Our Picks
What is the best web hosting for e-commerce right now?
The best web hosting for e-commerce right now is Hostinger. Hostinger offers a specialized website builder plan for e-commerce and WooCommerce hosting plans starting at less than $5 a month. Both include a free domain for one year, secure socket layer certification, firewall protection and email hosting for up to 100 email addresses. You’ll also get enough storage for at least 2,000 pages (200GB) on both the e-commerce website builder plan and the lowest-tier WooCommerce plan. However, the e-commerce store builder only provides inventory management for up to 500 products, so you should only use it if you're planning to stick with a limited range of products. WooCommerce, on the other hand, lets you create unlimited products, so it can grow with your store.
If you're determined to use a website builder and you want to be able to sell more than 500 products, Shopify is your best option. The store builder is highly flexible, Shopify's server performance is the best of any host I've tested and both data and bandwidth are unlimited on all plans. You'll also get email marketing tools, plus systems for managing your store's logistics and finances. Shopify is more expensive -- starting at $29 a month -- but the costs are offset by major shipping discounts available for USPS, DHL Express and UPS.
Best overall web host for e-commerce
Pros
- Offers both a website builder plan and managed WooCommerce plans
- AI site generation for the website builder
- Managed WooCommerce plans include LiteSpeed caching
- Email hosting for up to 100 email addresses included with all e-commerce plans
Cons
- Best renewal pricing is only available through a four-year plan
Hostinger is a rapidly growing web hosting company that offers two types of e-commerce hosting: a website builder with a specialized e-commerce plan and managed WooCommerce hosting. Hostinger also did well during our hands-on testing, earning top marks for ease of use and server performance.
Both types of e-commerce hosting from Hostinger include a free domain for one year, enough storage for at least 2,000 pages, SSL certification, firewall protection -- including distributed denial of service or DDoS protection -- and email hosting for up to 100 email addresses.
Plans
Hostinger's website builder offers both an AI-powered site generation process -- building a site for you based on simple information you enter about your business -- and a self-created website option that is based on 150 templates. The e-commerce focused plan also features SEO tools, marketing integrations, inventory management tools for up to 500 products, appointment scheduling and 20-plus different payment methods.
For managed WooCommerce, Hostinger offers four plans with one-click WooCommerce setup, LiteSpeed caching, auto-updates and automated daily backups. More advanced plans include benefits like built-in WooCommerce integrations and AI content generation tools.
Pricing
Hostinger’s e-commerce store builder plan starts at $4 a month (plus three months free) and renews for $9 a month if you choose a four-year plan.
Hostinger’s managed WooCommerce hosting starts at $4 a month, with renewal pricing as low as $9 a month for the most affordable plan. You must choose a four-year plan to access the full introductory discount; lesser discounts are available on two and three year terms.
Best e-commerce website builder
Pros
- Unlimited storage and bandwidth
- Extensive tools for product/inventory management
- Excellent server performance
- Major shipping discounts with popular shipping companies
- Extensive marketing tools, including email marketing software
- Robust security protocols
Cons
- Starting price is high
- Purchase process is somewhat convoluted
If you're selling physical products, you'll love Shopify's tools for managing your inventory, calculating sales tax for customers in a variety of regions and shipping products (including the ability to create shipping labels). You'll also enjoy the shipping discounts, which go up to 88% for USPS, DHL Express and UPS, potentially saving you thousands of dollars every month.
Shopify also impressed me during my hands-on tests, with an easy-to-use site editor and incredible server performance. I experienced 100% uptime during my week of testing and the fastest site speed of any host I've tested -- plus there's fast customer service to boot. All of this earned it the highest ranking of any website builder I've tested and put it only a little bit behind Hostinger, the highest-ranking web host I've tested so far.
All Shopify stores are secured with SSL certification, firewall protection, anti-DDoS protocols and 24/7 security monitoring.
Plans
Shopify's Basic plan includes unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth and full access to the e-commerce store builder, plus a robust set of email marketing tools with unlimited contacts and monthly email sends. You'll also get essential sales tools like discount creation and abandoned cart recovery, plus tools for selling on other online marketplaces like Facebook Marketplace. You can further diversify your income by using the Shopify POS or point-of-sale system to sell at in-person events. The shipping discounts for this plan go up to 77%.
The Shopify plan includes everything in the Basic plan, plus the ability to add five additional staff members and shipping discounts of up to 88%. There's also an Advanced plan with the option to create 15 additional staff accounts and 10 physical checkouts for online stores that are launching physical shops.
Pricing
Shopify's Basic plan costs $29 a month, the Shopify plan costs $79 a month and the Advanced plan costs $299 a month, with prices based on annual billing. You can choose month-to-month plans, but they cost significantly more, with the month-to-month Basic plan priced at $39.
There's also Shopify Plus for enterprise businesses, which starts at $2,300 a month.
