Monthly ArchivesOctober 2022

Starting an ecommerce business comes with its own set of challenges. One of those is selecting a host. Your ecommerce platform and hosting provider will largely affect the success of your online store in the long run. With a wide variety of hosting options available in today’s saturated market, it is not surprising that many business owners have difficulties finding the best hosting for ecommerce.

In this comprehensive guide to choosing web hosting for ecommerce, we will list the key features to look for in hosting plans and provide an ecommerce website hosting comparison to make it easier for you to identify the ideal solution for your business.

What to look for in an ecommerce host

Once you no longer find yourself wondering how to start an ecommerce business, know all the ecommerce website best practices, and are ready to bring your ideas to life, it is time to build your online presence. Designed to power online stores and marketplaces, web hosting for ecommerce provides a number of benefits over traditional hosting.

All hosting providers present you with a range of hosting options and their descriptions, so you can better understand what you are signing up for. Most of the time, however, it is difficult to distinguish between what features are absolutely essential and what unnecessary hosting add-ons can easily be skipped to save money on the initial setup phase. Below we have gathered the six most important aspects of web hosting for ecommerce that will help you choose the right hosting solution and avoid being overcharged.

High performance

The rapid growth of ecommerce has made online store owners face even more challenges. One of them is ensuring high website performance regardless of the number of shoppers browsing the product catalog or placing orders at a given moment. Slow page load times or an inability to receive relevant search results will inevitably lead to low conversion rates and abandoned carts.

When choosing the best hosting for ecommerce, pay extra attention to the performance optimization solutions implemented by the hosting provider. The application stack in use, including the search engine, caching options, and the amount of hosting resources available to your ecommerce site are the three key factors that will determine its performance. Make sure your web hosting for ecommerce sites has plans for the platform you wish to use, so the server infrastructure is fully optimized for its specific requirements.

Unlimited storage and bandwidth

The amount of hosting resources allocated to your online store is essential in choosing the best hosting for ecommerce. Here are the most important numbers you should be looking for:

• Storage. The amount of storage defines how much disk space your website can occupy. Remember that online stores and marketplaces need substantially more disk space than blogs as you store product catalogs, orders, and customer information.
• PHP workers. The number of PHP workers serving web requests is the determining factor in the amount of traffic your website can handle without notable performance degradation.
• Bandwidth. The amount of bandwidth included determines how much data you can transfer to your website visitors over the network. Unlimited bandwidth ensures that you will not be overcharged in case of a large traffic spike.

You can typically choose a hosting plan that provides a smaller amount of hosting resources if you are just starting your ecommerce journey, and upgrade as your business grows and attracts more visitors.

Built-in security features

Security is a major concern in the ecommerce industry as online stores and marketplaces host and process sensitive customer information and receive payments. You will need a range of solutions implemented on both the server and website level to keep the shopping experience safe, and your customer data protected from various security threats. Web hosting for ecommerce should offer an extensive list of built-in security features, including SSL certificates and Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance.

PCI compliance

Web hosting for ecommerce must be PCI compliant. PCI compliant hosting meets strict security standards established by credit card companies by implementing a number of advanced network and data security policies.

Free SSL certificate

SSL certificates ensure that all traffic between your website and customers’ browsers is encrypted to prevent any sensitive information from being stolen. Look for web hosting for ecommerce that offers free SSL, so you will not have to pay extra to obtain a certificate from a third-party provider.

Firewalls and security plugins or extensions

Other security measures can include firewalls and security plugins or extensions that will help protect your ecommerce website on the application level. Such solutions are designed to examine web requests coming to your online store and block hacking attempts.

Backups

Make sure your hosting provider offers at least a week of free daily backups, so you can easily restore your website in case of a failed update or malware infection. One-click restores can be a truly life saving feature in case of data loss. It is also a good idea to use another backup solution to ensure data redundancy. Saving backups manually or using a backup plugin is often the best option for it.

Guaranteed uptime

Guaranteed uptime ensures that your ecommerce website stays online regardless of traffic surges or hardware failures. Web hosting for ecommerce often includes monitoring services that allow your provider to react to any attacks or server-side issues in a timely manner. Two other important factors that largely affect the guaranteed uptime are redundancy and scalability.

Redundant and scalable web hosting for ecommerce sites ensures minimal downtime by storing your website in multiple locations and adding more server resources to accommodate traffic. As opposed to using the resources of one server, cloud and high-availability hosting solutions use multiple servers to eliminate the possibility of data loss and provide a guaranteed uptime of up to 99.9% for mission critical websites.

Look for a minimum guaranteed uptime of 99%, but always pay attention to any extra charges for resource or traffic overages. Will the chosen hosting provider charge you extra in case of a traffic surge and how much will you have to pay for each extra visitor? Study Server Level Agreements to determine what kind of credit you are eligible for if the guaranteed uptime is not ensured.

Ecommerce platform integration

Choosing the right ecommerce platform is a critical step towards building your online store. Open source or proprietary, the ecommerce platform you choose will define your online store’s functionality and limit your scope of search for the right web hosting solution.

Hosted ecommerce solutions like Shopify promise a fast and easy start, but what often gets overlooked are the high transaction fees. Hidden fees and an inability to easily switch hosting providers are the main reasons why more and more business owners give preference to open source ecommerce platforms. There are multiple open source ecommerce solutions better than Shopify that we recommend you consider for this reason.

