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Best Web Hosting for E-Commerce in 2025

We researched and tested popular web hosting and e-commerce hosting companies to help you find the best web hosting service for launching your e-commerce store.

Our Experts

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Written by  Dianna Gunn
Article updated on 
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Dianna Gunn Web Hosting Expert
Dianna Gunn built her first WordPress website in 2008. Since then, she's poured thousands of hours into understanding how websites and online businesses work. She's shared what she's learned on blogs like ThemeIsle, BloggingPro and DomainWheel. She now works for CNET as a Web Hosting Expert, creating in-depth guides on web hosting and reviewing the top web hosting companies to help folks preparing to build a website for the first time.
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There’s a lot to tackle when building an e-commerce store, from choosing a domain and creating your website to selecting products, setting up product pages and more. To make it all run smoothly, you need a web hosting company with fast, reliable performance, intuitive store creation tools and various hosting plans that can grow with your business. I've spent the past year testing web hosting services for site speed, uptime, ease of use and more, then used my review data to compile this list of the best web hosting services for e-commerce stores.

Our Picks

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WEB HOSTING DEALS OF THE WEEK

Deals are selected by the CNET Group commerce team, and may be unrelated to this article.

What is the best web hosting for e-commerce right now?

SiteGround web host
James Martin/CNET

SiteGround is the best web hosting for e-commerce shops powered by WordPress thanks to its many tools for the CMS, from a guided setup assistant that helps you build your site quickly to proprietary plugins for enhancing site speed and security. SiteGround also offers excellent customer service, with access to WordPress experts and even additional paid services to get things like custom themes properly installed on your site. The renewal prices -- starting at $18 per month -- are high for personal sites, but more than reasonable for an e-commerce site, and you'll pay much less -- starting at just $3 per month -- for your first year, allowing you to establish your platform on a shoestring budget. Moreover, SiteGround's features and service are excellent enough to earn it our 2025 Editor's Choice award for best web host.

Shopify is our 2025 Editor's Choice for best e-commerce website builder. The store builder is highly flexible and Shopify's server performance is the best of any host I've tested. Plus, 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.

Top e-commerce web hosts compared

CompanyBest forStarting storageStarting bandwidthStarting price - WooCommerceStarting price - Website builder
SiteGround Best overall10GB (enough for at least 100 pages)10,000 monthly visitors$3 a month for the first year, $18 per month after$3 a month for the first year, $18 per month after
Shopify Best e-commerce website builderUnlimitedUnlimited N/A$29 a month, billed annually
Hostinger Best value web hosting50GB (enough for at least 500 pages) for WooCommerce, 200GB (enough for 2,000 pages) + 600 products for store builderUnmetered (recommended max of 100,000 monthly visitors on basic WooComerce plan)$4 a month to start, $14 a month on renewal, based on four-year contract$4 a month to start, $14 a month on renewal, based on four-year contract
Hosting.com Best WooCommerce hosting for beginners15GB (enough for at least 150 pages)UnmeteredWordPress hosting is $3 a month for the first year, $9 a month on renewalN/A
Ionos Best variety of options100GB (enough for at least 1,000 pages) for WordPress, 500 products for website builderUnlimited $16 a month to start, $20 a month on renewal, based on one-year contract$6 a month to start, $24 a month on renewal, based on one-year contract

Best web hosting for e-commerce

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 is our 2025 Editors' Choice pick for Best Web Host Overall and our top pick for e-commerce hosting, thanks to its guided WordPress setup, proprietary tools for enhancing WordPress performance and spectacular customer service.

Why we like it

All of SiteGround’s WooCommerce plans include a robust set of features, including SiteGround's guided WordPress setup, solid server performance, advanced security tools and excellent customer service.

The most unique thing about SiteGround is its approach to WordPress, starting with an installation process that guides you through choosing a theme and key plugins for functions like e-commerce and marketing, things you could otherwise spend many hours searching for. You'll also automatically get proprietary plugins for enhancing site speed and security, with comparable features to many top-rated third-party plugins. If your site runs into trouble, you'll be able to rely on SiteGround's award-winning customer support team, which impressed me with their speed, helpfulness and understanding of WordPress. SiteGround's WordPress experts can also help with complex tasks like setting up custom themes or plugins, though you will have to pay additional fees to access these services.

