Welcome to our reviews of the best ecommerce hosting companies for 2023 and beyond. This should prove helpful if you’re looking at how to sell online through your website.
Our list of the top 10 ecommerce web hosts for an online store offers options to consider if you’re planning a new site or you want to move an existing e-shop.
Good website hosting providers are the often first place to start for creating online stores. Most come with top ecommerce website builders like Woocommerce ready to install.
Best Website Hosting Company Overall
Due to their global range of green data centres, speed and excellent customer support, we love Siteground web hosting. They can cater for any type of site.
However, we also describe and signpost a great all-in-one ecommerce solution in Shopify. This is perhaps the most complete, SEO-friendly and easy to use ecommerce platform. It’s quick to set up and of course, hosting is included.
A secure and reliable website is an important consideration to prevent headaches down the line. Speed is an essential ecommerce conversion factor effecting traffic, trust and customer experience.
The providers here are some of the best web hosting companies based on experience and research.
For some, saving money is most important. For a personal or information site you can get away with one of the cheapest hosting providers. Choosing one of the best becomes more important when you are conducting online business. It’sessential when selling products and services through an online store.
What Makes a Good eCommerce Host?
There are components of a good ecommerce host that are important considerations if you want to sell online:
- Security – look for secure web hosting advice and solutions. SSL certificates are a must if you are going to accept online card payments. SSL enables your web address to start with the padlock as a security signal in the address bar.
- Speed – a fast website will be rewarded with better Google rankings. It will build trust with your visitors – nobody wants to wait for your pages to load.
- Reliability – consistent uptime is important for maintaining your Google rankings and trust with new and repeat visitors.
- Great customer service – there are cheap web hosting services out there, but make sure you don’t compromise on support. eCommerce website hosting requirements can be more complex than for say, a personal blog. So fast, reliable and knowledgable customer support staff will be something you greatly appreciate if you need it.
This list of website hosting companies for ecommerce has been updated in November 2022. It takes into account experiences with providers over the last 3 years in particular. I have removed two hosts from the list following issues with their uptime and customer service. I only include providers if I have had positive experiences or heard good reviews about them from multiple trusted sources.
Siteground
For website security, Siteground offer free SSL certificates via Let’s Encrypt
One of the most popular web hosting providers in the world. Siteground e-commerce solutions range from low-cost, shared servers to powerful cloud or dedicated server packages. If you’re looking for the best ecommerce hosting in the UK, USA, Europe or Asia-Pacific region you are well catered for.
The company has data centres in London, Chicago, Amsterdam and Singapore. You can choose the closest for you and / or your customers. This will help deliver the best website speed. Fast web page load times make a real difference when it comes to selling online.
Siteground’s website offers a great deal of advice about the platforms you might want to use to set up an online shop. At the time of writing, there are 18 e-commerce apps available 1-click install in CPanel. WordPress and Magento are recommended by these web hosts. Both are given particular prominence on their site.
Siteground offers PCI Compliant hosting solutions, 24/7 support, and guarantees 99.9% uptime.
Free SSL Certificates
Since our earlier review, the addition of free SSL certificates with all their hosting packages means that you can have the green address bar and HTTPS – an important trust signal for an online shop to show that customers’ payment details are safe and secure – without any extra expense. This is great as an SSL certificate often starts at around £40 / $50 with other hosts.
Getting the padlock symbol and HTTPS at the start of your web address has now become a must-have, rather than a nice-to-have for ecommerce website owners.
Google has publicly stated that websites with valid HTTPS get a small ranking boost. Now all non-HTTPS pages show a ‘Not Secure’ warning in the Chrome web browser. Therefore, most active websites have moved to it.
A stronger red warning is already in place in Chrome for any web pages that collect personal information via forms, such as payment details. So, if you are setting up an ecommerce website, ensuring it has a valid SSL certificate is a must.
This addition of free SSL makes Siteground one of the best choices for secure and SEO friendly website hosting. It’s also one of the fastest and most reliable, with excellent customer service.
Many hosts are likely to follow Siteground’s lead in making SSL available for free by default.
Fast and
For years, Siteground have been using Google cloud hosting infrastructure for all new clients. In addition to further improving the speed and reliability of their solutions, this move also makes Siteground one of the best green hosting companies around.
Learn more about their hosting packages and features on the Siteground website. We have found this to be one of the best ecommerce hosting companies in the world. If you want a good value host for WordPress websites with WooCommerce or other popular CMS / shopping cart platforms, such as Magento, OpenCart or PrestaShop, it’s a great choice
Visit the Siteground eCommerce hosting section to learn more.
WordPress and WooCommerce Hosting – Kinsta
We have moved some websites to specialist WordPress hosting provider – Kinsta.
Kinsta is one of the world’s top web hosting companies, with clients that include Fortune500 companies. Major global brands like Ricoh and Intuit use them. However, their users are not limited to those with big budgets. Prices start from $30 (around £25) per month, and that low cost comes with good, fast support.
Their hosting is based on the Google Cloud Platform. How often do you see the Google website go down?! There’s a choice of over 20 data centres across the globe. This means you can choose a location closest to your most frequent / important visitors to maximise pageload speed.
Kinsta also have a range of website security measures in place. There’s assurance of regular back-ups and uptime checks every 2 minutes.
