WooCommerce Hosting

A shop asks different things of a server than a company website does. Cart, checkout and customer account cannot be cached away, something is always running in the background, and a shop that is down takes the orders with it. We pick the hosting that suits your WooCommerce shop, set it up and run it for you on request.

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Why WooCommerce hosting is not the same as WordPress hosting

Technically, WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin. Everything that makes good WordPress hosting still applies. What comes on top is the load profile. A normal website serves almost every page ready made from the cache. A shop cannot do that on exactly the pages the revenue depends on.

What runs differently in shop operation

Pages that cannot be cached: cart, checkout and customer account are individual to every visitor and come fresh out of PHP and the database on each request.
Constant background load: the Action Scheduler works through order statuses, emails and synchronisations, at three in the morning as well.
A database that keeps growing: orders, customer accounts and sessions add up, while a website stays roughly the same size in terms of content.
Load peaks you can see coming: a newsletter, a campaign launch or seasonal business brings traffic in waves.
Payment traffic: payment providers call your callback URLs. If the server is overloaded at that moment, orders get stuck between statuses.

Object caching, not just page caching

If the important pages cannot sit in the cache as finished HTML, the optimisation has to start one level deeper. A persistent object cache keeps recurring database queries in memory instead of asking for them again every time. In a shop this is not fine tuning. It decides whether the checkout runs smoothly when several people order at once.

What we adjust during setup

A persistent object cache (Redis or Memcached) for recurring queries
Clean cache exceptions for cart, checkout and customer account, so nobody gets to see another person's data
Tidied up transients and autoloaded options, which otherwise get loaded on every single request
Regular care of the order and session tables, so the database does not quietly grow out of hand
A real system cron job instead of the visitor-dependent pseudo cron WordPress ships with

Backups that actually help when it matters

Between the last backup and an incident, a shop collects real orders, payments and customer data. Restore last night's state and the orders from that day are gone, while the payments of course still exist at the provider. We therefore match the backup intervals to the order volume and test the restore. That a backup feature exists says very little on its own.

Orders contain personal data. So a backup strategy also has to cover where the backups are stored, how long they are kept and who can read them. We prefer providers with servers in Germany or the EU, and we put the retention periods in writing.

Staging is not optional in a shop

A plugin update that briefly knocks a website off balance is annoying. The same update in the payment path can make orders fail without anyone noticing. Every production shop we look after therefore has a staging environment. Updates go there first, and they go there with the whole order path: product into the cart, choose a shipping method, pay, check the confirmation in the inbox. We describe the procedure on the page about WooCommerce maintenance & security.

The right hosting model for your shop

We are not tied to any provider. For many shops a good managed host with shop experience is the right fit, because server administration and security hardening are already covered there. As soon as services of your own come into play, an ERP interface for example, a search index or a worker for imports, a dedicated server starts to make sense. Plain shared hosting cannot run that properly.

What we look at when choosing

PHP version and limits that match the WooCommerce version in use
An available object cache, not only a page cache feature
Server location in Germany or the EU for processing order data
A staging environment that can be created from production at the click of a button
Support that understands shop questions instead of only administering webspace
Headroom, so a successful campaign launch does not end at the server

After a hosting move we measure. Our free tool SiteSentry watches the loading times automatically, so you can see in black and white what the migration achieved.

Frequent questions about WooCommerce hosting

Is my existing WordPress hosting enough for a shop?

Often yes, as long as the product range is manageable and the order volume is moderate. It gets tight without a persistent object cache, with low PHP limits, or when there is no staging environment. We look at your current hosting and tell you whether a move is necessary or whether a targeted adjustment will do.

Can you migrate my existing shop?

Yes. We migrate files, database and configuration, switch DNS and SSL and test the whole order path on the new environment before anything goes live. We schedule the move for a quiet period and freeze the order process briefly, so no order gets lost between two systems.

How do you handle load peaks, at a campaign launch for example?

Beforehand rather than afterwards. If the date is known, we check the environment in advance and add resources temporarily. Usually it helps more to keep cart and checkout lean than to add server power. What slows a checkout down under load is often extra tracking scripts and plugins.

Do you also take on maintenance and updates?

On request, yes. Hosting and ongoing care work together here, so updates, security patches, backups and monitoring then run through the WooCommerce maintenance. Your shop has one contact for the whole technical basis.

Ready for your WooCommerce project?

Tell us about your project. We'll get back to you promptly with an honest assessment.