Best WooCommerce Hosting 2023 [Performance Tests Included]

We’re at it again, doing detective work and conducting extensive research—so you don’t have to! This time, we’re focusing on the BEST WooCommerce hosting of 2023. And of course, we’re including performance tests for all the different competitors.

Before we get started and look at the different hosting providers, let’s get a few definitions out of the way.

What is WooCommerce and WooCommerce hosting?

WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce platform built for WordPress. It was officially launched on September 27, 2011, and rose in popularity thanks to the plugin’s simplicity and customizability, becoming a fan favorite for small- to large-sized businesses running online shops through their websites. Such a fan favorite in fact, that it has the largest market share of over 39% among the entire eCommerce industry! Once installed and activated, WooCommerce allows you to sell any kind of product or service online (physical or digital), easily collect payments for them, geolocate your customers to make shipping, currency, and taxes simpler, and so much more!

So, if you’re looking to add an online shop to your website, simply go for WooCommerce. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, not quite so simple when we consider the following: not all hosting providers are ideal for WooCommerce. To benefit fully from all that WooCommerce has to offer, you have to have a solid, fast, and reliable WordPress hosting platform to begin with. While you can run WooCommerce on any type of WordPress hosting, you should aim to look for one that is optimized for WooCommerce—offering WooCommerce hosting.

In this guide, we’re going to look at 9 different factors that transform regular WordPress hosting into good WooCommerce hosting and see how each of our hosting providers does.

Disclaimer

Disclaimer: We kept this guide as neutral as possible to avoid any bias. We bought subscriptions to every single hosting provider, used the exact same layout for the testing website and the same plugins/additions, and if something was not clear, we reached out to the relevant hosting provider’s customer service.

But, first thing first, let’s get to know each of our 5 competitors, the plans we tested, and their pricing:

• 10Web: An integrated AI platform, offering several features for hosting WooCommerce sites efficiently with minimal overhead. We tested the AI Ecommerce Starter Plan for $15/month.
• SiteGround: A good quality web hosting company that provides shared and cloud hosting. We tested their Managed WooCommerce Hosting StartUp plan for $14.99/month.
• DreamHost: A popular option offering a variety of hosting plans, some shared, some dedicated, and DreamPress, a premium managed option. We tested the DreamPress WooCommerce hosting plan for $16.95/month.
• Bluehost: A very affordable shared WordPress hosting plan, with some nice features included. We tested the Standard WooCommerce hosting plan for $19.99/month.
• GoDaddy: An attractive option for beginners and website managers with a modest budget, with the biggest market share for hosting. We tested the WooCommerce Hosting plan for $19.99/month.

Now that we’re all familiarized with all the hosting providers we will be examining closely, we can begin!

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Best WooCommerce hosting comparison

What are we going to be looking at, exactly? Here’s a sneak peek:

• Which hosting is the fastest WooCommerce hosting?
• Which hosting is more scalable?
• Which WooCommerce hosting has the most responsive support?
• Which WooCommerce hosting has the best backup solution?
• Which WooCommerce hosting is most secure?
• Which WooCommerce hosting has the most intuitive dashboard?
• Which hosting offers the cheapest storage price?
• Which hosting provider offers team collaboration features?
• Which hosting includes hidden costs and limitations?

Good luck to all our competitors, let’s see who comes out on top!

Which hosting is the fastest WooCommerce hosting?

Speed. It’s important for any type of website, but particularly crucial for eCommerce as it can be the difference between making or losing a sale. Google equates low PageSpeed scores to a “huge missed opportunity”, and notes:

Google truly cannot be any clearer than this on why speed matters.

HubSpot notes that since web page load time refers to how fast (in seconds) all content on a web page loads, the PageSpeed scores you would see reflect “page type, user behavior, file sizes, website server/host, inefficient code, hotlinking, and too many plugs and/or widgets.”

So what exactly do the numbers signify?  For Google, there are essentially three categories:

• 1-49 (over 4 seconds): slow
• 50-89 (2.5 to 4 seconds): average, needs improvement
• 90-100 (under 2.5 seconds): fast

According to research Portent conducted in 2019, “the highest eCommerce conversion rates occur [on pages with load times] between 0 and 2 seconds”, or those with a PageSpeed score of 90+.