Magento and WooCommerce are the two most popular robust open source ecommerce platforms that provide excellent functionality and high customization options for building a truly unique storefront. Most hosting providers offer web hosting for ecommerce designed specifically to meet the needs of websites built on these platforms. These hosting plans can include built-in plugins and extensions that integrate different payment gateways, shopping cart and sales analytics software, and more.

Hosting plans optimized for your chosen ecommerce platform will include great solutions for building and managing your online store more efficiently.

Content delivery network CDN setup

Using a content delivery network for ecommerce is no longer just an option, it’s a must. A CDN speeds up your ecommerce website by bringing content closer to the end user, even if you have customers all around the globe. A large number of geographically distributed servers will cache static content, which, once requested, will be loaded from the point of presence closest to the visitor’s location.

Using a content delivery network, you can significantly improve your ecommerce website performance and reduce bandwidth consumption. Moreover, with the large amount of dynamic content tailored to each website visitor, it is even more important to have images and video served by the CDN.

Choosing the right web hosting for ecommerce, check whether a content delivery network is included with the hosting plan. Although you can always use a third-party CDN provider, it may result in additional costs and take you hours spent on configuring the content delivery network according to the needs of your ecommerce business. A CDN provided by web hosting for ecommerce sites often comes preconfigured for the chosen platform.

The different types of ecommerce hosting compared

The type of web hosting for ecommerce you choose is extremely important. It will define what kind of server infrastructure your website will run on and the scope of support your hosting company will provide. The ecommerce website hosting comparison below will help you determine what solution is best for your online store.

Managed hosting

Managed hosting represents a way to delegate most infrastructure management tasks to the hosting provider, while you focus on growing your business. This hosting model works perfectly for most ecommerce business owners who do not wish to spend hours on configuring and maintaining their production environment.

Your web hosting provider will be responsible for keeping the infrastructure secure and optimized, and you will be able to get assistance with most website administration tasks whenever you need. In addition to that, managed web hosting for ecommerce often offers advanced features like custom ecommerce themes, premium ecommerce plugins, and a number of software solutions for store management.

The concept of managed hosting, however, has nothing to do with the website hosting infrastructure types. Often managed hosting for ecommerce is offered with cloud hosting solutions. Cloud hosting is designed to overcome the limitations of shared hosting by providing on-demand server resource allocation for better performance and scalability. The cloud hosting model is used by most web hosting solutions for ecommerce. By combining the resources and processing power of multiple servers, you can significantly reduce the possibility of downtime even in case of a traffic surge.

Shared hosting

Shared hosting is the most affordable, yet not at all a suitable hosting type for ecommerce. As the name suggests, shared hosting allows for using one physical or virtual server to host multiple websites by sharing its memory and processing power between them. Your website will be allocated a small portion of server resources and with strict limits on the number of visitors, storage, and PHP workers.

The vast majority of ecommerce websites can not work correctly in the shared hosting environment, and will experience frequent downtime and slow page load times. Even if you are just starting in ecommerce, cloud hosting is a much better option.

VPS and dedicated hosting

VPS or dedicated hosting can be ideal if you need more freedom and control over the server infrastructure. Renting your own virtual or dedicated server from a hosting provider allows you to bypass the limitations of shared and cloud hosting and gain root, or system, level access to the production environment.

Although VPS and dedicated hosting offers much more freedom and flexibility, it leaves you responsible for managing your server infrastructure. It can be an advantage if you would like to create a highly-customized environment and know exactly what will meet the requirements of your ecommerce business. Most of the time, however, cloud hosting is a better solution for the vast majority of Magento and WooCommerce websites.

The best ecommerce hosting providers

Unfortunately, not all hosting providers offer great web hosting for ecommerce. But now that you know what features to look for, it will be much easier to identify the best ecommerce hosting solution. Below we have gathered the five best ecommerce hosting providers, and will review what makes each stand out in this ecommerce website hosting comparison.

Hostdedi managed hosting

Hostdedi focuses on providing fully managed hosting for ecommerce that’s specifically optimized for Magento and WooCommerce. The combination of powerful open source software, cloud hosting architecture, and the best support in the industry makes Hostdedi the hosting provider of choice for online stores and marketplaces of all size and complexity.

Hostdedi web hosting for ecommerce also offers a number of advanced features for store management and analytics. Sales Performance Monitor offers intelligent ecommerce monitoring with personalized revenue insights to help you stay profitable.

Performance and uptime

Hostdedi is super high-performance hosting with scalable infrastructure and a lightning-fast content delivery network with over 20 points of presence worldwide. A minimum of 10 PHP workers will be allocated to your website on all hosting plans with the best caching solutions enabled. With a guaranteed uptime of over 99.9% and auto scaling to handle traffic surges with confidence, you can forget about poor performance and downtime.

Security

Hostdedi offers PCI-compliant web hosting for ecommerce with enterprise-grade security solutions built in, regardless of the hosting plan you choose. Web application firewall on the server side paired with iThemes Pro, the award-winning security plugin, make Hostdedi managed WooCommerce plans the best web hosting for WordPress ecommerce websites. Free SSL certificates and 30 days of free daily website backups offer an additional layer of security to secure the shopping experience and protect your store from data loss.