Their customer support is excellent. Managed migration to their hosting is helpful if you have an existing website hosted elsewhere.
Learn more about the Kinsta hosting features on their website.
Kualo
This UK and US based eco-friendly hosting company is a new addition to the list. It seems to be a real gem. We found Kualo when looking for the best green web hosting companies around the world, and placing scrutiny on genuine environmentally friendly commitments and practices. Kualo came out joint top alongside only two other providers. Our review of their service for the sites we have moved to them is 5-Star.
They have a dedicated page on the site explaining how they deliver a green web hosting service that is also extremely quick and reliable. It’s achieved by:
- Powering their data centres with 100% renewable energy, sourced from windfarms. This includes London Array – the world’s largest off-shore windfarm.
- Running an energy efficient data centre – built to be that way from the ground up.
- A range of other policies, including smart cooling sensors for their servers and minimising staff travel.
They offer low cost web hosting for small business sites. Kualo also cater for large ecommerce stores running leading platforms such as Magento, OpenCart or PrestaShop, or WooCommerce via WordPress. The WordPress websites we have moved their have so far run extremely quickly. They were easy to set up with the cPanel hosting, and the service has been reliable with no issues so far – several years into using them. Learn more about Kualo web hosting on their site – we think they are great and highly recommend them.
Bluehost
In terms of customer service and slickness of operation, Bluehost is certainly justified a place in the list of top 10 ecommerce hosting companies I have used to date. When I first joined them I signed up and paid online, and not long later (within about 24 hours I think) I received a phone call from them asking if I was getting on OK. I’ve never experienced this before. This was doubly impressive as they took the care to call me during my working hours even though I’m based in the UK and they are in the US.
Bluehost were extremely professional and helpful when I needed technical support, and I found them quick and easy to deal with. I’ve only used quite basic web hosting packages with them so far, but they seem great value and often have special offers running. They’re worth a place on the shortlist when looking at the best ecommerce hosting companies for your online store. Their good reviews seem well justified.
iPage
Highly rated by many website reviews, the ecommerce hosting solutions from iPage are clearly explained on their site. There’s the ShopSite online shopping cart system, and PayPal for credit / debit card processing. SSL Certificates increase customer security.
Clook
Another website host with UK servers. I have managed a retail client’s ecommerce site at Clook without any problems. Their servers are set up to support a wide range of popular e-store solutions, such as Magento, Zen Cart, OpenCart and XCart systems for online shopping with secure payment processing.
Layershift
Home to many of the world’s leading companies, Layershift offers specific solutions and advice pages for ecommerce web hosting. The Magento open source e-commerce platform is a popular choice for main online retail businesses. Layershift offers easy install, as well as managed hosting services and 24/7 support for this e-shop builder. Among their e-commerce hosting security solutions, there is automated data backup every 6 hours available.
Rackspace
For larger ecommerce businesses, Rackspace online store solutions include a range of managed services and they are specialists in cloud hosting technology. The company offers Linux and Windows cloud servers for sites ranging from fairly low traffic and storage levels requiring 1GB of RAM, right up to intensive requirements of 120GB for massive, high traffic websites.
One of my previous employers was using Rackspace to host its own sites, as well as applications for some global, blue-chip retailers, without any issues to my knowledge. Looking for a green hosting company for your online store? Rackspace are one of only 3 companies given a 5-star review in the Good Tech Guide list of the best green web hosting providers when they analysed the eco credentials of several hosts who promote themselves as being environmentally friendly.
ekmPowershop
This ecommerce website builder offers an easy way to create an eshop and comes with free online store hosting. It allows you to accept debit / credit card payments, and other popular online payment processing systems, such as PayPal and SagePay. ekmPowershop charges a flat monthly fee for use of the platform and ecommerce hosting. However, there are no transaction fees.
At the time of writing there are over 150 website templates for your estore. There are many useful features that make the system easy for both the customer and the business owner. These include social media promotional tools, eBay integration, live chat functionality, customer address verification and multi-currency displays. With this provider, you can host unlimited products on your site. You can easily add blogs, promotional stickers and customer loyalty schemes.
Shopify
This all-in-one ecommerce website software and online store hosting solution has powered $Billions in sales across over 1 million retail sites. Having a complete web shop solution like this ensures all aspects of your ecommerce system are compatible and work together seamlessly.
It’s simple enough to set up and use for novice website users. This means that the e-shop owner does not need to engage the services of expert web developers. Even much of the web design is taken care of. So, all you might want to create a slick experience for your visitors is a graphic designer to help you with a company logo.
Online stores with Shopify are fast and mobile friendly out of the box – one of the benefits of using one of the more modern e-commerce platforms.
For most users looking to create a low-cost, turnkey eshop, this would prove to be an effective, cheap and reliable solution. It can be upgraded as your needs grow.
It comes with a range of innovative tools specific to the field of online retail. These include gift cards and purchase journey analytics. Security in the online shopping experience is at the core of its functionality. Shopify is certified as PCI Compliant. There is even a dedicated mobile point of sale add-on to make ecommerce even easier for buyers.
Is an easy to use, integrated solution a high priority when choosing the best ecommerce hosting company for you? If so, then Shopify could be a great choice.
Visit the Shopify Complete eCommerce Solution
If you have been looking for reviews of the top ecommerce web hosting companies for 2023 and beyond, then we hope the information above proves useful. Happy selling!