With Google’s shift to mobile-first indexing, it is also wise to prioritize the speed of your website on mobile. According to Jill Streit, a website strategist at Blue Frog:

Google has confirmed that “53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer than three seconds to load,” which again translates to anything with a PageSpeed score of less than 90.

But what is PageSpeed Insights exactly? Well, it’s a website for checking a site’s Core Web Vitals (CWV), which show how well your site renders the heaviest content, responds to the user when they interact with a page and keeps the visual elements stable. The scores are crucial for ranking and SEO. PageSpeed also assigns an overall score for both mobile and desktop environments based on CWVs.

You can easily use PageSpeed Insights to check your site’s performance. Below we list the overall scores for Mobile and Desktop for several hosting providers.

To test the websites, we ensured that the content on all the sites was the same to avoid a bias in the results. Also, we did not turn on PageSpeed Booster or switch to a CDN when testing 10Web.

The results clearly show that 10Web has the highest Desktop and Mobile Score. We deliberately turned off PageSpeed Booster and Cloudflare’s CDN to keep the comparison.

Using the CDN and PageSpeed Booster will improve the hosting performance even further.  You can get PageSpeed Booster and CDN together in the AI Ecommerce Premium plan costing $55/month.

Which hosting is more scalable?

When you opt for a hosting provider, you are also opting for their specific bandwidth and storage limitations. As your eCommerce site grows, you want your hosting provider to work with you—at a small additional cost. Scalable hosting allows you to quickly increase bandwidth, storage, or other resources to meet your business’s growing needs.

So, for example, when a website experiences higher than usual traffic, it does not affect the website’s performance. If you run an eCommerce site to sell stuffed bears, your site may experience higher than normal traffic during the holiday season. If your hosting is not scalable, the website will have performance and speed issues, and instead of reaping the benefits of an increased audience and therefore increased sales, you can end up with fewer sales, and the only thing in abundance will be unsatisfied customers! Many websites find it difficult to predict traffic patterns and growth—that’s where auto-scaling becomes crucial. Let’s take a look at how our 5 hosts did in this regard:

10Web

10Web uses elastic scaling, effectively meaning there are no hard limitations set in place. So if you are selling stuffed bears like in the above example, you don’t need to worry about any downtime or speed issues as a result of a spike in traffic around the holidays. Since 10Web also automates the scaling process, users also do not need to constantly keep tabs on their website traffic to avoid possible performance issues.

While 10Web doesn’t limit traffic and storage, you do get an additional charge if you go over a certain threshold. However, you don’t have to upgrade to a higher plan for extra storage and traffic.

SiteGround

With SiteGround’s WooCommerce Hosting StartUp plan, there is no exact limit for visits, but the approximate estimation is around 10,000 visits. If the website is well optimized, it may work well with higher traffic, as long as the other server limits have not been exceeded (such as CPU, disk space, etc.). If more resources are required, a user can upgrade the hosting to the next plan and only pay the price difference between the packages for the remaining months until expiration. The plan includes an overall 10GB of storage, which includes files, databases, and emails. The server backups are stored separately and do not take up any of the space on your account. The plan is not scalable and if a user needs more resources they would need to upgrade to a higher plan.

DreamHost

DreamHost’s DreamPress WooCommerce hosting plan includes 30GB SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, and an approximate 100,000 monthly visitors limit. The 100,000 monthly visitor allowance is not a hard limit, as the hosted site may be able to receive more—or less, depending on the frequency of the traffic and how well-optimized the site is. The service is not automatically scaled, so users would need to upgrade to a higher plan. When looking at their 30GB SSD storage, it’s important to add that this is only for the web files and database, the backups are not included in this limit.

 Although the service offers unmetered bandwidth, data transfer speed can suffer if traffic is high. However since traffic is limited to 100,000 monthly visitors, unmetered bandwidth doesn’t add much value.