Best variety of options
Pros
- Offers a variety of e-commerce options, including a proprietary website builder, WooCommerce plans and plans for tools like PrestaShop and Magento
- AI site and content creation tools
- All e-commerce plans include a domain for at least the first year and permanent SSL certification
Cons
- Significant price increases halfway through a one-year term for website builder plans
- Renewal cost for WooCommerce plans is significantly more than introductory price
Ionos’s main e-commerce offerings are an online store builder and WooCommerce hosting. Both include a free domain for at least one year, an SSL certification, firewall protection and DDoS protection. You'll also get access to Ionos's top-notch customer service, one of the biggest benefits I discovered during my hands-on testing of Ionos.
Plans
Ionos’s online store builder includes manual and AI-driven site-building tools, including a customizable checkout with options to add upsells to encourage people to upgrade their products and cross-sells to encourage people to buy related products. A variety of payment processors, shipping rate calculation tools and promo/coupon creators are also included.
All online store builder plans from Ionos include free email hosting for at least one email address and the ability to list at least 500 physical products in your store.
Ionos’s WooCommerce plan includes preinstalled WordPress and WooCommerce, plus an AI-powered setup wizard that builds a site for you based on basic information about your store.
Ionos’s WooCommerce plan also includes a caching plugin, Jetpack backup, automated WordPress updates, unlimited product creation and email hosting for 10 accounts.
Ionos also offers managed hosting plans for Magento and PrestaShop, two moderately popular e-commerce platforms.
Pricing
Pricing for Ionos’s e-commerce online store builder is complicated. The Plus plan starts at $1 a month for a one-year term but rises to $30 a month after those months, and you must sign up for a year to get the discount -- so you’ll pay $30 a month for the second half of your term. The Starter plan, on the other hand, starts at $6 a month for one-year but only rises to $24 a month afterward.
As for WooCommerce hosting from Ionos, there’s only one plan, and it costs $16 a month for the first year and $20 a month after.
Magento plans from Ionos and Ionos's PrestaShop plans are similar to regular shared hosting plans, with the most affordable one starting at $4 a month and rising to $6 a month. Like the site builder, there are Magento and PrestaShop plans starting at $1 a month, but they both to $12 a month on renewal.
You can also save money by purchasing one of Ionos’s highly affordable shared hosting plans, with the lowest tier starting at $4 a month and rising to $6 a month on renewal. If you choose this option, you’ll have to configure and maintain your e-commerce store on your own.
Best customer support
Pros
- Top-notch customer support from WordPress experts
- Excellent security
- Daily backups
- Improved server performance through CDN
Cons
- Renewal pricing is very high
- Introductory pricing only available for one year
- Relatively low storage limits
SiteGround offers fully managed WordPress hosting, including a guided setup process to quickly help you build the basics of your site. All of these plans include WooCommerce support to simplify building an e-commerce store.
SiteGround also has award-winning customer service that lived up to its spectacular reputation during my in-depth SiteGround review. You can even pay for advanced support packages to help you configure and optimize your store.
Plans
All of SiteGround’s WooCommerce plans include unmetered bandwidth, a free domain for the first year, permanent SSL certification, WordPress auto-updates and daily backups.
SiteGround also offers top-notch security features, including a constantly updated firewall, AI anti-bot tools and a custom security plugin. Combined with a content delivery network and highly optimized servers, these features ensure excellent site and server performance.
Pricing
SiteGround’s least expensive WooCommerce plan starts at $3 a month and rises to $18 a month on renewal. The most expensive WooCommerce plan starts at $8 a month and rises to $45 a month on renewal. You must sign up for one year to get the full introductory discount, and there is no option to keep the discount by signing up for a two or three-year term.
Buying regular shared hosting from SiteGround won’t save you money, either -- the prices for both regular shared hosting and regular WordPress hosting are the same as SiteGround’s WooCommerce hosting prices.
Best WooCommerce hosting for beginners
Pros
- Excellent WordPress setup tools for beginners
- WordPress hosting servers are heavily optimized for performance
- Great security features
- Email hosting for unlimited email addresses
Cons
- Both introductory pricing and renewal pricing are expensive for managed WordPress plans
- Introductory pricing is only available with a three-year plan
- Customer service can be slow via email and phone
A2 Hosting is an independent web host with a 4.6/5 star rating on TrustPilot with over 2,500 reviews. A2 Hosting also performed well in our hands-on review, with excellent ease of use, a good variety of plans and great server performance -- even on a basic plan without added caching tools. Customer support via phone and email was slow, suggesting that it may take a significant amount of time to address complex issues.
Plans
A2 Hosting offers several WordPress hosting plans and one WooCommerce plan. A2 Hosting WordPress plans include optimized WordPress installation with automatic setup for essential pages and plugins, plus server performance tools like LiteSpeed caching. These plans also include daily backups, SSL certification and an advanced firewall with distributed denial of service and brute force protection.