StoreBuilder

If you are new to ecommerce and are not sure you will be able to create a great storefront, Hostdedi has you covered. StoreBuilder by Hostdedi is a powerful ecommerce solution that combines the functionality of WooCommerce, a no-code website builder, and a number of premium plugins and extensions to manage your online store like a pro. StoreBuilder plans offer the best web hosting for small business ecommerce websites by making it fast and easy to launch your online store without any coding skills.

Cloudways

Cloudways is a managed hosting provider that offers cloud hosting for all types of websites, including ecommerce. Cloud hosting solutions were created to combine the flexibility of VPS and dedicated hosting with the high scalability of cloud hosting architecture.

Cloudways is of prime consideration for midsize to large online stores and marketplaces needing more freedom to create customized hosting infrastructure that will meet the requirements of their ecommerce businesses more precisely. If you are just starting in ecommerce and need a beginner-friendly hosting solution, Cloudways may not be what you are looking for.

Performance and uptime

Cloudways ensures high performance by using caching and a number of other optimizations, with a CDN included. Similar to Hostdedi, Cloudways offers the guaranteed uptime of over 99.9%, which is ensured by high scalability of the cloud hosting architecture.

Security

Cloudways offers hosting infrastructure of five different cloud providers. Google Compute Engine, Amazon AWS, and Linode at Cloudways guarantee PCI-compliant hosting. Cloudways includes free SSL certificates and automated backups, as well dedicated firewalls implemented to keep your ecommerce business secure.

Bluehost

Bluehost offers a wide range of shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting plans for websites and web applications of all kinds. However, you can find two hosting solutions for WooCommerce. Bluehost WooCommerce hosting is highly affordable and beginner-friendly, which makes it one of the best web hosting options for small business ecommerce websites.

Bluehost can be ideal for hosting small online stores built on WooCommerce. A free domain name for the first year, SSL, and a number of other ecommerce solutions for pricing and product management make it even more appealing. With all the undoubted advantages of web hosting for ecommerce that Bluehost offers, the functionality is very limited compared to other providers mentioned in this ecommerce website hosting comparison.

Performance and uptime

Bluehost does not reveal what infrastructure optimizations are implemented for ensuring high performance. A content delivery network is not included. Bluehost encourages its customers to use Cloudflare instead.

Security

Bluehost offers free SSL certificates and secure payments for all WooCommerce online stores and marketplaces. The Jetpack Backups plugin is offered for managing website backups and performing one-click restorations.

WP Engine

WP Engine provides hosting services for WordPress websites only, maintaining highly-optimized hosting infrastructure for online businesses of all sizes. From small WooCommerce stores to large mission critical portals and marketplaces, WP Engine offers hosting solutions for a wide audience of business owners.

WP Engine positions itself as premium hosting, so the WooCommerce plans are not the most affordable you can find. With just 10G of storage and 50G of bandwidth included with the smallest WooCommerce plans, choosing WP Engine does not sound like a reasonable option for small businesses. WP Engine is definitely not the best web hosting for small business ecommerce websites.

Performance and uptime

High performance and the guaranteed uptime of over 99.9% are achieved by a proprietary caching solution WP Engine implements. A content delivery network allows you to leverage lighting-fast page load time with minimal latency.

Security

According to the provider’s acceptable use policy, WP Engine does not allow you to store or process credit card information, and instead encourages you to use a third-party payment gateway that can accept and process credit card payments on your behalf. However, WP Engine offers free scheduled and on-demand backups, and SSL certificates to protect your ecommerce website, along with automatic WordPress core and plugin updates.

Siteground

Using the cloud hosting architecture, SiteGround can offer high performance and security for your ecommerce business for an affordable price. Similar to Bluehost, SiteGround is focused on beginner-friendly hosting for WooCommerce, which, however, includes a very limited number of features.

WooCommerce hosting plans offer all the same functionality SiteGround includes in their hosting solutions for WordPress. It covers the basics of web hosting, but provides no additional tools for managing ecommerce, leaving you to look for the best third-party solutions yourself. A small amount of storage included makes it difficult to run larger ecommerce websites.

Performance and uptime

High website performance is ensured by using the cloud hosting architecture and caching. SiteGround offers a number of caching solutions to speed up ecommerce websites, including page and object cache. A CDN with over ten points of presence is included in all WooCommerce hosting plans. Performance-wise, SiteGround might be the best web hosting for WordPress ecommerce websites that just launched and want to ensure fast page load speed.

Security

SiteGround does not offer PCI-compliant hosting, but does include a number of security optimizations that allow you to keep your ecommerce website protected from hackers. This includes a web application firewall with a large number of custom security rules tailored for WordPress and a proprietary anti-bot system. Free SSL certificates are available for all websites.

The importance of finding the right ecommerce host

Finding the right web hosting for ecommerce that will meet the needs of your business is a challenging, yet not impossible task. Now that you know what features you should be looking for in an ecommerce hosting plan, you can easily identify the best solution. Choose high-performance hosting with a content delivery network, advanced security features, and built-in tools for managing your online store.

Hostdedi makes it easy to build your online presence by providing unrivaled performance and enterprise-grade security, the best support in the industry, and a wide range of powerful ecommerce tools. Fully managed WooCommerce or StoreBuilder hosting plans allow you to create the storefront of your dreams and stand out from the competition.

