Editorial verdict
The short answer
Choose around revenue risk. Prioritise uncached checkout performance, database capacity, backup frequency, security operations, staging, monitoring and rapid escalation. Premium managed hosting can be cheaper than one preventable outage.
Before you buy
Questions the provider must answer
- 01How many uncached requests can the plan sustain?
- 02How frequently is transactional data backed up?
- 03Are staging and safe deployments included?
- 04Who handles malware and incident recovery?
- 05What happens during traffic spikes?
Decision process
A practical, repeatable method
Model peak transactions
Use campaign and seasonal concurrency, not average monthly visits.
Separate cached and dynamic paths
Product pages may cache well; cart, account and checkout requests often require origin processing.
Protect transaction data
Set RPO and RTO appropriate to order value and volume, with tested database restores.
Harden the stack
Use updates, Web Application Firewall (WAF), least privilege, monitoring and payment-provider best practices.
Stage every change
Test themes, plugins, checkout, tax, shipping and webhooks outside production.
Plan scaling and rollback
Know how resources increase, how quickly limits apply and how a failed release is reversed.
Avoidable errors
Common mistakes
- × Selecting by visit allowance alone
- × Relying on daily backup for high order volume
- × Testing cached pages but not checkout
- × Installing too many overlapping optimisation plugins
- × Running updates directly on production
Frequently asked questions
What buyers ask next
Is shared hosting suitable for a store?
It can suit a small, low-volume store, but verify resource limits, backups and support before revenue depends on it.
When is managed WordPress worth it?
When operational time, incident risk and performance consistency justify the premium.
Does a CDN accelerate checkout?
It helps static assets, but most personalised checkout work remains dynamic.
How much uptime is enough?
Translate downtime into revenue and reputation risk, then evaluate the provider’s architecture and remedy, not only the headline percentage.
Evidence
Primary and supporting sources
Prices and terms can change. Recheck the provider page and checkout before purchasing.
How to use this guide
Separate facts, estimates and judgement.
Provider documentation establishes product terms. Calculations explain their financial effect. Regional suitability requires checkout verification and testing from the intended audience. A recommendation is editorial judgement only after those layers agree.