SiteGround also offers top-notch security protocols, including a constantly updated firewall and AI antibot tools. Combined with a content delivery network (CDN) and proprietary caching tech, these features ensure excellent site and server performance.

Plans and pricing

SiteGround focuses on plans for small businesses, with the majority of plans coming in at less than $50 per month. The most affordable WooCommerce plan starts at $3 a month ($18 a month on renewal) and includes enough storage for at least 100 pages, plus enough bandwidth for 10,000 monthly visitors. The most expensive WooCommerce plan starts at $8 a month ($45 a month on renewal) and includes enough storage for at least 400 pages and enough bandwidth for 400,000 monthly visitors. 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.

Larger e-commerce stores can use SiteGround's cloud hosting, which provides dedicated resources pulled from servers in numerous locations to improve performance and security. These plans start at $100 a month for enough storage to host at least 400 pages and enough bandwidth (referred to by SiteGround as data transfer) for five million monthly visitors.

SiteGround also recently launched a website builder with plans in the same price range as its WooCommerce hosting, but we haven't had a chance to test this website builder yet so we've kept our focus on SiteGround's WooCommerce hosting in this article.

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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

Shopify is our Editors' Choice winner for Best Web Host for E-commerce, thanks to its 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).

Why we like it

Shopify impressed me during my hands-on tests with its incredible server performance, excellent security protocols and unique tools for e-commerce products. All of this earned it the highest ranking of any website builder I've tested and put it only a little bit behind SiteGround, the highest-ranking web host I've tested so far.

I experienced 100% uptime during my week of testing and an average site speed of just 1.71 seconds, the fastest site speed of any web host I've tested. I was also impressed with the customer service, which made it easy to speak with a human -- something I've struggled with. My specific issues took a little while to fix, but the customer service agents were very professional and fixed my issues in less time than some other hosts have taken to connect me with a human.

All Shopify stores are secured with SSL certification, firewall protection, anti-DDoS protocols and 24/7 security monitoring. This level of security is common among website builders I've tested, but the 24/7 security monitoring puts it a step above most traditional web hosting.

Shopify also provides numerous tools specifically for selling physical products, such as an extensive inventory management system and shipping discounts of up to 88% with USPS, UPS and DHL Express. You can even start selling at pop-up markets and other in-person events using Shopify's Point of Sale (POS) system, something you can't get from any other web host on this list.

The actual Shopify website builder does have a higher learning curve than some of the other website builders I've tested, but most of the processes are straightforward once you've gotten used to navigating the dashboard. Moreover, learning these processes is highly worthwhile if you're selling physical products and can therefore take advantage of Shopify's best features.

Plans and pricing

Shopify offers plans for businesses of all shapes and sizes, starting with the Basic plan at $29 a month. Basic includes unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth and full access to the e-commerce store builder. You'll also get a robust set of email marketing tools with unlimited contacts and monthly email sends, plus discount creation and abandoned cart recovery. The shipping discounts for this plan go up to 77%.

The Shopify plan costs $79 a month and 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 for $299 per month; this plan offers the option to create 15 additional staff accounts and 10 physical checkouts for online stores that are launching physical shops.

Enterprise businesses can invest in Shopify Plus, which starts at $2,300 a month and requires you to work with customer support to build a custom plan.

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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. Moreover, Hostinger offers both types of hosting for plans that are affordable both now and in the long term, with renewal rates starting at just $11 per month. This combination of excellent features and reasonable pricing has earned Hostinger our 2025 Editor's Choice award for Best Value Web Hosting.

Why we like it

Hostinger's great because it provides options for a variety of people, from small business owners eager to use a website builder so they can get started quickly, to medium-sized businesses looking to build complex WordPress sites. Moreover, Hostinger's e-commerce hosting options all use fast, reliable servers and use extensive security protocols to keep your site -- and your customers' information -- safe.