Looking for something more advanced with more customization options? Managed Magento hosting may be exactly what you are looking for. Power your ecommerce business with fully managed cloud hosting by Hostdedi to give your website the platform it deserves.

Check out our plans to get started today.

Modern content management systems are often perceived as serving one of two purposes — either running a blog or an ecommerce website. But that is a common misconception.

Magento CMS is well known as a powerful solution for building a unique storefront and managing online stores of any size and complexity. What is often overlooked are the other benefits of Magento, which include its content management capabilities. In this Magento CMS tutorial, you will learn how to use Magento as a CMS and why Magento may be the best platform for building a strong online presence.

Can you use Magento as a CMS?

Powering more than two hundred thousand websites worldwide, Magento CMS maintains its place among the top ten most popular content management systems. When it comes to building and managing online stores and marketplaces, the Magento ecommerce platform is of prime consideration. WooCommerce, another popular CMS, is probably the only open source software for ecommerce used more frequently.

Using Magento as a CMS vs. Magento for ecommerce

Magento has been designed to serve the requirements of ecommerce. This includes building and managing a catalog of products, processing orders, and storing customer information, among many other features. On top of that, Magento CMS is known as an open source ecommerce platform that allows for almost infinite customization.

Using various extensions and custom modules, you can create a truly unique storefront and integrate various services, including payment gateways and analytics tools. However, the power of Magento CMS is paired with its complexity, as you would often need to hire a developer or even a whole team to bring your ideas to life.

Magento page builder

With the introduction of Magento Commerce 2.3, the world was finally able to see a drag and drop content management solution added to the built-in platform’s functionality. Magento Open Source users were able to leverage the new Page Builder functionality only three years later when Adobe finally included it in Magento 2.4.3 and later versions.

Despite the fact that numerous page builder extensions existed before Magento CMS introduced its official solution, the release of Magento Open Source 2.4.3 was a huge step towards full site editing, and, ultimately, to using Magento as a full-fledged CMS solution.

Magento 1 and Magento 2

Magento CMS has a long history, and the ecommerce platform has undergone a lot of changes to become what we know today as Magento 2. Magento 1, which is still used by thousands of store owners, reached its end of life in 2020. Magento 1 users are encouraged to move to Magento 2 which continues to grow and develop. Or, you can use a solution like Safe Harbor from Hostdedi to stay on Magento 1.

Although Magento 2 can be considered a successor to Magento 1, the two platforms are totally different, which made migration from one platform to the other a rather complicated process. Content management functionality provided by Magento 1 is extremely limited, and no major updates have been released for it since its end of life. Magento 2 is the only option you should be considering for a Magento CMS.

Magento as a CMS for SEO

Magento CMS features go well beyond the high customization capabilities that make it a robust ecommerce platform. Magento is extremely SEO friendly, which is ensured by two main factors — its speed and a number of advanced SEO optimizations included. Magento CMS features include enhanced URL structure, sitemaps, meta descriptions and tags, and product rank on all major search engines, including Google.

Website performance and page load time have become one of the main ranking factors too. Thanks to numerous updates released with each new Magento CMS version, any delays in bringing content to the end user have been almost eliminated if there are no limitations imposed by the hosting provider.

Fast query processing is a major concern for all ecommerce platforms. Magento CMS ensures it by using Elasticsearch as its main search engine. Elasticsearch largely outperforms MySQL/MariaDB on ecommerce websites, providing blazing-fast speed and impeccable relevance of search results.

How to use Magento as a CMS

With unrivaled performance, effective SEO, and an extensive list of content-optimized themes and extensions, Magento CMS can be a perfect solution for both content management and ecommerce tasks. With the introduction of the 2.4.3 version, Magento has become an even more attractive option for all business owners.

Moreover, Magento CMS offers excellent options for creating responsive websites. Having content tailored to the requirements of each visitor depending on their device characteristics and personal preferences can significantly increase content engagement and build brand loyalty.

Magento content elements

From the 2.4.3 version, each Magento CMS download offers a list of features for content management, which include CMS pages, blocks, and widgets. The content elements available in the Magento CMS Page Builder are very similar to those other content management systems include as part of their built-in content editors’ functionality.

The content management menu is available from the main page of the Magento CMS dashboard. Let’s take a look at what each content element can be used for.

Using Magento pages as a CMS vs. Magento for ecommerce

Pages are the central part of Magento content management functionality. Magento CMS pages allow you to create website content by adding essential design elements like text, images, blocks, widgets, and links. The Magento CMS pages offer all necessary features for running both an ecommerce site and creating blog content.

As you create more content, new pages will appear in the pages table along with their title, unique ID, and address. Each new Magento CMS download will have a few pages created by default, which include the default home page, a custom error page if the requested content can not be found, and pages outlining the privacy policy.

When adding a new page, Magento CMS will ask you to provide its title and description, as well as some other information.

You can go straight to content editing by choosing Edit with Page Builder from the content tab.

The Magento CMS Page Builder offers a highly intuitive design, so you will be able to create any kind of web content in a matter of minutes, even if you have never used any drag and drop content editor before.

Static blocks for content

Along with new content elements unique to each web page, you can create static blocks to then have them placed on different web pages. As the name suggests, static blocks are content elements that can present certain information that remains unchanged.

