Picking the ‘right’ host is tough enough for any website. Let alone if it’s for an e-commerce site!
Why? Because having an online store that’s reliable, credible and loads quickly for customers has everything to do with your host.
Many site owners jump straight into the first cheap web host they find. By the time they realise it may be a bad decision, they face the headache of a full site migration.
So, today, we’re talking about why finding the RIGHT host matters, WHAT matters, and our top picks for the best ecommerce hosts. Ready? Let’s go.
Best eCommerce Hosting
Verdict
We at Bitcatcha are always stressing the importance of website speed. But for e-commerce sites, this is ultra important!
Good speed translates to a better user experience for your customers. Better UX, happier customers.
Better UX also helps to build brand credibility. Customers who have a good time on your site are much more likely to return in the future, or recommend your business to others.
Not many visitors will tolerate a slow-loading site, let alone browse through product pages until they find something they want to buy. With today’s standards, every millisecond counts.
And another important thing – speed also affects your site’s SEO.
And, in the e-commerce realm, ranking higher than your competitors on Google makes all the difference.
Last July, Google added a ‘Speed Update’ which now factors mobile speed into its ranking algorithm. The faster your mobile website speed, the better your SEO rankings.
So just to summarise, a slow website means poorer retention, greater page abandonment and lower SEO rankings.
A fast website means better visibility, lightning-quick transactions and higher conversions. All great news for you!
Every e-commerce site deserves a provider that’s more than a barebones hosting service.
It’s not just about finding a physical server for your site. What you should be looking for is a partner in technology.
Like any good partner, you want someone dependable through the highs and lows. Someone…
Whether or not you understand the nitty gritty of server technology (which yes, can get very technical), you should still always feel that you as the owner have total control over your e-commerce site.
That means being able to manage it in a way that suits your business and your level of expertise.
You should feel a sense of freedom and possibility; of having room to grow, and with the option to switch plans or providers at anytime.
In other words, a true technology partner should enable you to do things your way.
Not every entrepreneur comes from an tech background, and a good web host understands this – for example, by providing an intuitive control panel, or by giving you the flexibility to use whatever your favourite ecommerce software is.
Today, we’re using 6 pillars to choose our favourite 5 ecommerce hosts:
Of course, a good host needs to deliver excellent speed. This is non-negotiable!
A good host will be geared for speed in both its hardware build and software add-ons. Some things to look out for include:
We’ll also be running hosts through our trusty Bitcatcha website speed test tool.
This speed test tool basically helps us measures how quickly a server responds to a request from anywhere in the world.
We have 10x testing nodes installed in different locations to help simulate people around the globe visiting the site you are testing.
Live chat, phone, a ticketing system … often, the ‘best’ method to offer customer support is a matter of preference.
However, we feel a good host should not only offer you 24/7 support, but have a team that is highly qualified to solve issues quickly. That way, your queries won’t have to go through multiple escalations.
We’re also squeezing uptime into this pillar. A good host will take all measures possible to minimise downtime. Look out for hosts with a uptime guarantee of at least 99%, and who can validate their claims with third-party reviews.
A good host offers strong security features, not limited to the following:
As we’ve mentioned, most hosts offer different bundled software and integrations.
Some hosts include e-commerce features, but if you already have preferred 3rd-party tools like Magento, Prestashop or WooCommerce, you’ll need to check that your host supports them.
Whilst the “best host” is the one who covers ALL e-commerce software, this isn’t realistically possible.
However, be on the look-out for hosts that offer the cPanel interface. It comes with the Softaculous installer that covers 400+ software, which means you’d be quite well covered. If it doesn’t have cPanel, check if they have some sort of alternative installer, and that they offer good app support.
Every business wants to grow. Your host should certainly not hold you back!
The general rule of thumb is to start with an average host plan and upgrade along the way.
For small/medium or new e-commerce sites, shared hosting is often the way to go. It’s great for keeping costs low when you’re just starting out, as resources are shared with other sites on a server.
However, once your traffic starts to grow, you’re likely to want to look into VPS dedicated server, or cloud solutions.
A great host can accommodate this sort of future growth.
Ask yourself, can this host easily upgrade my plan to allow for more storage and bandwidth? If the answer is no, you might end up having to switch host later in the future. Much better if your host can simply scale their solutions as you grow.
A good host will get you your money’s worth.
Prices vary a lot between different hosts and plans. Whichever you choose, you definitely want to be getting bang for your buck.
