How To Choose the Best WooCommerce Hosting Provider

May 2, 2023

How To Choose the Best WooCommerce Hosting Provider

When it comes to finding the best WooCommerce hosting provider, there is a lot of information to know. You have to find someone who is not only an expert in WordPress and WooCommerce, but you also want to find a company that genuinely cares about increasing your revenue and helping your online business be successful. Figuring out what to look for in managed WooCommerce hosting can be difficult, and that’s why Inspry has put together this guide to help you pick the right WooCommerce hosting provider for you.

What is WooCommerce and who needs it?

Before you can begin to understand how to search for the best WooCommerce provider, it’s important to know certain information about WooCommerce. This includes exactly what WooCommerce is, how it works, and who needs WooCommerce on their website. Knowing this information will give you a basic understanding of WooCommerce and allow you to have the information you need to then make the best choice for your WooCommerce needs.

What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is a popular WordPress plug-in that works with WordPress sites to build and create online stores. WooCommerce has everything that a business owner looking to sell online would need from adding products, managing inventory, calculating shipping and taxes, and accepting payments and fulfilling orders with carriers in real time. It can allow you to create an online product catalog that lets your users see and browse what you are selling. It is designed for both physical and digital products, making it the perfect place to create almost any kind of online store. WooCommerce can also help you manage your orders to assist in keeping track of who has bought what and accepting multiple forms of payment from Stripe to PayPal. WooCommerce is not only popular because it has everything any online store owner needs to promote and sell their items or services, but it also makes it extremely easy to manage your content marketing and grow your search engine optimization (SEO) using the most popular content management system, WordPress.

So how does WooCommerce work? WooCommerce is what is called open-source software (similar to WordPress), which essentially means that any user with the right skills and knowledge can edit or modify the plug-in without any restrictions.  A user can install WooCommerce onto a new or existing WordPress website.  By being open source, users can truly customize their storefront both in terms of layout and functionality, giving them access and robust flexibility to create whatever they need to sell their unique products. While this can be done by individuals, many businesses choose to utilize the skills of managed WooCommerce hosting companies to help them host and manage their WooCommerce stores.

Who needs WooCommerce on their site?

WooCommerce is a great WordPress plug-in for anyone looking to sell goods or services from their WordPress website. There’s a reason WooCommerce is so popular, and that’s because it offers the ability to sell online for a variety of different kinds of people and organizations with more flexibility than almost any other shopping cart out there.  It has a huge ecosystem of third party developers and powers nearly 25% of all online stores.  For example, an individual looking to make some money on the side with a small business can sell handmade items using WooCommerce to build an online storefront where customers can browse and purchase their products. At the same time, WooCommerce is also designed to help enterprise businesses sell and distribute a large number of products to a variety of customers across the globe. 

What are the benefits of using WooCommerce over other online shopping cart software?

As we already mentioned, WooCommerce is known for its flexibility and versatility for businesses of any size. But, there are other benefits of using WooCommerce to manage your online store. For example, WooCommerce itself is free and open source, meaning that if you’re a small business just starting out, you can still use WooCommerce while saving money until you’re ready to pay for the upgrade. Once you get going, you purchase commercial add-ons that provide additional functionality, payment, or shipping integrations you may need.  You can even hire a freelancer or web development agency to build a custom WordPress plugin that will extend the functionality of your WooCommerce store.   This is also possible in other shopping carts, but most other carts are not open source and rely on a software as a service model where your team can’t access or modify all aspects of the code, only what the cart software provides access to.

Another benefit is that WooCommerce is known for its security. The ability to safely receive payments from all over the world is a necessity for any business owner, and WooCommerce is designed to protect your data while accepting payments for your goods, helping ensure that your transactions are safe and secure. WooCommerce supports a vast variety of mainstream payment processors and even has its own secure payment gateway called WooCommerce Payments that makes setting up payments turnkey for new businesses.

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As WooCommerce works exclusively on the WordPress CMS, it doesn’t just work well on WordPress sites out of the box, it integrates deeply into WordPress. This means it inherits the design of the variety of high-quality WordPress design themes out there and ensures a responsive, mobile friendly website.  Since high-quality website designs are key to making customers want to stay on your site long enough to make a purchase, having your shopping cart plugin look and work well is key to making the most of your online store.