The blocks page provides very similar functionality to what Magento CMS offers for web page creation and management. After you save a new static block after having it created with Page Builder, you can then add it anywhere on the website.

Magento widgets

Magento widgets are similar to static blocks, but there is one main difference — widgets are placeholders for dynamic content. Magento CMS widgets offer a perfect way to add real-time dynamic content to your website to increase engagement and make the user experience more personalized.

You can create custom widgets, which, however, will involve some coding, or choose one of the default types of widgets Magento CMs offers. Recently Viewed Products, Catalog Products List, and Orders and Returns are the most frequently used widgets that allow you to boost sales by creating a more appealing shopping experience.

Alternatives to Magento as a CMS

Even with all the undoubtable benefits that Magento CMS offers, it is not always the perfect solution for every business. Choosing a content management system is a very important step in building your online presence, and all factors and specific requirements need to be taken into account.

We have to admit, Magento’s native CMS capabilities may not be as advanced as those of the other leading content management systems. In this section of the Hostdedi Magento CMS tutorial, we will review what alternatives you can consider and how you can integrate them with Magento to leverage amplified capabilities and create a seamless user experience.

Connecting Magento with another CMS

One of the most spectacular Magento CMS features is that you can easily integrate it with another content management system. The main reason that Adobe allows for such integrations is precisely because Magento 2 and other popular CMS platforms often complement each other as opposed to competing with each other.

Instead of having to choose between the two, you can leverage the robust ecommerce capabilities of Magento and content management features of another CMS like WordPress or Drupal. The easiest way to integrate Magento CMS with another platform is by using one of the numerous extensions.

Magento vs. WordPress

WordPress is one of the primary platform considerations for any type of business. Powering around 40% of the whole internet, WordPress serves the diverse needs of business owners by combining CMS and ecommerce features. WordPress’ focus on the frontend and ease of use make it an appealing choice for many. WooCommerce, which sometimes can be referred to as a separate ecommerce platform, is in reality more of an add-on for building and managing an online store.

Let’s take a look at what sets the two popular platforms apart and why there are no winners and losers when comparing the two.

Criteria	WordPress	Magento
Content Management	WordPress’ Block Editor provides extensive functionality for full-site editing.	While Magento CMS Page Builder may be overshadowed by the capabilities the WordPress Block Editor offers, it can still be considered a rather powerful and convenient solution for content management.
Ecommerce	WooCommerce, a WordPress plugin for ecommerce, turns the CMS into a full-fledged platform for building online stores and marketplaces.	Magento is a robust ecommerce solution that employs advanced technology and ultimately provides much more powerful solutions for running an online store.
Ease of use	WordPress is super beginner-friendly and does not require any coding skills to create a website in the vast majority of cases.	Magento is not the best platform for beginners as the command line interface is used for performing a large number of website management tasks. Coding skills are required to leverage all customization capabilities of Magento CMS.

Magento vs. Joomla

Originally created as a platform for building portal-like websites, Joomla has become a content management system capable of running a website of almost any kind. While Joomla can be a better solution for smaller businesses, Magento remains the platform of choice for building sophisticated storefronts and running large, complex online stores.

Criteria	Joomla	Magento
Content Management	Joomla offers a few content editors with different functionality. Content management is overall similar to what Magento offers.	Magento Page Builder offers a rather extensive list of features for drag and drop content creation.
Ecommerce	You can use numerous ecommerce extensions which can help you build an online store. But in reality, Joomla is not the best solution for ecommerce.	Magento leaves Joomla far behind when it comes to ecommerce by offering a wide range of features and advanced customization options.
Ease of use	Joomla stands somewhere in the middle between the two when compared to WordPress and Magento.	Magento is much more complex than most other content management systems, including Joomla.

Bottom line: asing Magento as a CMS

The importance of organic content for increasing engagement and building brand awareness can not be overstated, especially in ecommerce. As a powerful ecommerce platform, Magento has undergone dramatic changes over the past few years, which allowed it to become one of the leading content management systems for running an online business.

So can you use Magento as a CMS? Definitely! High customization capabilities combined with an extensive list of options for content management have allowed Magento to meet the diverse needs of business owners.

Hostdedi takes pride in powering thousands of websites running on Magento, making sure small and large businesses stay online regardless of anything. Build and expand your online presence by unlocking the power of the open source ecommerce platform with Hostdedi managed Magento hosting plans.

Check out our plans to get started today.

Everyone loves a glow up.

Hostdedi began hosting sites and stores in 2000 – and defied expectations by thriving during the dot-com bust. For 23 years, we’ve been the managed hosting and solutions experts you know and trust.

We’ve demonstrated that expertise by optimizing hosting for the industry’s leading content and commerce platforms — WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento — and building in the technology that makes them fast, scalable, and secure.

With our sister brand, Liquid Web, we delivered the industry’s first Managed WooCommerce hosting. And, we know Magento in and out — because it was built first on our servers (#humblebrag).

That’s why we aren’t just a hosting option – we’re the hosting company every business wants on their team.

When you check out our website today, Hostdedi is going to look a little different. Here’s why.

Why Rebrand?

Brands inform perceptions. Our brand doesn’t just reflect our company – it’s a representation of who we serve. As our customers and their needs evolve, so do we.

This isn’t the same industry we broke into over two decades ago. Now more than ever, entrepreneurs and creators can dream big and do more.  Technology has made it accessible to go from a great idea to making money online.