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 600 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. All of Hostinger's WordPress plans also include the proprietary site assistant, which makes it easy to start building your website in minutes.

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 five inboxes per website.

The only downside of Hostinger is its customer service, which is only available through an AI-run chatbot. While I was impressed with this chatbot's training, I was frustrated by how difficult it was to reach a human, requiring me to wait for over half an hour after typing in "speak to a human."

Plans and pricing

Both types of e-commerce hosting from Hostinger require you to choose a four-year plan to access the full introductory discount, longer than the one- or two-year contracts required to receive the best discounts from other hosts. However, if you stick with the four-year plan, you'll be able to save a significant amount of money in the long run, as Hostinger's renewal costs are lower than the renewal costs of SiteGround or the initial price of Shopify.

Hostinger’s e-commerce store builder plan starts at $4 a month (plus three months free) and renews for $14 a month if you choose a four-year plan. This plan has unlimited bandwidth and enough storage for at least 2,000 pages, but you will only be able to sell 600 product types. This is more than enough for most e-commerce stores, but the limit's still worth knowing about.

Hostinger’s managed WooCommerce hosting starts at $4 a month, with renewal pricing of $14 a month. This plan includes enough storage for at least 500 pages and enough bandwidth for up to 100,000 monthly visitors.

Smaller stores can save money with Hostinger's basic shared hosting, which starts at $3 a month and rises to just $11 per month on renewal. This plan includes enough storage for at least 250 pages, unmetered bandwidth and full access to many of Hostinger's best WordPress features, like LiteSpeed-enhanced servers and the WordPress site assistant. You'll have to install and manage WooCommerce yourself on these plans, but those small up-front savings can turn into a lot of money in the long run.

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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

Hosting.com (formerly A2 Hosting) is an independent web host with easy setup tools for WordPress sites and great server performance during our CNET review.

Why we like it

Hosting.com offers several WordPress hosting plans that include optimized WordPress installation with automatic setup for essential pages and plugins, solid server performance and robust security protocols.

Hosting.com's server performance is optimized through top-of-the-line hardware and LiteSpeed enhancement, giving my website an impressive 100% uptime during my week of testing and decent site speed. Moreover, Hosting.com has now extended its proprietary Turbo-optimized servers to all of its hosting plans, so you might experience even better site speeds than I did during my hands-on review. Bandwidth on all plans is unmetered, so you also don't have to worry about your site going down due to traffic spikes.

Every Hosting.com plan also feature SSL certification and an advanced firewall with distributed denial of service and brute force protection. Some plans also feature automated backups on a weekly or daily basis.

Plans and pricing

The lowest-tier WordPress hosting plan from Hosting.com starts at $3 a month ($9 a month on renewal) and includes enough storage for at least 150 pages, plus unlimited bandwidth. The most expensive plan costs $7 per month in the first year and $18 per month after, with enough storage for at least 1,000 pages and unlimited bandwidth. There are no specialized WooCommerce plans, but you can install WooCommerce on any WordPress setup for free.

If you want more support, you can invest in Hosting.com's fully managed WordPress plans, which include automated updates for the WordPress CMS and plugins. These plans start at $12 per month ($28 per month on renewal) for unlimited bandwidth and storage for at least 150 pages. The most expensive managed WordPress hosting plan from Hosting.com costs $30 per month to start and rises to $60 a month on renewal, with unlimited bandwidth and enough storage for at least 1,000 pages.

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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 offers several options for e-commerce hosting, from the popular WordPress to a proprietary website builder to hosting for PrestaShop, a store builder popular in Europe.

Why we like it

The biggest benefits of Ionos are its variety of plans, AI-powered site setup tools and excellent customer service. Ionos also offers an above-average 99.99% uptime guarantee, which it lived up to during my hands-on tests.

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.

Ionos also offers WooCommerce hosting with 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.

Both types of e-commerce hosting 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, which had some of the best response times I've encountered in the web hosting space and very helpful support agents.

