SiteGround Is Helping To Democratise Ecommerce

“The continuous lowering of the technical barriers to getting started with an online store is an essential endeavour to the true democratisation of commerce.

We’re proud to use and recommend SiteGround Managed WooCommerce hosting – it’s a game-changer”

Ashley Pearce

Founder, Future State Media

WooCommerce Pricing – Is WooCommerce Really Free?

Absolutely. WooCommerce is developed by Automattic the company behind WordPress, Tumblr and a bunch of other projects. When it comes to WooCommerce, Automattic have a stated mission to “Democratise Ecommerce” and invest relentlessly in the development of the WooCommerce Software.

 

How Does WooCommerce Make Money?

Automattic have made WooCommerce free to use which is in complete alignment with their mission to democratise ecommerce.

Automattic, through WooCommerce.com sell premium “extensions” that enhance the core WooCommerce software.

These “extensions” or “plugins” aren’t necessary for you to have a functional WooCommerce website. There are even many WooCommerce Extensions available for free at WooCommerce.com

 

What Costs Are Involved In Using WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is software that comes in the form of a WordPress Plugin. Great news, WordPress is also FREE to use as it’s brought to you by the same company behind WooCommerce; Automattic.

WooCommerce needs to be “hosted” on a “server” and today, that means paying for a hosting package from a reputable host. We obviously recommend SiteGround WooCommerce hosting as we’ve thoroughly tested, worked with, continue to work with and reviewed SiteGround WooCommerce hosting.

You can host WooCommerce with SiteGround for as little as $6.99 per month! Compare that with Shopify at a minimum of $29 a month PLUS transaction fees, WooCommerce is a hell of a lot more affordable and scalable.

 

Are There Transaction Fees or Credit Card Fees With WooCommerce Like When Using Shopify?

Shopify take a cut of each sale you make with their transaction fees, plus there’s obviously the monthly subscription for you to “rent your website from them”. Worse than that, if you want to use another payment provider, Shopify then charge you a transaction fee for NOT using the Shopify Payments function that comes with their monthly subscription. Yes, with Shopify, you pay a monthly subscription, then you pay a transaction fee to your payments provider AND you pay a transaction fee to Shopify (if you don’t just use Shopify Payments).

WooCommerce don’t have this same approach – or anywhere near this approach. You can use whichever payment provider you like and you ONLY pay transaction fees to your chosen payment provider. There’s no “surcharge” with WooCommerce.

In the question of WooCommerce vs Shopify, this is definitely a HUGE positive for using WooCommerce over Shopify. It’s one of the biggest negatives we see of using Shopify instead of WooCommerce.

 

Is SiteGround a Good Option for WooCommerce Hosting?

If you’re still asking if SiteGround is good for hosting WooCommerce after reading all of the content on this page, I’d encourage you to head over to the SiteGround website and take a look at the full features list.

SiteGround is more than capable of hosting your WooCommerce store AND they have advanced packages to allow your store to scale without a reduction in performance.

For that reason alone, SiteGround is a great choice of host for WooCommerce. You can pay for the server resources you need, when you need them. Starting with a smaller WooCommerce Hosting package and growing into packages with more server space, processing power and speed.

But don’t think that smaller SiteGround hosting packages mean your site is going to be slow – select a WooCommerce hosting package from SiteGround that suits your current needs and speed and performance will be great. Speed and performance will only become a problem if your WooCommerce store starts to experience consistently high demand – and when that happens, SiteGround can migrate you onto a package with more resources to suit your specific needs.

Overall, SiteGround are a great choice of hosting for your WooCommerce and WordPress website. Why would you look elsewhere?

 

Is SiteGround Good for eCommerce Hosting?

SiteGround is a great choice for eCommerce hosting in general – but it’s an EXCEPTIONAL choice for hosting your eCommerce website built on WooCommerce.

We have WooCommerce websites hosted on SiteGround with fantastic performance across the globe. With a built in integration with CloudFlare CDN we get instant access to a global network of servers to ensure maximum uptime, security and speed. SiteGround integrates directly with CloudFlare for a zero effort implementation. Equally, CloudFlare isn’t necessary for speed with SiteGround. They have data centres and servers located all over the globe meaning you can setup your website on a server that’s local to your customers – and if your customers are globally distributed, CloudFlare CDN can be used to ensure optimum performance for your customers, wherever they’re located!