Bluehost

For Bluehost, their Standard WooCommerce hosting plan supports a maximum of 7000 to 8000 visitors daily or a monthly limit of 210,000. With any increase in visitors and higher traffic, the hosted website will slow down and the only option in this case would be to upgrade to a better-suited plan. While there are no storage limitations, there is a 200,000 file performance limit.

GoDaddy

WordPress Ecommerce Hosting plan includes unlimited SSD storage and unlimited monthly visitors. When we spoke with customer support representatives, they mentioned that the eCommerce plan would be able to handle unlimited monthly visitors and also comes with CDN. The plan can handle multiple visitors and traffic peaks with no additional fees or upgrades necessary.

Which WooCommerce hosting has the most responsive support?

No matter how great your hosting provider or plan is, you certainly want to make sure they also provide great customer support. Trust us, when you find yourself in a situation where you need help or guidance for your online shop, it will make a world of difference in how fast and useful the responses are!

10Web

With 10Web, you can expect the first reply time in a chat to be about a minute, with a chat satisfaction rate of a whopping 95+! Ticket escalation rarely takes over 24 hours, and the hosting platform prides itself on an individual approach to all customers. As 10Web’s support staff is comprised of WordPress experts, users have an added appreciation for receiving their answers from those who know the platform best.

SiteGround

The first reply we received from SiteGround’s support team was fast and the representative was also very knowledgeable and understanding. She was able to quickly answer our specific questions while being generally very helpful.

DreamHost

In our DreamHost experience, it did take a bit longer for the agent to first join the chat, and our question was misunderstood. Once we clarified, he was able to provide help. Through the course of our hosting plan, we contacted their customer support multiple times, and overall the representatives we communicated with were very friendly. DreamHost also has agents who specialize in eCommerce hosting, and my chat was immediately passed over to them when more detailed information was required.

Bluehost

When you contact Bluehost via chat, the first thing they focus on is identifying you as their customer. Even when asked a very simple question, such as: do you provide managed or WordPress hosting?, this is what you can expect to see as a reply:

Hello! Thank you for contacting live sales & support! My name is “……… ” and I am happy to answer your questions. But, before we get started can you kindly provide your email address and the domain you are looking to set up/have already set up with us.

Our first assumption is based on this? They will not answer our questions properly unless we’re already a customer. There is also a very pesky character limitation in the chat, so when we needed to explain something, we’d have to divide up the message into several smaller messages, which feels like a very unnecessary added frustration to the overall experience. We also noted that whenever we had two Bluehost tabs open, the chat window would disconnect frequently. When logged in to our account, we were not able to find the button to contact their support team from our dashboard—we would need to continuously use this link, even when we had an account and were logged in.

Overall, the representatives unfortunately do not provide very detailed answers. And to even get to answers, you have to paraphrase and really narrow down your questions and follow-ups constantly.

GoDaddy

Our experience with GoDaddy’s support almost left us speechless. But, we reminded ourselves that we were writing this comprehensive guide, so we turned our shock and frustration into something legible—with no profanities!

If you have a VPN and the location is set to the USA, the chat button appears and is accessible. However, without a VPN and based on different regions, we only received access to the Russian homepage, which is completely in Russian and there is no chat button to be found most of the time. The chat button may not appear, for example, if the chat queue is busy. In those cases, we had to wait for an hour for the chat button to be clickable again to connect to it. For users outside of the USA or with no VPN, it’s a pretty different experience—and a bad one, at that.

However, the chat box itself—when we were actually able to connect to it, left a lot to be desired as well. It felt like an obstacle course to just reach help! We’d even have to click several buttons for the chat box to effectively shut down. And heaven forbid you don’t pay 100% attention to the buttons while trying to shut down the chat box because if you click the wrong one, you will have to click 10 more to close the chat window.

The entire process was beyond frustrating, and it honestly felt like they wanted to make it as inconvenient as possible to reach out to them. Once you do, however, the system says the agent will reply appropriately in 7 minutes. After the 7 minute mark, you will be asked if you still need help. If you don’t answer, or are delayed in answering, the chat automatically closes and you have to start the entire process again. When you answer as fast as your fingers allow you to type “YES!”, the system then lets you know an agent will join in about 8 minutes. A wonderful experience, is it not? We honestly spent close to 2 hours trying to get our first reply.

