WordPress Ecommerce Hosting | A complete Guide
Ready to get started with WordPress eCommerce Hosting? This guide will take you through the entire process — from the first idea for your domain name to your last plugins added — to start selling products on a WordPress website. In order to make an eCommerce business a success, you need a powerful and robust WordPress eCommerce hosting solution that could keep pace with the growth of your business.
Why choose WordPress for your eCommerce platform?
If you’re looking for a platform to build an eCommerce website, it won’t take you long to stumble onto WordPress. WordPress is at the top of many lists for preferred eCommerce site builders, and you may have even heard of the platform before starting your own eCommerce site. Brand recognition isn’t the only reason to consider listing WordPress as the top CMS (content management system) for eCommerce brands. It’s important to understand exactly why WordPress is consistently labeled one of the premier solutions for eCommerce businesses and how you can make the most of its versatile features and robust developer community. A few of the top benefits of choosing WordPress for your eCommerce business include:
- More than one-third of all websites run on WordPress.
- WordPress prides itself on being user-friendly.
- You have a whole community of resources at your fingertips.
- There are tens of thousands of plugins to choose from.
As we dive further into these four benefits, you’ll begin to realize just how important they are to your eCommerce brand. The flexibility and diversity of features available on WordPress make it a slam-dunk choice for many online retailers.
Hosting Requirements for a Seamless WordPress Ecommerce Hosting Experience
In order to run an online business successfully, it is crucial to understand the dynamics of its hosting requirements. For this, you need to know the answer to the following questions.
Why Is It Important to Understand the Requirements?
It is important because not all online stores are equal. Because of the differences in business model and operational requirements, every online store requires a unique set of services and tools for a smooth transition. If you provide an optimum environment for your store, the visitors and customers will have a great experience and could leverage high availability and security for success.
What If I Opt for an Expensive Dedicated Server?
A dedicated server can give you a lot of computing power but you would still require to invest in optimized resource management as well as frequent updates, patching, and probably a system administrator to perform these and other related tasks. WooCommerce runs on WordPress which in turn runs primarily on a stack consisting of a PHP processor, a web server (Apache/NGINX), and a database (MySQL or MariaDB). In addition, WooCommerce and WordPress also require additional services to manage caching, traffic spikes, and backups. Bringing all of this together on a single server requires a range of skills. Similarly, you would soon discover that managing the server is a huge hassle that could become a hindrance to other business parts. To see if any hosting service matches this equation, I decided to review Cloudways, a managed WordPress cloud hosting provider.
Cloudways Features Overview
Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform for WordPress, WooCommerce, and other PHP-based web applications. The platform handles all the server-side issues, while the users enjoy the sheer power of cloud servers running under the hood.
The Choice of Infrastructure
One of the most essential features of Cloudways is the choice of cloud infrastructure it offers to its users. At the moment, the platform lets you choose the servers from the top five cloud providers.
- Google Cloud
- Amazon Web Service
- DigitalOcean
- Linode
- Vultr
Advanced Yet Intuitive Platform
Cloudways platform is very user-friendly and modern. I will walk you through some of the key features and will leave the rest for you to explore.
Optimized Stack
At the start of this article, I described the stack required to run a WordPress-based eCommerce business. Cloudways offers it all and more. In this model, Cloudways is a platform that operates on top of your cloud server and is responsible for sustained optimal server performance. Under the hood, It runs and manages several services. The purpose of these services is to provide maximum uptime and performance to an online business.
Web Server
Cloudways uses both Apache and NGINX as web servers. The combo is used to serve a broad range of use cases. Without going into the technical details, I would like to mention that the Cloudways Platform uses Apache for flexibility and NGINX for speed.
Server & Application Launch
On Cloudways, launching a server and a WooCommerce store is a matter of a few clicks. After signing up for a Cloudways account, all you need to do is to choose the provider and name your store and server. Select the desired server specifications, choose the data center location, and launch. Within a few minutes, both the server and website are ready for action.
Server Management
The server management screen contains all the options to control and manage server-related services. In this section, you could find your server IP and credentials for SSH and SFTP access.
Application Management
The application management section contains all the options and credentials for your specific website hosted on the server. Here, you can get access to WordPress and database credentials. The side menu contains the options for domain mapping, SSL certificates, Backups, and Migration tools.
Scalability
Scalability is important for growing online businesses. If your hosting service is not scalable, your ongoing business process would be limited to the current server parameters. In the long run, this would require you to migrate to a new host, a tedious process at best. Cloudways understands this well and offers features that can help you scale as the need arises.
Team Members
It is possible that more than one team member is working on your eCommerce store and each requires customized role-specific access and credentials. Cloudways solves this problem with its Team Member option. With this feature, you can add team members and also define access parameters as per their roles. This is a useful feature as it eliminates the hassle of managing everything on your own. Having team members on board streamlines the tasks and improves productivity.
Add-ons
Cloudways offers a bunch of add-ons so that you can use additional value-added services. These add-ons include DNS services, email integrations, Elastic email, application migration, and CloudwaysCDN.
Flexible Pricing
Cloudways offers flexible pricing which runs on the pay-as-you-go model. Customers are only charged for the services they use.
24/7 Live Chat Support
No matter how good a service is, having support has its perks. Cloudways have multiple channels of support through which customers can resolve their queries. Customers can reach out to a support agent 24/7 via live chat and can also create a support ticket at any time. There is no phone support available, however, for the more urgent issues, agents can contact via phone. For a closer partnership, you can opt for an Advanced or Premium Support add-on that enhances your support experience and our Senior Support Engineers work as an extension of your in-house team.
Final Thoughts
Running an online business is challenging and requires your attention to various matters. Choosing the right hosting partner can help you to take the load off your shoulders. Performance, ease of use, scalability, and security are the key elements to look for when choosing your next hosting provider.