Some hosts offer a slew of value-add services. Some questions to ask include:
With all of that in mind, we selected 5 hosts that we feel do these 6 pillars proud.
Yet each of them have their own areas of strength and unique selling points. Let’s take a closer look at what these hosts excel in.
99.9%
A+
$3.95/mo
Hostinger has managed to make it on our ‘best eCommerce web host’ list for a few years in a row. They first caught our attention for their affordable plans, but it’s in recent years that they’ve really outshone the competition in other areas too.
In fact – we recently conducted some brand research and discovered Hostinger to be the most sought-after web host of 2020 (Read the full report here).
To test their server performance, we have 3 premium accounts on Hostinger (with test sites on their Singapore, Netherlands and US datacenters, read our in-depth Hostinger review here).
| US (W) | US (E) | London | Singapore | Sao Paulo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 75 ms | 21 ms | 92 ms | 244 ms | 136 ms |
| Bangalore | Sydney | Japan | Canada | Germany |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 211 ms | 265 ms | 172 ms | 37 ms | 107 ms |
Hostinger scored an A+ ranking – the highest grade there is! And because they have 10 data centers for you to host from, your customers can expect seriously fast speeds regardless of the region they’re based in.
eCommerce owners will also appreciate Hostinger’s very own drag-and-drop website builder, Zyro (which itself is our favourite eCommerce platform for beginners).
In short – expect fast server speeds, a great global support team and industry-leading eCommerce features, at an affordable price point.
In all – nicely well-balanced hosting.
Their VPS hosting plans start from $3.95/mo. We’d recommend their VPS 2, which starts at $8.95/mo.
100%
A+
$7.99/mo
SiteGround is one of our absolute favourite hosts, hands-down.
Founded in 2004, they’ve won plenty of accolades since. Most notedly, an endorsement by WordPress themselves!
Though it’s tricky to decide which standout USP to shout about, we feel SiteGround’s biggest strength is that they offer premium hosting that’s perfect for growing business websites.
To test the speed of SiteGround’s servers (which run on speed-enhancing SSD disks), we set up a separate test site hosted on their GrowBig plan and put it through our trusty Bitcatcha speed tool.
The result: an A+ rating with an amazing average response time of 136.9 ms!
| US (W) | US (E) | London | Singapore | Sao Paulo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 68 ms | 33 ms | 96 ms | 233 ms | 181 ms |
| Bangalore | Sydney | Japan | Canada | Germany |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 243 ms | 203 ms | 165 ms | 29 ms | 118 ms |
In practice, loading times would be sped up even more by activating their Cloudflare CDN and premium SuperCacher (built by their own engineers and said to boost load times up to 4x).
Fellow users on the GrowBig plan also enjoy premium priority support by chat or ticket. We’ve always been very impressed by the promptness of their support team, who can be contacted 24/7 by phone, chat and ticket.
On top of that, SiteGround 99.9% uptime guarantee, and our test sites suggest that they do walk the talk.
So yes, with SiteGround, your e-commerce site is guaranteed to be speedy. And you’re certainly in very good hands.
We’d say SiteGround is a great pick for sites that have a slightly bigger budget, or require more premium features. They’re an excellent host, and if you can afford SiteGround, you really can’t go wrong with them.
We’d recommend their GrowBig shared hosting plan, and then later scaling up when necessary.
100%
A
$30/mo
Next, meet Kinsta – a managed WordPress host that’s been around since 2013.
The first thing you need to know about it is that it’s powered by Google Cloud.
This gives it an interesting edge over most of the competition, and helps put Kinsta near the top of our list of favourite ecommerce hosting.
Even better, Kinsta runs off Google Cloud’s Premium Tier. This lets users tap into the highest levels of performance, speed and security of what’s already a leading brand in cloud hosting. It also gives them 20 data centre locations to pick from!
So, it came as no surprise to us that’s it’s extremely FAST.
We played around with a test site and put it through our speed checker. It scored an A rating, with an average response time of 196ms (you can read our full Kinsta review here). Very respectable!
| US (W) | US (E) | London | Singapore | Sao Paulo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 130 ms | 95 ms | 10 ms | 287 ms | 203 ms |
| Bangalore | Sydney | Japan | Canada | Germany |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 487 ms | 266 ms | 221 ms | 83 ms | 13 ms |
And that’s before implementing their very impressive, premium KinstaCDN (a partnership with KeyCDN, another leading brand in their field).
It’s this same cloud architecture that puts Kinsta’s no-downtime technology in a league of its own.