We also found that we had to contact several agents and double-check answers as sometimes the responses given to the same question by different representatives did not match. Like Bluehost, representatives did not really provide detailed answers, making us feel that there are custom texts used that do coincide with the answers needed, but only cover it partially.

Which WooCommerce hosting has the best backup solution?

We like to drop harrowing facts like this whenever we talk about the importance of backup solutions:

Need we say more?

Here we are not only looking at details regarding general backups, but also if the backups include both database and files, how often backups can take place, and how easy it is to restore a hosted website. All of these factors are necessary to get the best picture, and we have all of this important information conveniently included in the below chart:

Which WooCommerce hosting is most secure?

The level of security offered by a hosting provider is important in any and every situation. In the case of eCommerce websites, however, security is even of greater importance because it’s not only your own website and data you are protecting, but also your customers’ valuable and sensitive information. We will gladly quote WooCommerce itself here to further cement this point (emphasis added):

So let’s see which of our hosts live up to WooCommerce’s standards—without the use of any third-party specialized solutions like Sucuri or Wordfence, of course.

10Web

10Web’s built-in Security Service effectively secures your websites by scanning them for vulnerabilities, suspicious file modifications, malware detection, DDoS attacks, brute force attacks, and SQL injections. Websites hosted on 10Web are monitored and secured 24/7. Additionally, 10Web provides detailed information on all potential issues and threats. Every website hosted on 10Web is also completely isolated from others, as the platform uses Linux containers which provide isolated environments for every single website.

SiteGround

When hosted on SiteGround, for daily and scheduled security checks you would need to purchase an additional service called SG Site Scanner, an additional $18 per year in addition to their hosting plan. This service is a malware detection and early warning system and enables a user to perform on-demand scans of their website and perform comprehensive daily scans to detect domain blacklisting and malware. The malware database is constantly updated, which enables the SG Site Scanner to detect even the latest threats.

DreamHost

DreamHost offers ModSecurity, a web firewall that prevents unwanted requests to the site. It’s a Web Application Firewall (WAF) that filters and blocks known malicious HTTP requests. Blocked HTTP requests include most, but not all forms of Brute Force, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Remote File Inclusion (RFI), Remote Execution, and SQL injection (SQLi) attacks.

Bluehost

Bluehost offers an option to scan the WP core files. If the WordPress admin isn’t working, or if you notice other errors, you can run this scan to see if your WordPress core files are intact. The functionality is quite primitive and does not provide any detailed information.

GoDaddy

When speaking with their customer support agents, they said their hosting comes with “integrated security”. When we asked for clarification, they said that when a user has concerns, they can raise a ticket and their security team will check the website. Otherwise, a user can use another security service. There is no way to check the security of any file changes from GoDaddy’s dashboard, you would need to use a third-party security plugin or service.

Which WooCommerce hosting has the most intuitive dashboard?

The dashboard provided by your host should never be complicated or difficult to navigate. You will spend lots of time there, so a clear and simple yet functional dashboard that is intuitive to your needs is absolutely paramount. Trust us, on those busy days when you need to get lots done, the layout will really make a difference!

10Web

The 10Web dashboard offers an automated solution that prioritizes functionality, multiple features, and a toolbox that takes care of building, maintaining, and managing websites. The dashboard layout is clean and very easy to navigate. It also consists of two main views: Main Dashboard View and Individual Website Management Dashboard View. Check it out for yourself:

SiteGround

Through SiteGround’s dashboard, there are no eCommerce management or business management tools. However, you do get an overview of all the services and functionalities available in your plan and can view the options to upgrade some of the services.

All the tools are listed on the left side of the dashboard, which makes it easier to focus on the page.

DreamHost

DreamHost has no eCommerce management or business management tools in its dashboard. After installing the extensions and setting up WooCommerce, the management is done through those extensions. However we do want to mention the dashboard is very intuitive, and it was easy to migrate and set up the website.