As the internet continues to transform the way businesses operate, Hostdedi wants to empower business owners and their creators to build, manage, and grow their businesses. That’s why we’ve curated a mix of tools, infrastructure, and expert support to create the best place to build your business online.

So, TLDR: how we’re perceived needs to match what we offer and we are tackling that with this rebrand.

Changes You’ll See

At our core, the Hostdedi team is entrepreneurial, energetic, and full of vision. We know that the same spirit is found in our customers, too.

Everything we do is focused on making it easier on the businesses we power, as well as the designers, developers, and agencies who create for them, to make money online.

We’ve made big changes to our online presence. Our refreshed look and feel reflects the deliberate choice to personify Hostdedi as the knowledgeable sidekick that helps you get the job done.

We want our new brand to reflect on our 23 year focus – helping businesses grow online.

What You Can Expect

We’re still the same Hostdedi. We’ve refreshed our look for a more cohesive, recognizable design that reflects the support and expertise our brand embodies.

Whether site owners and businesses are using WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, StoreBuilder, or our Cloud solutions, the Hostdedi brand meets them where they are in their journey — whether that’s launching, managing, or growing their business.

Online business owners look for hosting solutions that understand their unique problems. So, our experts develop our products with customers in mind – addressing problems they experience with sites and stores.

Everyone can become an expert when they’re guided by experts. That’s why we provide managed hosting infrastructure with expert support.

The right setup generates better results. We’ve optimized infrastructure for sites and stores. We bundle our products with curated tools that make it easy for you to run your business and keep it running at peak performance. And, our team of experts are here for you 24/7/365. Always on, always working for you.

So, yeah. Hostdedi looks different – and we feel great about that.

WordPress’ origin goes back to the early 2000s when blogging platforms were at their peak.

WordPress initially launched as a blogging platform, but over the years, it’s become a popular and efficient website builder with an incredibly robust content management system (CMS).

You can create a beautiful, highly customized website with the WordPress platform. And one way to do that is by using WordPress shortcodes.

Sound intimidating?

Here’s the good news:

You don’t have to be a developer or skilled scriptwriter to use shortcodes. We’ve created this handy WordPress shortcode tutorial to help you modify and design your website to suit your needs.

Keep reading to learn:

What Is a Shortcode?

A shortcode is a shortcut that helps you add and define various objects in your page source.

Simply put, shortcodes are small snippets of code that can perform multiple functions. They simplify your website code and make it easy to manage even if you don’t have any experience in website development.

You can insert these snippets of code into any post, page, or widget on your website to add dynamic functions like galleries, videos, or content from external sources.

Shortcodes are displayed in brackets as shown in the image below:

Shortcodes are easy to use, and you can even create your own without any previous coding knowledge.

What Are WordPress Shortcodes?

WordPress shortcodes are micro-codes that you can use in the standard WordPress editor, widgets, and templates to customize your website.

On the technical side, PHP functions defined in the shortcode registration process the shortcodes to display the content you want to insert.

Despite their ease of use, people often ignore or aren’t even aware of WordPress shortcodes, despite how useful they are.

Here are two types of shortcodes that will help you remodel your content into a captivating user experience:

• Self-closing shortcodes: This type of shortcode includes only one tag that closes itself. To customize a self-closing shortcode, you need to specify attributes like width, id, or order.One self-closing shortcode example is

  

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• Enclosing shortcodes: On the other hand, you need a closing tag for this type of shortcode. You can define the attributes as well, but the primary content is located between the opening and closing tags.Most of the time, you will find enclosing shortcodes used with HTML elements. Let’s take a look at the following WordPress shortcode example:

That’s an enclosing shortcode for a caption that enables you to wrap captions around content, which is mostly used for images. It has a value between the opening and closing shortcode tags that defines the content. In our case, it has a link to the image itself with corresponding attributes.

To better understand the difference between those two types of shortcodes, let’s take a look at the image below:

Most shortcodes make it very apparent what they do.

For instance, the

shortcode embeds an image gallery on your WordPress website. To use it, you simply need to just paste it right into a post or page, and it will immediately be visible on the front end.

Behind the scenes, the shortcode is telling WordPress to execute an extended segment of code within one of your site’s files. But that method needs no further input from you.

And that’s where WordPress shortcode API comes in. The shortcode API is an intuitive set of features for creating WordPress shortcodes that are used in posts and pages.

The API empowers plugin developers to create unique varieties of content that users can connect to their pages by including the corresponding shortcode in the webpage’s text.

The API handles all the difficult parsing, eliminating the need to write a custom regex for each function of the code. Help functions for setting and calling up standard attributes are included.

The API supports shortcodes for automatic closing and appending — or, as it’s popularly called within the WordPress development community, for both self-closing and enclosing shortcodes.

What Are the Default WordPress Shortcodes?

To make it easier for you to get familiar with using shortcodes, your WordPress installation comes with several default ones:

• — with the help of this shortcode, you can easily add video content to your WordPress page.
• — use this shortcode to share a list of music tracks to your website’s visitors.

• 

  — enables you to share multiple images on the same page in a gallery view.
• — gives you the opportunity to wrap captions around any kind of content.
• — empowers you to insert embedded items.
• — lets you post audio files on your webpage.

