Choosing a website hosting company for your eCommerce site is one of the most important decisions you will make when starting up an online business. You need to be sure that your website is being hosted by a reliable provider who offers sufficient bandwidth, storage space, and excellent customer service. In this blog post, we have compiled a list of the best ecommerce websites we could find!
Recommended Web Hosts for Open Source Ecommerce Platforms
If you are running Magento or WordPress / WooCommerce as your shopping cart, then these web hosting providers will be of interest to you.
1.) WebCitz
Open-source stores are resource-heavy by nature. WebCitz has optimized their infrastructure at the WebNX data center in Provo, UT, to bridge the gap between shared hosting and high-end dedicated servers, giving your store the horsepower it needs to convert visitors into customers.
Infrastructure Built for High-Transaction Volume
Ecommerce databases are complex. To prevent “time-out” errors during checkout or inventory syncs, WebCitz provides massive overhead with their new hardware:
- Processing Power: AMD EPYC 7H12 CPUs (64 Cores / 128 Threads).
- Memory & Storage: 512GB ECC RAM paired with 8TB NVMe drives, ensuring your product images and database queries load instantly.
- Higher Limits: A 2,048MB PHP memory limit and 300-second execution time-nearly 5x the industry standard-allowing your store to run demanding web applications and complex queries without crashing.
Optimized for Speed & SEO
Site speed is directly tied to conversion rates. WebCitz utilizes LiteSpeed Web Server, enabling the LiteSpeed Cache plugin. This setup-especially with “Guest Mode” optimizations-is a proven way to help your store pass Google’s Core Web Vitals, boosting your search rankings and providing a snappy shopping experience.
Geographically Redundant Data Security
An ecommerce site’s most valuable asset is its database. WebCitz protects your store with a sophisticated offsite backup strategy:
- Nightly Database Backups: Stored offsite at Wasabi.
- Weekly Full Site Backups: Stored offsite at Amazon S3. By using multiple geographic regions, WebCitz ensures your customer and order data is protected against any localized data center issues.
Ecommerce Hosting Tiers
- Performance Hosting ($249/yr): Ideal for niche stores and startups; includes 10GB of high-speed storage.
- Supercharged Hosting ($499/yr): Built for high-traffic stores, offering dedicated CPU and RAM slices to handle massive traffic spikes during sales or seasonal rushes.
2.) SiteGround
SiteGround has been a great choice for us over the last few years. I’ve always been happy with their server performance and control panel. From their control panel, you can restore to your own backup point. For most web hosting companies, you have to contact customer service to get a backup restored. They also have good server performance and customer service. Another feature we like is their collaborator functionality, which is far better than GoDaddy who has a similar feature that allows site owners and developers to share access.
Hosted Ecommerce Platforms
What if I told you that finding a web hosting company isn’t required to set up an eCommerce store? It’s true… there are platforms that are 100% managed so you don’t have to worry about servers, uptime, or any of the other intricacies that are involved with running an ecommerce business.
There are two main considerations when choosing a hosted platform for your store – cost and features! You’ll want to look at all of the different plans offered by each provider in order to find one that is within your budget while still meeting all of your needs.
Some popular hosted ecommerce platforms include Shopify and BigCommerce. Let’s talk a little about each.
1.) Shopify
Shopify is one of the best-hosted eCommerce platforms that allow you to build an online store without any coding experience. With complete design customization and web hosting included in the subscription, they make it easy for beginners to get their site up and running fast!
When it comes to Shopify pricing, there are many factors that determine how much you’ll pay. Since they offer monthly and yearly plans with no contract necessary, it gives their users complete flexibility and freedom to choose the best option for their business, without any commitment!
For new ecommerce companies looking to get started as quickly as possible, the $29/month basic plan is the best choice. It is perfect for new businesses and offers unlimited bandwidth, products, customers & orders. This is a great option if you’re looking to get your brand up and running without any hassle!
For established brands with more complex requirements, Shopify Plus might be necessary. However, at $2,000/month it’s not the most affordable solution on the market today.
Overall I would recommend giving Shopify serious consideration as they are one of the easiest platforms available that doesn’t require extensive knowledge or coding experience! Best of all – their customer support team can be contacted 24 hours a day, which means there is always someone ready to help.
2.) BigCommerce
BigCommerce is another hosted ecommerce platform that has been gaining popularity over the past decade. Like Shopify, you can get your ecommerce business up and running very quickly.
There are differences between Shopify and BigCommerce, though. It really isn’t a bad idea to get an account with both Shopify and BigCommerce to see which admin interface, product entry system, and base functionality you prefer the most. This is really important if you have complex product data and aren’t sure which platform will best suit your needs, especially if you are coming from Magento which has the most robust product management system of all the platforms I’ve used in the past. Both Shopify and BigCommerce can be extended with apps, though prepare for expensive monthly fees compared to open-source ecommerce platforms. I’d definitely give it to BigCommerce for developing a more advanced and capable API, but that isn’t something every ecommerce business will take advantage of on their platform.
Their premium plan will give you access to priority support (24/7/365), unlimited bandwidth & storage space, and no transaction fees. If you’re looking for a hosted platform but aren’t sure of what features are most important this may be just right for you! If you plan to get a lot of monthly orders (thousands each month), maybe check with BigCommerce for pricing for that order level so you understand what types of costs you are going to be facing down the road.
FAQs
No! Both of these platforms are hosted solutions, which means you don’t get access to the source code of their applications. You can control the design of your website within each platform, and interact with their API to perform more technical work.
For Shopify or BigCommerce, each has a service level that starts around $30/month. If you are using an open source ecommerce platform like Magento or WordPress/WooCommerce, you’ll need a web hosting service to run the application. Prepare to spend at least $20/month for a reliable web hosting service that won’t make you spend an hour when you have a question.
Yes, both Shopify and BigCommerce allow you to upgrade or downgrade your service levels. Most ecommerce web hosting companies, such as WebCitz, allow you to upgrade or downgrade the web hosting plan of your open-source shopping cart, as well.
It all comes down to how much you think you’ll sell. Each plan is designed to accommodate a certain amount of store traffic and transactions. So if you think that your store will be selling upwards of $50,000 per month, then the Shopify Plus plan is probably best for you!
You will usually save money by paying for one year upfront. However, consider how confident in the service you are. If you are unsure of how well it will work for your business, paying monthly may be a better option.