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Reviewed
If your e-commerce platform or website builder does not include a hosting service as part of its plan, you will need to select a reliable e-commerce web host. There are many options available, so Forbes Advisor did the research to help you find the best solution for your needs.
Featured Partners
1
Bluehost
$2.95 per month
Unmetered bandwidth, SSD storage starts at 10GB
Free domain name & SSL for a year
2
HostGator
$2.75 per month (for first 36 months)
30 days
Free SSL certificate, free website transfer
3
Web.com
$2.75 per month
Yes
Customizable templates, Easy drag-and-drop technology, SSL certificate
The Forbes Advisor Small Business team is committed to bringing you unbiased rankings and information with full editorial independence. We use product data, strategic methodologies and expert insights to inform all of our content and guide you in making the best decisions for your business journey.
We reviewed 15 providers using a detailed process to help you find the seven best e-commerce hosting services for small businesses. Pricing, hosting features, customer ratings and a final review by our panel of experts all played key roles in determining the rankings of providers for our list. All ratings are determined solely by our editorial team.
| Company | Forbes Advisor Rating | Starting price | Free domain | Templates | LEARN MORE | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IONOS |  |
4.6 |  |
$6 per month (for the first six months), then $24 per month | For the first year | Yes | Learn More | On IONOS' Website | |
| Bluehost |  |
4.4 |  |
$8.95 per month | The first year | Yes | Learn more | On Bluehost's Website | |
| HostGator |  |
4.4 | |
$9.95 per month | The first year | Yes | Learn More | On HostGator's Website | |
| DreamHost |  |
4.3 | |
$16.95 per month | With a yearly plan | Yes | Learn More | On DreamHost's Website | |
| InMotion Hosting |  |
4.2 |  |
$7 per month | Yes | Yes | Learn More | On InMotion Hosting's Website | |
| TMDHosting |  |
4.0 | |
$2.99 per month | Yes | Yes | Learn More | Read Forbes' Review | |
| SiteGround |  |
3.8 | |
$2.99 per month | With a yearly plan | Yes | Learn More | On SiteGround's Website |
An e-commerce platform is a software application or system that allows businesses to create and manage an online store. It provides the tools and features needed to sell products and services online, such as a shopping cart, payment processing and inventory management. An e-commerce platform is different from an e-commerce host in that it is a company that provides the servers and technology needed to host and display an online store on the internet.
When deciding whether to use an e-commerce platform or an e-commerce host, it’s important to consider the specific needs and goals of your business. An e-commerce platform is typically a good choice for businesses that want a comprehensive solution for building and managing an online store. It offers a wide range of features and tools and often includes options for customizing the look and feel of the store.
Meanwhile, an e-commerce host typically is a good choice for businesses that already have an established online store and need a provider to host and display it on the internet.
There are many e-commerce host companies to choose from. To find the best fit for your business, carefully consider costs, availability of customer support, customer reviews and how easy the software is to use. There are also several features you should ensure the platform provides.
When choosing an e-commerce hosting service, it’s important to consider the level of security and encryption that the service provides. Here are some factors to consider:
There are several types of hosting services available, each with its own set of features and benefits. Here is a bulleted list of some of the most common types of hosting services:
The cost of hosting an e-commerce website can vary widely depending on the size and complexity of your website, the amount of traffic you receive and the resources you need. Here are some general estimates of how much it may cost to host an e-commerce website:
There are several factors that can impact the cost of hosting an e-commerce website, including:
There may be price changes after a promotional period, so it’s important to carefully read the terms of service and understand any renewal pricing before signing up for a hosting plan.
To reduce the cost of hosting, you can try the following:
Featured Partners
1
Bluehost
$2.95 per month
Unmetered bandwidth, SSD storage starts at 10GB
Free domain name & SSL for a year
2
HostGator
$2.75 per month (for first 36 months)
30 days
Free SSL certificate, free website transfer
3
Web.com
$2.75 per month
Yes
Customizable templates, Easy drag-and-drop technology, SSL certificate
When considering which are the best e-commerce hosting companies of 2024, we wanted to make sure they were cost-effective, easy to use and had features important to e-commerce business owners. We also considered real customer reviews and added benefits rarely found in a hosting company.