Big traffic surge? No problem. With Kinsta, your website’s container simply scales dramatically to as many CPUs as needed. Your site should stay up and running and you just need to pay the overage fee.
Compare this to shared or VPS hosting, where a sudden traffic spike can bring down your site. No wonder Kinsta also has a SLA-backed 99.9% uptime guarantee.
Their Google Cloud infrastructure also makes Kinsta super scalable. If you need more bandwidth, you can seamlessly upgrade your plan. No complicated migrations to another server or host. Simply pay the next tier up.
With such speed and scaling advantages, we think Kinsta is a great option for large or fast-growing enterprises who want to make sure they’re always open for business.
Kinsta’s plans start from $30 a month for their Starter plan, and go up considerably by tier.
99.9%
A+
$7.99/mo
For a relatively unknown web host, A2 offers a striking value proposition.
The more we read into the long lists of features it offers, the more we became sure it deserves a place on this list.
Out of all their plans, their Turbo plan was the one that caught our eye. It’s supercharged for speed in every way.
This plan proudly utilises Turbo web hosting servers, said to load sites up to 20x quicker than standard servers. When we put this to the test, our test site on their Turbo plan also scored an A+ on our speed test, with an average response time of 169.5ms.
Fast – but admittedly not the fastest out of the hosts we tested (read up on all the juicy details in our full review here)
| US (W) | US (E) | London | Singapore | Sao Paulo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 63 ms | 10 ms | 129 ms | 234 ms | 145 ms |
| Bangalore | Sydney | Japan | Canada | Germany |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 433 ms | 214 ms | 147 ms | 13 ms | 110 ms |
Still, A2 certainly seems to offer a LOT of things under the Turbo plan.
The 3 different options of caching are just the beginning. Not to mention you’ll get Hackscan (a very decent all-inclusive security protection), or the fact their e-commerce apps come A2 Optimized, meaning they’re configured to load pages faster and more securely.
Now, what we loved most about A2 was its very impressive list of ‘unlimited’ offerings under a low price tag.
We’re talking unlimited email addresses, websites, total databases, storage and transfers – as well as unlimited subdomains, parked domains and addon domains. You won’t even need to pay for SSL as they include a free Let’s Encrypt SSL option.
That’s a ton of unlimited value and a decent amount of room for you to grow.
All this, at a reasonable price, makes A2 a feature-rich solution for owners of small to medium e-commerce sites.
Introductory prices for their shared hosting options start at $7.99/mo for their Lite plan.
They also offer VPS hosting (managed and unmanaged), dedicated hosting and reseller hosting.
100%
A
$15/mo
Cloudways is a bit of an unusual one.
Versus your standard host, Cloudways is more an integration point for multiple cloud services, managed from a single console. They help you set up a cloud-based virtual server that suits your specific hosting needs and style.
Their tagline immediately caught our attention: ‘limitless growth without any restrictions’. The more we investigated, the more we realised they aren’t kidding around!
See, the thing we love about Cloudways is the degree it lets you do things YOUR way. Not only is it a powerful hosting solution – it guarantees you both flexibility and control. We’re talking about next-level customisation.
To get started, you’ll need to pick from world-class cloud providers like AWS and Google Cloud. That already gives you a whopping 60+ data centers to choose from.
After selecting a provider, you’ll be able to customise a number of server parameters, as well as deploy applications and upgrade packages as you see fit.
If you decide you need more resources, Cloudways lets you scale your server storage space in just a few clicks without affecting your store performance or your prior customisations. In one click, you can also vertically scale your RAM, processor and bandwidth. It doesn’t really get more seamless than that!
All of this on a convenient pay-as-you-go model – a great flexible alternative to the usual host contracts that lock you down.
We definitely recommend Cloudways to tech-savvy owners who know what they’re doing, and crave the advanced flexibility and control.
However, for e-commerce site owners who are just starting out, the huge number of customisation options may be overkill.
Cloudway’s plans vary a great deal in price and capacity, given you’re picking from 5 different providers.
Their most popular tiers range from $33.30/mo (Google Cloud) to $50/mo (Linode) – each offering different storage and bandwidth levels, with a pay-as-you-go pricing plan layered on top.
Sure, your hosting provider isn’t something your customers see.
However, it has everything to do with how they experience your business, and how they come away feeling.
Which is the very best ecommerce host? There’s no absolute right answer, but you’ll want to be sure the host you choose ticks the following boxes:
From here, you’ll make your decision based on their strengths. To recap, here are the top 5 host:
