Want to jump straight to the answer? The best ecommerce hosting provider for most people is Bluehost or HostGator.
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 seven best ecommerce hosting providers, along with a quick section to help you identify the best option for your needs.
The 7 Best Ecommerce Hosting Providers
- Bluehost — Best for WooCommerce Websites
- HostGator — Best for Scaling Without Breaking the Bank
- Web.com — Best for Beginners
- Hostinger — Best for Online Sellers With a Tight Budget
- Liquid Web — Best for Managing High-Traffic 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? We’ve got you covered.
Bluehost — Best for WooCommerce Websites
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.
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
- 12 months — $9.95 per month
- 36 months — $12.95 per month
Online Store + Marketplace
- 12 months — $12.95 per month
- 36 months — $19.95 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.
HostGator — Best for Scaling Without Breaking the Bank
Every HostGator web hosting plan comes with built-in ecommerce tools for online sellers.
When you look closer at what’s included with your plan and how well HostGator handles things as your store grows, it’s easy to see how much value you’re getting with your subscription.
As an ecommerce website, you need to make sure that visitors can land on your pages to purchase products without any issues. Fortunately, HostGator offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee. So you won’t have to worry about outages hurting your conversions.
You can also take advantage of a free domain name, free SSL certificate, unmetered bandwidth, and one-click WordPress installations.
Some plans come with up to $500 in Google Ad credits and $100 in Microsoft Ad credits. This more than covers the cost of your hosting plan and helps get eyes on your store as soon as you launch.
Pricing
In terms of pricing, you start with one of HostGator’s shared plans. But many ecommerce websites can benefit from a cloud package, as these make it easier to deal with increased traffic as your store grows.
Shared Hosting
- Hatchling – Starts at $3.75 per month
- Baby – Starts at $4.50 per month
- Business – Starts at $6.25 per month
Cloud Hosting
- Hatchling Cloud – Starts at $4.95 per month
- Baby Cloud – Starts at $6.57 per month
- Business Cloud – Starts at $9.95 per month
Regardless of the plan you select, HostGator is really affordable and built to scale. Purchases are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Web.com — Best for Beginners
If you want to host your website and build your online store under one roof, look no further than Web.com. It’s the perfect choice for beginners because you don’t need to sign up for tons of different platforms or tools to get started.
In addition to hosting, Web.com offers a free domain for one year and a free drag-and-drop website builder.
Even at the most basic hosting level, Web.com can support a ton of traffic. The entry-level plan can handle up to 15,000 visitors per month. The mid-tier and top-tier plans support 50,000 and 200,000 visitors, respectively.
As a beginner, this is great to have because you won’t have to worry about outgrowing your host or migrating to new servers as your site grows. You can stick with Web.com for the long haul.
You’re also getting unmetered bandwidth, a free SSL certificate, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
While most of you will be fine getting the hosting sorted and the website built on your own, Web.com also offers expert ecommerce design services for those of you who need a little extra help. This is easier and more affordable than having to work with a third-party design agency.
Pricing
There are two different ways to use Web.com for your ecommerce store. You can just sign up for hosting alone and then leverage other ecommerce platforms. Or you can use Web.com to build and manage your store.
Hosting Only
- Basic – Starts at $2.75 per month
- Plus – Starts at $3.95 per month
- Premium – Starts at $5.95 per month
Ecommerce Builder
- Online Store – Starts at $13.95 per month
- Online Marketplaces – Starts at $19.95 per month
To lock in promotional rates, you can save up to 70% with three years of hosting. The ecommerce plans are also 70% off your first year compared to month-to-month pricing.
Hostinger — Best for Online Sellers With a Tight Budget
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.
The fact that Hostinger has ten 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
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.
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 $149.25 per month for 16 GB RAM
- VPS Hosting — Starting from $25 per month for 2 GB RAM
- Managed WooCommerce Hosting — Starting from $21 per month for one store
A 7-day VPS free trial is also available.
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 — $8.45 per month
- 36 months — $11.08 per month
Online Store + Marketplace
- One month — $49.95 per month
- 12 months — $11.08 per month
- 36 months — $17.07 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
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.
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 three hosting services, web hosting, WooCommerce hosting, and WordPress hosting. All three have similar pricing:
- StartUp — $2.99 per month
- GrowBig — $4.99 per month
- GoGeek — $7.99 per month
Every plan comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, too.
InMotion — Best for Starting and Scaling an Online Business
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.
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 — $2.29 per month
- Launch — $4.99 per month
- Power — $4.99 per month
- Pro — $12.99 per month
SSD VPS Ecommerce Hosting
- VPS 4 GB RAM — $14.99 per month
- VPS 8 GB RAM — $24.99 per month
- VPS 12 GB RAM — $34.99 per month
- VPS 16 GB RAM — $44.99 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 is the criteria we use to choose the best ecommerce web host for your 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, Bluehost and HostGator are our 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.