Bluehost

There are sections titled Marketplace and Marketing Tools to help eCommerce businesses, however, they are mostly third-party or paid products and services and we weren’t able to test them.

There is a Marketing Center section in My Sites where a user can set up Google Ads or manage their business in Google Maps. Overall, everything is better managed and much more user-friendly than when compared to GoDaddy (we saved that one for last!).

However, all the functionalities that would really have helped to build a successful eCommerce website come at additional costs as they were not included in our plan.

Essentially, it’s like saying there is this tool for this purpose, you can use it, but whenever you try to actually use it, you are either redirected to the service provider or WordPress dashboard, or it turns out that you have to buy the service. Everything on the Bluehost dashboard does encourage a user to buy additional services.

GoDaddy

Our uncensored and honest opinion here? The interface of GoDaddy’s dashboard is an eyesore in every sense. First of all, its product sections all look the same. There are absolutely no visual hints, so you have to read everything very carefully. We’re including some screenshots here so you can really understand our pain:

Beyond the visual factor, it also takes forever for a chat window to load—if, that is, you are lucky, as most of the time there is no chat button to trigger a chat window in the first place!

Everything that has anything to do with managing your eCommerce business redirects you to the WordPress dashboard. Basically, users have to install WooCommerce extensions from their WP dashboard, and manage everything and follow up from those extensions.

Which hosting offers the cheapest storage price?

We can list all the beautiful capabilities or frustrating limitations of our 5 hosts for an eternity. However, we know that in addition to good quality, affordability is a top priority for so many looking to set up shop—virtually, that is. So let’s take a look at the costs associated with storage for each of our hosting providers and see who truly offers you the most bang for your hard-earned buck:

*The disk storage of Bluehost is shared between emails, system files and website files in the entire account, which is most likely why the website hosted on Bluehost had consumed much more disk storage than on the other hosting providers.

Which hosting provider offers team collaboration features?

When you are setting up your online shop, collaborating and coworking with your team should be made to be as smooth and simple as possible. In fact, this is something any WooCommerce hosting should be offering its users: a dedicated space to brainstorm, create, and discuss. After all, teamwork makes the dream work and for a provider to be WooCommerce-friendly, they need to take the power of collaboration into consideration. Let’s see what our 5 different hosts offer in this regard.

10Web

10Web’s User and Team Management is a collaborative workspace that allows users to invite an unlimited number of people. They can then work and cooperate across all teams at various levels in real-time. A workspace owner can assign the varying permission levels, which are as follows:

• Admin: Access to all workspace features and billing except user management.
• Contributor: Access to adding, removing, and managing all websites in the workspace. No access to user management, white label, and billing. Perfect for lead developers & project managers.
• Member: Access only to selected websites’ live or staging environments. Perfect for clients, developers, designers, or marketers.

SiteGround

SiteGround enables you to add collaborators. In higher plans, it is possible to add clients and even specify roles for each collaborator or client, but that feature was not available in our plan. Inviting a developer is quite simple: you enter their name and email address and they’ll receive an invite through email with a link to sign up.

DreamHost

Unfortunately, DreamHost does not offer a tool for client or user management. We had such high hopes!

Bluehost

Ditto here.

GoDaddy

With GoDaddy, you can invite a delegate—such as your web designer or developer, to access GoDaddy products in your account. Delegates can open and use your products, but they cannot view or change account information such as payment methods and passwords.

As was the unfortunate theme for GoDaddy throughout our research, finding where to add a user was quite tricky and time-consuming. If it wasn’t for this article we would have never even known they offered such a functionality, especially as we avoided using their dreaded chat box!

Which hosting includes hidden costs and limitations?

We’ve specified the 5 providers we looked at in this guide, the specific plans we tested, the features they include relevant to WooCommerce hosting, and their prices. As an added bonus in an effort to be as detailed as possible for you, we’ve also looked at the fine print to discover the hidden costs (if any) and limitations or restrictions (if any) for each plan—both necessary to know from a business perspective. This way, you’ll be armed with all the knowledge necessary to make a truly informed decision on which host has the honor of hosting your wonderful online shop!