Pricing
The lowest-tier managed WordPress hosting plan from A2 Hosting starts at $14 a month and rises to $28 a month after renewal. The one plan with preinstalled WooCommerce starts at $47 a month, with a renewal cost of $67 a month. Discounts are only available with a three-year plan.
You can save money with a regular shared hosting plan -- starting at $2 a month and rising to $13 a month for the lowest tier. These plans still include excellent security and WordPress features, but some of them don’t include daily backups or performance tools like LiteSpeed.
Best premium managed WooCommerce hosting
Pros
- Several premium plugins included with all packages
- Caching and image compression can improve performance
- Automated daily backups
- Above-average uptime guarantee
Cons
- No introductory pricing; lowest plan is $8.40 a month when purchased annually
Nexcess offers top-tier WooCommerce hosting and fully managed Magento hosting. All of Nexcess’s plans feature SSL certification, firewall protection, automated daily backups and an above-average 99.99% uptime guarantee.
Plans
Nexcess’s managed WooCommerce hosting plans come bundled with plugins like Yoast SEO, Astra Pro and Beaver Builder Lite bundled directly into its hosting packages for improved performance.
Nexcess’s managed WooCommerce hosting plans also include automated updates for WordPress and all plugins, plus a plugin performance monitor to track the impact plugins and themes have on site performance. Object caching and image compression are also included to further improve performance.
Nexcess’s fully managed Magento hosting plans include robust developer tools and caching for accelerated site speed.
Pricing
Managed WooCommerce hosting through Nexcess starts at $17.50 a month, with the most expensive plan costing $912.50 a month. Both of these prices are based on an annual payment and there is no introductory pricing.
Fully managed Magento hosting through Nexcess starts at $37.52 a month for the first three months and rises to $67 a month after those three months. The most expensive plan starts at $539.01 a month for the first three months and rises to $1,017 a month in following months.
Factors to consider when choosing a web host for e-commerce
Website builder vs. content management system
A website builder is a visual design tool for creating sites without using code, installing extensions or managing software updates. Most website builders are front-end editors, so you can see what your site edits will look like to the public in real time. Website builders also tend to be proprietary, making it difficult to switch hosts later on.
A content management system or CMS is a tool for creating, managing and organizing content like blog posts and landing pages without needing code. These tools are typically open-source, so you can use them with most hosting companies and plans. They also tend to have more customization options than website builders, but you may need to install extensions to access these options. WordPress is the most popular CMS, powering 43.4% of all websites.
If you want the simplest site building process possible, choose a website builder plan. If you want maximum flexibility and you’re capable of dealing with more complex software, choose a third-party hosting plan with a CMS like WordPress.
Shop management system
The shop management system is the tool you’ll use to create your online store, product pages and checkout experience. If you’re using a website builder, this will be built into the software. If you’re using WordPress, you’ll probably end up using the popular WooCommerce plugin.
Other shop management platforms include Magento -- recently rebranded as Adobe Commerce -- and PrestaShop. These are essentially content management systems built specifically for e-commerce. Some hosts, including Ionos and Nexcess, offer specialized hosting plans for these tools.
Hosting types
Most website builder hosting plans from traditional web hosts use shared hosting, which involves splitting a server’s resources between many sites. This lets hosts keep shared hosting prices low. Data storage, which includes how much space and bandwidth you have for things like images and blog posts and how much monthly traffic your site can accommodate, is limited on these plans.
If you choose a CMS, you’ll be able to pick between a few types of web hosting. Shared hosting is the most affordable, though basic shared hosting plans will require you to set up your e-commerce software yourself. Many web hosts also offer specialized shared hosting plans that are optimized for WordPress and/or the popular e-commerce plugin WooCommerce. These specialized plans are often more expensive than regular shared hosting.
As your site grows, you might want to switch to virtual private server hosting for dedicated bandwidth and storage. This lets your site accommodate more monthly visitors -- often several hundred thousand -- and store thousands of large files like images and videos. You’ll also get some server customization options, like the ability to choose your operating system.
Large e-commerce sites can also choose dedicated hosting. Dedicated hosting gives you an entire physical server, often including enough bandwidth to handle millions of monthly visits and enough storage to upload hundreds of thousands of large files. Dedicated hosting also offers more server customization options.
Both VPS and dedicated hosting have managed and unmanaged hosting options. Managed hosting tends to be more expensive, but includes server software maintenance. Unmanaged plans are typically less expensive, but require you to maintain server software yourself (or hire someone to do it).