Finally, WooCommerce offers many different e-commerce features that allow website owners to make the most of the sale while helping ensure a smooth experience for the customers.  WooCommerce has third party add-ons, both free and paid, that can extend your shop for all sorts of use cases, even allowing you to set up the store in a catalog only mode if you aren’t quite ready to sell online yet.  WooCommerce’s expert design and tools make it the perfect plug-in for anyone looking to sell online. 

That being said, just like every other plug-in on WordPress, managing WooCommerce can be a difficult task if you’re unfamiliar with how WordPress websites and WooCommerce works. Open source software like WooCommerce provides great flexibility and power but puts more responsibility on the website owner to ensure the website is functioning properly and is secure since you have access to your data and code. That’s why many businesses choose to hire a WooCommerce hosting provider to help them install and manage WooCommerce on their website.

How can you find the best WooCommerce hosting provider?

There are several things to consider when picking the right WooCommerce hosting provider for you. Are they an expert in WordPress management, do they understand the specific needs of WooCommerce, are they reliable, and do they want to help your sales grow? All of these questions are ones you should keep in mind when looking at different WooCommerce hosting providers and their services.

Are they an expert in WordPress management?

The first thing to consider when finding the right WooCommerce provider is whether or not the company is an expert in WordPress management. Because WooCommerce is a plugin that works with WordPress websites, it’s important to hire someone who is skilled at working with WordPress. Otherwise, you run the risk of hiring someone that doesn’t know what they are doing and will create more problems than they are solving. Many web hosting companies and agencies will host any type of website, but if they aren’t experts in WordPress itself, you won’t be able to turn to them reliably for actual support or assistance on your website. WordPress has its own development nuances and quirks that only those with extensive experience in WordPress will be able to assist with.

Do they understand WooCommerce’s specific needs?

From staying ahead of security issues to understanding caching needs and database optimization, there are a lot of specific things needed in order to keep WooCommerce running smoothly on your WordPress site. That’s why it’s crucial to hire a company that understands the specific requirements of WooCommerce. After all, it’s different from other WordPress plug-ins, and that means it will have different, unique needs that require skill and knowledge to address.  Many WordPress experts even shy away from WooCommerce websites because it really is a complex and high-functioning plugin that requires its own skill set and expertise. On top of this, one e-commerce expert may have general knowledge of how to help you succeed with your online shop, but if they don’t know the technical ins and outs of WooCommerce, this could cost you dearly in the long run. From testing online checkout to troubleshooting your shipping live rates, a WooCommerce expert will be able to enhance your customer’s experience.

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Are they reliable and do they offer timely support?

The reality of owning any website is that you will run into problems from time to time. Whether something breaks or is too slow, addressing any issues that arise in a timely manner is critical to keeping the users of your website happy and willing to buy from you. Frustrated customers are far more likely to leave your site without buying anything when this happens, so any problems that arise can threaten to decrease your revenue. Unlike a marketing website, e-commerce websites are often the primary income-generating channel for many businesses and any business critical issues such as website downtime or checkout not working will directly hurt your sales. Thus, hiring a company that offers quality WooCommerce support in a timely manner is critical to making the most of your managed WooCommerce hosting and keeping your customers happy.

Are they genuinely excited about helping you increase your sales revenue?

The best WooCommerce provider should be excited about helping you utilize WooCommerce to maximize your revenue. After all, increasing your profit is the goal of hiring a great WooCommerce provider. Whatever provider you hire should be genuinely interested in using tools such as coupons, cross-promotion, and up-selling to help you get the most out of your sales. Even better, finding an expert who is familiar with third party integrations on WooCommerce such as CRMs, drip campaigns, A/B testing, and sales funnel software can help your sales explode. For example, our team is a certified partner of Klaviyo and MailChimp, two third-party CRMs that integrate beautifully with WooCommerce.

Why is Inspry the best WooCommerce hosting provider for you?

If you’re looking for the best-managed WooCommerce hosting provider, look no further than Inspry. We are experts in WordPress and WooCommerce and have been working in the field for well over a decade. As officially certified WooExperts, our passion is to utilize WordPress and WooCommerce to help your business succeed. Our expert knowledge combined with the care we have for all of our clients makes Inspry the top choice for ecommerce companies in Atlanta and beyond. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you with WooCommerce development.

Matt Schwartz is an accomplished entrepreneur and technology expert based in Atlanta, Georgia. He is the founder and CEO of Inspry, a WordPress and WooCommerce web development and maintenance web agency that has been providing cutting-edge technology solutions to clients since 2011. With over a decade of experience in the industry, Matt has become a respected figure in the web development community and has helped numerous businesses achieve their digital goals.