10Web

We searched far and wide, but 10Web has absolutely no additional transaction costs or limitations to note. What you see is what you get.

SiteGround

SiteGround is a more expensive option compared to the rest of the hosting providers. While our plan does include security and backup services, to be able to use either to their full potential, we would need to upgrade to a higher plan. Another option is to purchase separate security and backup services, which of course lead to additional costs. There are no transaction costs with SiteGround.

DreamHost

We give DreamHost credit for keeping their pricing pretty straightforward. The cost for recurring payments is the same as the first payment. There are no additional transaction costs.

While DreamHost has not banned the use of specific plugins, there are some they do not recommend to use with your account as they are not the best fit. In general, if a plugin uses PHP Sessions, it won’t perform well with the built-in server cache, and therefore, DreamPress. For example:

• Bad Behavior: The way it sets cookies isn’t 100% compatible with the DreamPress cache and can cause caching not to set.
• Captcha plugins: These generally apply cookies and/or sessions in a way that tells the DreamPress cache not to cache. Try not to use them on comment pages.

There is no other list with specific names of restricted plugins.

Bluehost

You can get an idea of the additional costs that will be incurred with Bluehost by taking a look at what they don’t offer. There is no website builder. Unlike most hosting companies within the same price range, Bluehost does not provide a drag-and-drop website builder with any of their hosting plans. There is no built-in backup solution, either. You would have to use a third-party service, leading to additional costs. They are upfront about this and clearly mention the lack of such services.

There are no additional transaction costs and their list of banned plugins can be found here.

GoDaddy

Free isn’t always free, and cheap isn’t always cheap. GoDaddy’s hosting falls into the latter category as it’s definitely not as cheap as we are made to believe.

Although business emails are included in the WooCommerce hosting plans, they become paid after the first year and will cost an additional $83.88. If you want to schedule backups on a specific schedule, you’ll need to purchase a backup solution separately, as the one included in the plan only allows manual backups or daily server backups. As you can see, although the standard hosting price is cheap, you need to make many more additional purchases for your website to function properly, and at that point, it just becomes overpriced. This is what is stated on their website regarding transaction costs:

“There are no setup fees with GoDaddy Payments and no long-term contracts. Just pay a low fee of 2.3% + 0¢ per transaction for in-person, 2.3% + 30¢ per transaction for ecommerce and Pay Link payments, and 3.3% + 0¢ for keyed-in transactions with no monthly minimums or any kind of hidden costs.”

Here you can find their rather long list of restricted plugins to be aware of.

And the winner is…

All right, folks. We’ve looked at speed, scalability, customer support, backup solutions, security, dashboards, affordability, workspaces, and hidden costs and limitations. We’ve dug through all the details, magnified the fine print, tested out the offerings, and reflected on the results. While we certainly see a lot of good in every single hosting provider, there is a clear winner that hit the ball out of the park in every single category:

There is just no comparison to 10Web’s Automated AI-Powered Platform. Here’s a little refresher for you:

• PageSpeed score of 100 on both desktop and mobile
• Elastic scaling with no hard limitations
• 95+% customer support satisfaction rate
• Customizable and simple backup solution
• Top-notch security
• Intuitive dashboard
• Lowest price
• Collaborative workspace
• No hidden costs or limitations

With all this in mind, we are happy to award 10Web the title of Best WooCommerce Hosting of 2023!

What if I need a dedicated server?

Well, you can opt for 10Web dedicated hosting plan which costs $175/month. The plan offers 4 core CPUs with 16GB RAM, a monthly visitor limit of more than 400k, 100GB+ SSD storage, and supports more than 20 websites. You’ll also get a separate accounts manager who will ensure the plan meets all your requirements.  

But, don’t just take our word for it! Try out the platform for yourself to really experience the 10Web standard. Just sign up through the FREE trial—no credit required. See how 10Web’s Automated AI-powered platform will transform your online business!

Thanks for reading and as always, let us know your thoughts below!

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