with WooCommerce entails a lot of (automated) processes, such as stock and price updates and the import of new products. To be able to run those queries (list of updates to be done), your resources should be sufficient. Therefore we advise a Managed VPS with at least 2 cores/CPU’s.
The 5 Best WooCommerce Hosting Providers
Okay, now that we have the basics, let’s take a look at the best WooCommerce hosting providers.
1. Hoasted – best WooCommerce hosting
Hoasted is a Dutch hosting provider with a very high service level. They provide not only a hosting plan but also support and maintenance. This means that Hoasted proactively works on optimizing your server, database, and running processes.
- Fast and personal support
- Specialized in WordPress and WooCommerce
- Pro-active DNA
- Both Shared hosting and a VPS
Cost: from €79.00 per month for your own WooCommerce VPS
Woosa has a collaboration with Hoasted, in which they put a copy of your webshop on one of their servers by means of a free benchmark. That way, you can immediately experience what Hoasted can do for your webshop. Interesting? Request the benchmark here.
2. Heijsen.nl
Heijsen.nl is a tiny, but personal hosting provider located in the Netherlands. They have straightforward prices and the ability to make changes for every individual case. They also work tight together with Woosa, to make your webshop work as seamlessly as possible.
- Complex tools make simple
- Specialized in WordPress and WooCommerce
- Live and staging website
Cost: from €37.00 per month for a Cloud Hosting website
3. WP Engine
WP Engine was founded in the United Kingdom and had many similarities with Kinsta. They operate worldwide and only focus on WordPress and WooCommerce websites. That says a lot about a hosting provider if you ask us.
One of the most significant benefits of the WP Engine is the platform’s simplicity. You can easily create (new) WordPress websites in their environment, migrate, copy or set up a staging environment. WP Engine is therefore often used by agencies, web builders, and online marketing agencies.
- Complex tools made simple
- Specialized in WordPress and WooCommerce
- Live and staging website
Cost: from €27.00 per month for 1 WordPress website
4. Flywheel
Flywheel used to be a stand-alone hosting provider but was recently acquired by WP Engine. As a result, they provide the same hosting functionalities as you can expect from WP Engine under a different brand name.
Flywheel is also a hosting provider specialized in WordPress and WooCommerce websites.
- Complex tools made simple
- Specialized in WordPress and WooCommerce
- Live and staging website
Cost: from €27.00 per month for 1 WordPress website
5. SiteGround
SiteGround is an excellent alternative for anyone looking for one of the best hostings for international websites due to its exceptional quality, features, and support. The company offers stable, high-performance hosting in Google Cloud Platform data centers. Plans start at $2.99.
Other hosting providers
In addition to the hosting providers for WooCommerce mentioned above, there are many other hosting providers. The most popular ones mentioned in WordPress land are Bluehost and Dreamhost. However, we do not always have good experiences with these because they mainly offer “shared hosting plans.”
We are also not a big fan of these hosting providers for WordPress because they often only support the basic functionality of WordPress. Looking at our plugins for WooCommerce and dropshipping, we need advanced functionalities. For example: include scheduled actions, cron jobs, webhooks, and the WooCommerce REST API. These functionalities are often not sufficiently supported in a standard (shared) hosting plan and, in some cases, not on a VPS.
These advanced functionalities stuck processes in your WordPress website and probably frustrated you as an entrepreneur.
Conclusion
Are you planning to set up a WooCommerce webshop that has to realize revenue and grow every month? Then invest in the best WooCommerce hosting provider and do not save money on this. Hosting is the Engine of your WordPress website, and you should carefully select it according to your goals and needs.
Hosting is one of the essential elements for a well-functioning WordPress or WooCommerce website.