SiteGround is great for eCommerce, whether you’re getting started and want to avoid installing WooCommerce yourself, or if you’re a veteran eCommerce entrepreneur who needs high performance hosting to deliver for your online business and your customers – SiteGround WooCommerce hosting delivers and scales.

 

SiteGround Reviews are confusing. Will SiteGround work for me?

We’re on your page. To truly understand hosting comparisons, you need to talk in “real world” terms. Most SiteGround Reviews don’t talk to the customer requirements, and they typically focus on SiteGround WordPress Hosting Reviews. Although these are partially applicable to WooCommerce store owners, the difference between WooCommerce Hosting and WordPress Hosting requirements isn’t always addressed.

This isn’t a review. We recommend SiteGround for WooCommerce Hosting on the basis that we KNOW it works. We use it, our customers use it, we love it and it simply performs.

So if you want to cut through all of the technical server and hosting jargon, and get to the cold hard facts of whether WooCommerce SiteGround Hosting is the right hosting solution for your eCommerce business – we can say with significant confidence that your WooCommerce store is hosted in good hands with SiteGround. You’re also in good company, as we exclusively host on SiteGround with ours and our managed client sites.

Are other WooCommerce sites hosted on SiteGround performing well? Yes – extremely well. No need for further technical nonsense!

 

Is Shopify More Popular Than WooCommerce?

No. WooCommerce is the dominant market leader. It’s a false perception in the market. WooCommerce has 5% more market share than Shopify – which is a huge number of online stores! WooCommerce with 26% of online stores running on WooCommerce whilst Shopify is only at 21%.

So WooCommerce is more popular and used by more online store owners than Shopify – and rightly so! Shopify after all is a SAAS platform that’s paid for on a monthly basis – you “rent your online store from Shopify” whereas with WooCommerce you own everything, including your data (not the case with Shopify). WooCommerce is open source software that’s developed by Automattic and is completely free of charge – so you won’t see too many (any!) retargeted Facebook Ads selling you on WooCommerce – but Shopify being a “pay to play” SAAS (or WAAS meaning Website As A Service) is using their monthly fees to market to potential store owners.

 

Is WooCommerce PCI Compliant when hosted on SiteGround?

When it comes to WooCommerce PCI Compliance, there’s the easy way and the hard way. With WooCommerce, SiteGround and a reputable Payment Gateway provider who handles the credit card and payment data for you – you’ve got the easy way. Why think about any other way? If you’re interested in PCI Compliance for Shopify or WooCommerce you should take a read of our guide to PCI Compliance for WooCommerce and Shopify. Hint – It’s a paperwork exercise if you follow our advice!

 

Why do we think SiteGround is the best host for woocommerce?

SiteGround know what it takes to be an entrepreneur – they’re not just hosting providers, they’re the guys fuelling the fire behind the system that keeps your eCommerce growth alive. Sure you can grab cheap hosting (not that there’s a lot cheaper than SiteGround!) but you’ll pay for it in a lack of support, a lack of scalability, security vulnerabilities and more with other hosting providers.

SiteGround hosting is the best hosting for WooCommerce as far as we’re concerned, not because of some technical nuance to do with the way they manage databases, but because they ‘get’ businesses like ours.

We’re building eCommerce businesses, not JUST ‘websites’ and we need not just the technical support, but the BUSINESS support that comes with SiteGround like no-other host we’ve tried.

With a technical support team ready to get to the coal face and fix your issues, there’s not a lot not to like about SiteGround hosting.

 

Can I host with SiteGround pay monthly or yearly?

SiteGround WooCommerce hosting comes in monthly, yearly or multi-year deals. This means you can choose a price plan that suits your current requirements. We’d always advise locking in a long term deal with a hosting provider we KNOW is as good as SiteGround. Costs are going to go up over the course of a few years so you can save a considerable amount by going with a multi-year deal.

If you just opt for a 1 year deal, that still represents a great saving with SiteGround’s WooCommerce Hosting packages.