WordPress hosting is the server your website or online store runs on. The choice decides how fast the site is, how often it’s down, and how much work you have to put into operations and security yourself. In short: a small website does fine on shared hosting, while an online store should run on managed WordPress hosting or a server that someone actively runs and monitors. Here we go through the types, what an online store needs, and what to check before you choose.
Domain, hosting and DNS: what’s the difference?
Three things have to work together before a website is online. The domain is the address people type into the browser, which you buy from a registrar and renew every year. The hosting is the server where WordPress, the database and your images live, and which responds when someone visits the site. And DNS ties the two together by telling the browser which server the domain points to. How that happens is explained in the guide to DNS and name servers.
Domain and hosting don’t have to be in the same place, and it’s often an advantage if they aren’t: then you only need to change DNS when you switch hosting.
WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress?
WordPress.com is a ready-made service with hosting, updates and security included, but you’re bound by its limits and plans. Self-hosted WordPress, the software from wordpress.org, is something you install on your own hosting and get full control over. The rest of this guide is about the latter, which the vast majority of WooCommerce stores run on.
| Type | What you get | Suits | Who runs it? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shared hosting | Space on a server you share with many other sites | Small websites and blogs with little traffic | The provider runs the server, you run WordPress |
| Managed WordPress hosting | A platform built for WordPress, usually with caching, backups and updates | Business sites and online stores that want peace of mind | The provider handles most of it |
| VPS | Your own virtual server with fixed resources | Sites with more traffic or special requirements | You, or whoever you pay to do it |
| Dedicated server | A whole physical server | Very large sites with high, steady traffic | You, or whoever you pay to do it |
| Cloud | Resources that can scale up and down as needed | Sites with big swings, such as campaigns and peak season | Depends on the setup |
Shared hosting is the cheapest and easiest to get started with, but you share CPU, memory and database with others, and the site slows down when the neighbors are busy.
Managed WordPress hosting is the type most online stores benefit from most. The server is set up for WordPress from the start, and the provider usually takes care of caching, backups and security updates for the server, often for WordPress itself too. You pay more than for shared hosting, but you buy yourself out of most of the technical work and get a platform built for the load WordPress creates.
A VPS gives guaranteed resources and full control, but someone has to install, secure, update and monitor it. Without someone responsible, it’s often less secure than shared hosting. A dedicated server gives even more of everything and rarely makes sense for a typical small or mid-sized store, while cloud hosting is interesting if traffic swings a lot and WordPress is set up to scale with it.
What does an online store need from hosting?
An online store loads the server differently from an ordinary website, and that’s the main reason to choose hosting carefully. On a blog, almost every page can be stored finished in a cache and sent out instantly, however slow the server behind it is. In a WooCommerce store, the cart, checkout and “my account” can’t be cached the same way, because they’re different for every customer. Every time a customer adds an item to the cart, changes a quantity or goes to checkout, the server has to run PHP and query the database. That’s why you feel bad hosting most exactly where the customer is about to buy.
The first thing to run out is usually not CPU or memory, but the number of PHP processes, often called PHP workers. Each process can handle one request at a time, and if they’re all busy, the next customers wait in line, even if the server otherwise has power to spare. So ask how many you get, and what happens when they’re used up.
Next comes the database. An object cache like Redis stores the results of repeated database lookups in memory and can remove a large part of the load on the pages that can’t be cached. The database itself should be on fast SSD or NVMe disks and have room for orders and customers to grow over the years.
Finally, the hosting has to handle your busy days. Black Friday, a newsletter or a campaign can bring many times the normal traffic within minutes. Ask whether the site slows down, shuts down or scales with it, and whether there’s a staging environment where updates can be tested before they hit the real store in the middle of peak season.
Technical requirements to check
WordPress publishes its recommended requirements for PHP, the database and HTTPS at wordpress.org/about/requirements. The requirements move, so check the page and ask the provider whether they meet them now and will keep up. The most important are a PHP version that still gets security updates and that you can switch yourself, enough memory for heavy plugins, a current MySQL or MariaDB, and OPcache turned on. HTTPS with a free, automatically renewed SSL certificate and support for HTTP/2, and ideally HTTP/3, is a minimum today.