E-commerce tools
A website builder for e-commerce should include:
- Store design tools, including product page and checkout customization
- Payment processing capabilities
- Search engine optimization -- SEO -- tools
- Coupon creation
An e-commerce plan from a traditional web host should include:
- A preinstalled CMS (typically WordPress)
- Preinstalled plugins or extensions for online store creation, such as WooCommerce
Security
At minimum, your e-commerce site should have the following security measures in place:
- SSL certification: This protocol encrypts data sent to and from your website, such as customers’ payment information.
- Firewall: This software attempts to filter out malware attempting to infect your site.
- DDoS protection: DDoS attacks flood a site with fake, malicious traffic to overwhelm the server. High-quality web servers are equipped with software to protect them from these attacks.
Some hosts may also provide things like two-factor authentication, malware scanning/repair and automated backups to further protect your site.
Performance
The best web hosting services for e-commerce provide at least 99.9% uptime, meaning your site won’t go down for more than 45 minutes a month due to server issues. This is important because every minute your site is down is a minute you could be losing traffic -- and if you’re running an e-commerce store, losing traffic equals losing money.
Many web hosts also offer tools to improve site speed and other aspects of performance, such as caching tools that store your data in users’ browsers so they can access your site faster on repeat visits.
Customer service
Customer service should be available 24/7 via live chat, email and phone. You also want customer support to be fast to respond and knowledgeable enough to assist you with any problems you encounter.
Reading third-party reviews is important, as web hosting companies will always play up the quality of their customer support. Looking at reviews from real people helps you understand whether or not the host you’re considering follows through on the promises made on its website.
Pricing
Consider what hosting fits within your budget, as the company and plan you choose will majorly impact your operating budget. Web hosting -- especially e-commerce hosting -- pricing can be confusing.
Here are four things to look out for:
- Annual/long-term payments: Most web hosting companies display monthly prices, but you can often only access the lowest price by paying for one to three years at once.
- Renewal pricing: Many web hosts’ listed prices are introductory rates, meaning you’ll be charged more per month when your service renews.
- Transaction fees: Some e-commerce-focused web hosting services charge transaction fees on some or all of their plans.
- Additional fees: Many web hosts provide a domain for the first year but require you to pay for your domain separately in subsequent years.
How CNET tests web hosting
We extensively research every web host we include on lists like this one. We start by reading their websites to evaluate the quality of their plans and pricing. We also read reviews from third-party sites like Trustpilot and check the Better Business Bureau for complaints about the service.
We’re currently conducting full reviews of popular web hosting companies to provide our hands-on, expert assessments. These reviews use our framework for testing web hosting services, including:
- Uptime monitoring for one week
- Speed tests over the course of five days
- Calls and emails to customer support to determine things like waiting time, professionalism and expertise of the customer support teams
Notes from these reviews are included in the listings for the relevant hosts. This page will be updated regularly with new notes as we publish more reviews.
Other web hosting for e-commerce we've tested
HostGator
HostGator is a popular web host that powers over 707,000 websites. HostGator’s two WordPress-based e-commerce plans include several preinstalled plugins for e-commerce and marketing, automated WordPress updates and automated daily backups.
HostGator delivers decent security features with all plans, including SSL certification and an advanced firewall with DDoS protection.
In my testing, I found HostGator’s site setup and management tools easy to work with. Benchmarking showed that HostGator’s servers offer decent performance. Customer support was inconsistent across channels, so you might want to avoid HostGator if your site is complex and/or you expect to need a lot of support.
Pricing: Online Store plan starts at $10 a month and rises to $25 a month on renewal; Online Store + Marketplace starts at $13 a month and rises to $40 a month on renewal. You can save money by purchasing a shared hosting plan ($3.75 a month to start, $10 a month on renewal). All of these prices are based on the purchase of a three-year term.
GoDaddy
GoDaddy is the biggest player in the web hosting space, powering a full 15.6% of all websites. You can get many types of web hosting from GoDaddy, including shared and WordPress hosting. The company also offers Managed WooCommerce Stores that include hosting, automated WordPress/WooCommerce updates and shipping discounts of up to 84%.
GoDaddy’s Managed WooCommerce Stores also come with SSL certification, an advanced firewall with DDoS protection and malware scanning. This is notable, as many of GoDaddy’s hosting plans don’t include these features.
During my hands-on assessment, I found GoDaddy frustrating to get started with, but this was balanced out by excellent server performance and customer service. There are a lot of open complaints on GoDaddy’s BBB page, so you might want to avoid GoDaddy if your site is complex or you expect to need high-level support.
Pricing: The most affordable WooCommerce Store plan starts at $25 a month, and rises to $30 a month on renewal. The most expensive WooCommerce Store plan starts at $130 a month and retains this price on renewal. GoDaddy also offers online store builder plans starting at $10 a month ($16 a month on renewal).
You can save a lot of money by choosing a regular shared hosting plan -- starting at $6 a month for the most affordable option, with a renewal price of $10 a month -- but you’ll be sacrificing a lot, including basic security features like a firewall.