Those are quite self-explanatory and do not require any special skills from you to use them. But if those shortcodes don’t meet your needs, you can create your own with the help of our WordPress shortcode tutorial below.

How Do I Create a WordPress Shortcode?

The WordPress shortcode API makes it fairly simple to create your own shortcodes. Doing this will enable you to take advantage of your plugin or theme’s features from any text-based area on your WordPress site.

Creating a shortcode starts with the add_shortcode function. It includes two parameters — a unique shortcode tag that represents the shortcode name and the handler function that’s executed after shortcode registration.

The very simple function syntax is shown below:

shortcode_name is a unique shortcode tag, and handler_function_name is a callback function name.

Besides registering your shortcode, you need to define the handler function itself. This function gives purpose to your shortcode.

Let’s take a look at a general example of the shortcode handler function:

The name of the function has to match the second line of an add_shortcode function (which is handler_function_name).

The callback itself can include up to three parameters:

• The $atts parameter stands for attributes that are passed to the function.
• The $content variable represents the content a user inserts between the opening and closing shortcode tags.
• The $shortcode_tag attribute is a unique name specified in the add_shortcode function. You only need to include this attribute if two registered shortcodes share the same function handler.

The shortcode function can be as simple as you want, depending on your website’s needs. You can place the shortcode script in the functions.php file inside of any plugin or theme folder. Or, you can even insert it into page code directly using the default WordPress editor.

How To Use WordPress Shortcodes

WordPress developers like to use shortcodes because they’re so simple to create and implement. You can embed shortcodes anywhere on your website and check the results immediately by previewing the page.

Here’s how to use WordPress shortcodes:

In Website Pages

First, log in to your WordPress dashboard and go to the page you wish to edit. In the page editor, click the plus (+) sign to see the list of WordPress elements and search for Shortcode.

Here, you can paste the shortcode you created:

In Sidebar Widgets

You can also place your shortcode inside of sidebar widgets. To do so, go to Appearance > Widgets and add a Text Widget:

Paste the shortcode inside the text widget field and hit Save. You can check the results by previewing your page.

In Footers and Headers

While shortcodes were primarily designed for posts and widgets, that doesn’t mean you can’t use them independently.

In order to do that, you need to add do_shortcode() function to your theme footer.php or header.php template file:

That code snippet will place the shortcode on your website

WordPress Shortcodes Pros

Now that you know how to create and use WordPress shortcodes, let’s discuss the benefits of using them:

• You can use shortcodes independently without needing to install separate plugins.
• Shortcodes are flexible and customizable, which empowers you to add many different types of elements to your website.
• Shortcodes are more user-friendly compared to HTML or PHP scripting languages.
• You can set them up as a separate plugin and use them on different websites.
• They are much easier to use compared to code snippets.

WordPress Shortcodes Cons

As with any other feature, shortcodes do come with some drawbacks:

• Shortcodes may badly affect your website performance due to an increase in the number of server requests.
• Even though they’re easy to use, you still need to type in shortcodes manually instead of using WordPress’s usual intuitive features.
• Shortcodes that are implemented in themes will stop working if you change your theme.
• There is a chance of a syntax conflict between shortcode and page code.

Now You Know

Shortcodes can appear demanding to beginner WordPress users.

But shortcodes are easy to handle and create once you understand how to use them, opening up your website to a realm of beautiful design and functionality possibilities.

Consider Hosting With Hostdedi

It’s extremely important to have a high-performing host behind you to respond flexibly to your website’s needs. Hostdedi’ Managed WordPress Hosting is designed to help you have the best WordPress experience.

Try Hostdedi Fully Managed WordPress Hosting today and create your first WordPress website with just one click.

WordPress powers over 40% of all websites on the internet for a reason. As a powerful open source content management system, WordPress is the perfect option for building a website without advanced coding skills or huge investments. This is what we all have heard, but is it really that simple?

In this comprehensive guide to the WordPress platform and hosting, Hostdedi will offer a WordPress website cost estimator. We will provide you with a full cost breakdown of building, hosting, and maintaining your WordPress website, whether it’s a blog, small business portal, or an online store.

The Cost of a WordPress Website: Pricing

Is WordPress free? This question is often asked by aspiring website owners. WordPress is an open source platform for website building, which means that the core functionality it offers is free, and you do not have to pay a subscription fee to keep using it. Moreover, as WordPress improved over the years, its built-in features can be just enough to run a small blog or even an ecommerce website if you use all the tools at your disposal wisely.

WordPress is definitely the best choice to create a website on a budget. However, it takes a significant amount of time and effort to make the most of its free functionality. Is it actually worth it in the long run? Most of the time, you will need a number of additional features, which can be provided by WordPress plugins and themes, both free and paid.

Before building your online presence, you need a clear understanding of WordPress website costs, including WordPress hosting. The costs of running a WordPress website differ dramatically, ranging from just $10-20 to a few thousand dollars a month.

Online resources can help you understand how WordPress works. You can also learn about the plugin, functionality, and customization options available to you.

WordPress.com and WordPress.org are the two major online platforms that you as a future WordPress website owner will choose between.

WordPress.com vs WordPress.org

Throughout the long and fascinating history of WordPress, the platform has undergone many changes, with thousands of individual developers and whole companies contributing to its success. The existence of WordPress.com and WordPress.org is a great representation of how the platform can remain free open source software, but at the same time allow its creators to build and maintain the brand.