If you already have a WordPress site, you can see most of this yourself under Tools → Site Health.
Speed: caching, CDN and server location
Hosting sets the ceiling for how fast your site can be. Good hosting caches at several levels: whole pages where they’re the same for everyone, database lookups in an object cache, PHP code in OPcache and files in the browser. A CDN serves images and files from a location close to the visitor and helps most if you sell across borders. If you mainly sell in one country, a server in or near that country is the simplest thing that works. Hosting is only one part of speed, though, and the theme, plugins and images matter at least as much. We cover the rest in the guide to WordPress architecture and performance.
Security and backups
Backups are your insurance if an update goes wrong or the site is hacked, and they’re only worth something if they work on the day you need them. Backups of both files and database should be taken automatically at least once a day, and more often if the store gets a lot of orders. The copies should be stored somewhere other than the site itself, so they don’t disappear along with the server, and kept long enough that you can go back to before a problem you only discover a week later. Test a restore now and then.
On the security side, the hosting should keep the server’s software updated, isolate your site from other customers’, scan for malware and have a firewall that stops known attacks and repeated login attempts. But whatever the hosting, WordPress, the theme and plugins also have to be kept up to date. That’s still the most common way in.
Operations, monitoring and support
Uptime is usually given as a percentage. It sounds high, but 99.9% uptime equals almost nine hours of downtime a year. So ask how the server is monitored, who gets alerted when it goes down, and how quickly they respond. Support is as important as the specifications: when checkout in your store fails, you need someone who understands both the server and WordPress, not just someone who can restart the server.
Remember too that hosting and WordPress maintenance aren’t the same thing. Even on managed hosting, someone has to keep an eye on plugins, test updates and clean up the database. You can do it yourself, or have it handled as ongoing maintenance.
Price and value
The monthly price is only part of the calculation. Check what’s included, what it costs to grow, and what the price rises to on renewal. For an online store, though, the most important question is: what does an hour with the store down or slow cost? If the answer is more than the difference between cheap and good hosting, the cheap option is the expensive one.
Setup and moving
Once you have a domain and hosting, the domain has to point to the server. Either you switch name servers to the hosting provider’s, so it controls all DNS for the domain, or you simply update the A and AAAA records wherever your DNS lives today, so email and other services can stay where they are.
If an existing store has to move, lower the TTL on the DNS records a couple of days in advance, so the switch takes effect quickly. Take a full backup, move the site over a secure SFTP connection, and test it thoroughly on the new server before you change DNS. Keep an eye on orders arriving on the old server while the switch is under way, and finish by turning on HTTPS, creating separate users with strong passwords and two-factor authentication, and setting up automatic backups.
Checklist before you choose WordPress hosting
- Does the hosting meet WordPress’s current requirements for PHP and the database?
- Is there an object cache (such as Redis) and enough PHP processes for your traffic?
- Are backups taken automatically at least daily, stored elsewhere, and can you restore them yourself?
- Is SSL free and renewed automatically?
- Is there a staging environment for testing updates?
- Is the server close to your customers, and is there a CDN if you sell abroad?
- Who monitors the site, and who responds when it goes down?
- Does the support team know WordPress and WooCommerce?
- What does it cost to grow, and what does the price rise to on renewal?
Frequently asked questions
For a very small store with few orders it can work, but as soon as the store matters to your revenue, managed WordPress hosting or a managed server is the safe choice.
Can I switch hosting later?
Yes. A WordPress site can be moved, and if the domain is somewhere other than the hosting, you only need to change DNS once the new server is ready. For an online store, the move should be planned so no orders are lost along the way.
What’s the difference between hosting and maintenance?
Hosting is the server and what runs on it. Maintenance is the work on WordPress itself: updates, testing, cleanup and monitoring that the site works. Some hosting plans include parts of that, but rarely all of it.
Would you rather have it taken care of?
We run WordPress and WooCommerce on servers set up for exactly that, with daily backups, automatic monitoring and a developer you can talk to directly. See our WordPress hosting for online stores.