Plans and pricing

Most of Ionos's plans are designed for small-to-medium-sized personal or business websites, with steep introductory discounts to help you get started. However, the best starting price doesn't always mean the best long-term savings, so it's important to pay attention to renewal costs when choosing a plan from Ionos.

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 the first year. The Starter plan, on the other hand, starts at $6 a month for one-year but only rises to $24 a month afterward, while still giving you unlimited bandwidth and enough storage for 500 product listings.

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. This plan includes unlimited bandwidth and enough storage for at least 1,000 pages.

Ionos's PrestaShop plans are similar in cost to regular shared hosting plans, with the most affordable option starting at $4 a month and rising to $6 a month. Like the site builder, there is a PrestaShop plan starting at $1 a month, but it rises 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, but the financial savings can easily make up for the time spent on these tasks. 

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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 hosting on Magento, a store building platform intended for developers.

Why we like it

Nexcess provides full site and server management -- including auto-updates of your chosen CMS -- plus a variety of tools to help you ensure fast, reliable website performance.

Nexcess’s managed WooCommerce hosting plans come bundled with page designers like Astra Pro and Beaver Builder Lite bundled directly into its hosting packages for improved performance. Qubely Pro further improves your ability to customize your website's appearance with advanced blocks for the Gutenberg editor. These plans further streamline the site management process with 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, caching for accelerated site speed and Inherent SEO to help you rank well in search engines.

All of Nexcess’s plans feature SSL certification, firewall protection, automated daily backups and an above-average 99.99% uptime guarantee.

Pricing

Nexcess's plans are aimed at medium-to-large-sized businesses, which is reflected in their prices. Managed WooCommerce hosting through Nexcess starts at $17.60 a month for enough storage to host at least 300 pages and enough bandwidth for up to three million monthly visitors. The most expensive plan costs $900 a month for enough storage to host at least 8,000 pages and enough bandwidth for ten million visitors per month. Both of these prices are based on an annual payment, and there is no renewal increase.

Fully managed Magento hosting through Nexcess starts at $37.74 a month for the first three months and rises to $74 a month after those three months. The most expensive plan starts at $546.24 a month for the first three months and rises to $1,138 a month in the following months.

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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. Furthermore, we conduct 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
  • Server speed tests over the course of five days
  • Calls and emails to customer support to determine things like response 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. 

What to look forward to in 2025

The biggest developments for the average user in the web hosting space are the increasing emphasis on website builders and AI tools to make creating a website easier and faster. Even SiteGround, a company long known for its commitment to WordPress hosting, recently launched a website builder with AI tools. We can likely expect to see more popular web hosting companies introducing their own website builders or improving existing ones in the hopes of cashing in on this trend.

More advanced users can look forward to growing options for cloud hosting, a specialized type of hosting that stores data in multiple servers to increase websites' reliability, speed and security. All three of our top web hosts for e-commerce -- SiteGround, Shopify and Hostinger -- already offer cloud hosting for at least some of their plans, and the advantages of cloud hosting make it likely to replace dedicated hosting as an option for hosting large sites.

Other web hosting for e-commerce we've tested

HostGator

HostGator Web Hosting logo
Sarah Tew/CNET

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, $11 a month on renewal). All of these prices are based on the purchase of a three-year term. 

Read our HostGator review.

GoDaddy

GoDaddy logo
Sarah Tew/CNET

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.

Read our GoDaddy review.

Web hosting for e-commerce FAQs

Which hosting service is best for an e-commerce website?

Hostinger is the best hosting service for an e-commerce website, with both website builder and WooCommerce plans available for affordable prices. Hostinger offers AI site and content creation tools, email hosting and 24/7 customer service.

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What is the No. 1 e-commerce platform?

WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce platform worldwide, with a market share of 39%.

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Is GoDaddy good for e-commerce hosting?

GoDaddy is a reasonably good choice for e-commerce hosting, offering managed WooCommerce plans with heavy shipping discounts available for some regions and shipping methods. Starting prices for GoDaddy’s WooCommerce plans are high, and non-WooCommerce plans lack key security features.

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