Here are some of the categories we used to rank the providers that made the top of the list.
Fees should be minimal for e-commerce hosts, aside from a monthly service plan and per-transaction fees charged by the payment provider. Our focus was on each provider’s starting cost for its plans, what it charged to renew once the initial contract ended, how many sites were covered under its plan and if it offered a money-back guarantee and the length of that guarantee. The hosting services with low starting prices, lower renewal prices and lengthy money-back guarantee periods fared the best in our rankings. Pricing accounted for 10% of our weighted scoring.
Certain features and functionalities are essential for an e-commerce hosting service to provide. For example, does the host company have a 100% uptime guarantee? If not, do customers have to pay extra to get help from tech support? Along those same lines is customer support. Many host companies have 24/7 support 365 days per year. This is the standard because downtime costs an e-commerce store money, so those hosting services that offered 24/7 support scored best.
Other general features we expected to see included offering unlimited storage and bandwidth―if not included in a standard plan, then definitely in a premium plan―providing free domain name and SSL certificates and offering encryption protection and cPanel control panel software developed.
Some additional features we wanted to see included providers that offered free domain privacy protection and business email addresses, a content delivery network (CDN), website builder and providing automatic backups of data. We weighted features at 50% of our total score.
We wanted to know what e-commerce business owners think of the e-commerce host they use. We turned to third-party review websites to gauge user opinions of these services, looking at reviews that scored at least 3.5 out of 5. Hosting services that had at least 300 reviews scored higher in our rankings. These accounted for 10% of the total score.
Analyzing customer reviews, our experts looked at four key metrics to gauge how well these e-commerce hosting companies provide their services. One such metric is ease of use. Do business owners have to do any coding or does the host have a website builder that makes it easy to set up a storefront? The other metrics we considered were any stand-out features, overall popularity and value for the money. Altogether, this analysis made up 30% of the total score.
IONOS places a strong emphasis on speed and performance. Its dual-platform technology allows for faster performance by hosting web servers and storage on the same platform and it also offers scalable performance to easily handle increasing traffic.
Bluehost is a good option for businesses that want to offer booking and appointment services through their online store. It provides a range of features powered by YITH, including a user-friendly dashboard that allows you to easily sync your calendar with your store.
HostGator is a good choice for businesses on a budget because it allows you to pay for only what your business needs. As your business grows and your hosting needs change, you can easily upgrade to a higher level of service.
Shared hosting can be a good option for small e-commerce businesses that are starting out and don’t have much traffic or many resources. It is the most affordable type of hosting and can be a good way to test the waters and see if e-commerce is right for your business. However, shared hosting can have some limitations when it comes to e-commerce, and you may outgrow the resources provided by shared hosting if your website starts to receive much traffic.
To host your own e-commerce website, you need to own and maintain physical servers. For smaller e-commerce sites, this is cost-prohibitive but it might make sense for a larger operation.
If you’re planning to start a dropshipping business, you need to ensure that your website can both handle the traffic and also help you process orders in an organized fashion. Any of the options on our list here will make a great web host but be sure to choose an appropriate e-commerce platform that can handle dropshipping functionality. An industry leader in this area is Shopify, one of our top picks.
The best features offered by an e-commerce hosting platform for someone new to building their own website, or just starting out with an online retail business, include a hosting site that offers marketing and SEO tools, assistance with e-commerce selling, security features, such as secure sockets layer (SSL) protocols and two-factor authentication (2FA) or multifactor authentication, and simple-to-use website building features, such as a drag-and-drop tool. Ideally, these will come as part of an inclusive package that you pay for all at once.
An e-commerce platform gives you the tools to design an attractive-looking page or series of pages for customers to visit and learn more about you, but that website has to be hosted somewhere, which is what an e-commerce website host does. Websites are hosted on platforms that can support the traffic being sent to them.
