Shopify
Best for: Not wanting a server or a maintenance schedule in your life.
No hosting plan required, because the platform is the host. If this is you, the only things to buy here are a domain and business email.
Hosting
Ecommerce Hosting Explained
Ecommerce hosting is ordinary web hosting with the headroom and the security habits a store needs. The first thing to establish is whether you need it at all, because half the people searching for it are about to buy a plan their store will never use.
First: do you actually need it?
You need a hosting plan when the store software runs on a server you rent. That means WooCommerce, Magento, or something custom. You do not need one when the platform runs the store for you, which covers Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, BigCommerce and every other hosted service.
We sell hosting, so it would be easy to be vague here. Instead: if you are on Shopify, close this page and go and register your domain name properly instead, which is the thing that actually matters.
What a store asks of a server that a brochure site does not
An ordinary business website mostly hands over pages that were already written. A store does work on every request: checks stock, calculates shipping and tax, keeps a cart alive per visitor, and runs a checkout that cannot be allowed to fail. That is why store hosting is discussed in terms of headroom rather than disk space.
- Room to work. The processor and memory allowance is what gets used up, not the storage figure on the plan.
- A current version of everything. A store holds names, addresses and order history. Out of date software is how that leaks.
- Backups you have restored at least once. An untested backup is a hope, not a plan.
- An SSL certificate. Not optional on anything that takes a card.
- Somewhere separate for email. Order confirmations that go out from the same box as your inbox is how businesses end up on blocklists. See why business email goes to spam.
Which plan, and when it stops being enough
| Plan | Suits | The sign you have outgrown it |
|---|---|---|
| Shared hosting | A small catalog, steady traffic, a store that is part of a wider site | The checkout is noticeably slower than the rest of the site |
| Business hosting | Stores as the main event, busier catalogs, sites that got slow on shared | Sustained load rather than peaks, or a genuinely heavy workload |
| WordPress hosting | A WooCommerce store somebody at the business updates themselves | Plugin heavy stores that need more headroom than the plan gives |
| VPS hosting | Stores with specialized requirements or their own integrations | Rarely. This is usually the end of the road for a small business store |
Nothing on this page states a storage figure, a bandwidth allowance or an uptime percentage. Those live at the storefront where they are kept current, and a number copied into a marketing page is a number that goes stale.
If you are still choosing a platform
Only one of these columns needs a hosting plan at all.
WooCommerce
Best for: A store you want to run on hosting you control.
This is the column that needs a plan. Shared or business hosting, an SSL certificate, backups, and a habit of applying updates.
A build by AldoMedia
Best for: A store that has to fit an existing system or an unusual process.
Hosting sized to the build. We host what we build, and we will tell you honestly when the build is not warranted.
Not sure whether you need a plan at all?
Tell us what the store runs on. If it is a hosted platform we will say so and sell you nothing, and if it is self-hosted we will tell you which plan actually fits.
Ecommerce hosting questions
Do I need ecommerce hosting for a Shopify store?
No. Shopify is fully hosted, so the servers and the storefront certificate come with the platform. A hosting plan bought alongside a Shopify store would sit empty. You need hosting when the store software runs on your own server, which means WooCommerce, Magento, or a custom build.
What makes hosting for a store different from ordinary hosting?
Less than the marketing suggests. It is the same kind of plan with more headroom, because a store does real work on every page: looking up stock, calculating shipping, holding a cart and running a checkout, none of which a brochure site does. The other difference is that you are handling orders, so backups and keeping the software patched stop being optional.
Is shared hosting good enough for an online store?
For a small catalog and modest traffic, often yes. The signals that you have outgrown it are a checkout that is slower than the rest of the site, an admin area that lags while the public pages seem fine, and backups that start and never finish. Before paying for a bigger plan, check whether the site itself is the problem: uncompressed images and a long plugin list are slow on any hardware.
Do I need an SSL certificate for an online store?
Yes, without qualification. Any page that takes a card or a password needs it, browsers mark pages without it as not secure, and no payment gateway will work properly without it. See SSL certificates.
How often should a store be backed up?
More often than a brochure site, because losing a day of a store means losing orders, not just edits. What matters more than the schedule is that you have tested restoring one. See website backups.