WordPress.com is an online platform for building and hosting WordPress websites offered by Automattic, the company behind WordPress. It is the official WordPress hosting solution that includes both free and paid plans. The free WordPress hosting plan includes very limited functionality and can not be used to launch an online business, as its main goal is to help you learn what WordPress has to offer.

WordPress.org is the platform that unites the WordPress community and provides a catalog of open source software for expanding the core functionality of the content management system. WordPress.org is a resource where you can explore WordPress plugins and themes, and choose what additional features you would like to add to your website. Plugins and themes will form a large part of your WordPress website costs.

Factors That Influence the Cost of a WordPress Website

Key factors impacting your WordPress website cost can be broken down into two categories: WordPress website building and administration costs, and WordPress hosting expenses. The chosen WordPress hosting provider will ensure that your website stays accessible to your potential customers, while you work on improving the user experience and growing your online business.

WordPress Hosting Plans

A hosting plan is a set of hosting services available to you on a monthly or yearly subscription basis. It will include a fast and secure hosting platform for running your website, along with a number of software solutions for website management. Your hosting provider will become the point of contact if any issues occur, or you need any assistance performing website administration tasks.

WordPress hosting plans offer server infrastructure optimized for the needs of the content management system, and a range of tools for technical aspects of running a WordPress website. The infrastructure optimizations provide improved website performance and security, and can include SSL certificates, caching solutions, and a content delivery network. WordPress website management tools can include automatic updates and backups, staging environments, and premium plugins and themes.

We will discuss WordPress themes, plugins, and extensions later in the guide. However, keep in mind that your hosting provider can help reduce your WordPress website costs significantly with server-side solutions and plugins included in WordPress hosting plans. Another aspect to keep in mind is email, and whether your WordPress plan will include email hosting, or you will need to search for an email service provider.

WordPress Hosting Pricing

Hosting expenses will greatly increase your WordPress website costs. WordPress hosting pricing starts at around $10 per month for shared and managed cloud hosting plans. It can go up to $1000+ for high-availability enterprise hosting solutions. Choose a WordPress hosting provider that includes more features and offers great support for an affordable price.

Hostdedi offers secure, high-performance hosting for WordPress and WooCommerce with a large number of features and customization options, and their award-winning support team is just one call away.

Choosing a Domain Name

No online business can exist without a domain. A domain name is a unique identifier for your business that helps potential customers find you online. Choosing the right domain name is key to standing out from the competition and ranking well on search engines like Google.

Building a strong brand identity and your SEO strategy starts with domain registration. You can choose any domain registrar — a company offering domain registration services — but purchasing a domain and hosting together often offers a number of benefits. Some hosting companies offer a free domain name for the first year and one management portal for both hosting and domain administration.

Domain Registration Pricing

Depending on the top-level domain, or the domain extension, domain registration costs range from $10 to $30 annually. Most of the time, you will need to renew your domain name every year, with most companies allowing for automatic renewal. Having a free domain name or a discount included in the WordPress hosting plan is a great way to lower your WordPress website costs, especially at the start.

Hostdedi offers domain registration services, with .com domain names starting at $15 yearly.

WordPress Themes: Free or Premium?

Building a WordPress website, you can choose from thousands of spectacular web designs with a wide variety of features and customization options. WordPress themes are templates that help you bring your ideas to life without any previous experience in website building and design. Whatever WordPress theme you choose defines the content layout and the overall look of your website.

Default WordPress Themes

WordPress offers a number of free default themes that are included in each WordPress installation. Once you install WordPress for the first time, you will see three standard themes named after the years in which they were released — Twenty Twenty, Twenty Twenty One, and Twenty Twenty Two. Default WordPress themes offer basic functionality and customization options for website building.

Free and Premium WordPress Themes

WordPress is highly customizable. You can choose from thousands of multipurpose and business-specific themes, both free and premium. Premium themes often provide better designs and customization, and more content templates, although a large percentage of WordPress website owners are fully content with what some free themes have to offer.

Numerous premium-like WordPress themes are free and provide a great user experience, such as OceanWP, Neve, and Kadence WP, the default theme on all Hostdedi managed WordPress hosting plans. Themes like StoreFront and ShoppingCart are among the best WordPress ecommerce themes.

WordPress Website Design Costs

Choose a theme according to the type of website you are designing, but keep in mind that the template you pick will be the central part of your WordPress website design costs. WordPress theme prices vary dramatically, ranging from $50 to $300 yearly, although some allow for purchasing a lifetime license.

Plugins and Extensions

Plugins and extensions are indispensable and absolutely necessary for running a WordPress website of any kind. By extending the native capabilities of WordPress, plugins can help you accomplish a large number of tasks. Performance and security, backups, search engine optimization, and ecommerce functionality — these are just a few areas where WordPress plugins can help you improve your website and add the functionality you need.

As plugins are essentially add-ons, a fresh WordPress installation won’t have any plugins installed by default. You can browse the catalog of WordPress plugins with their descriptions and user reviews on WordPress.org. Just like themes, WordPress plugins can be free or paid, depending on the list features included.

While there are some great free plugins available, most security, performance, and backup plugins, as well as ecommerce extensions, are paid. Premium plugins can be included in your hosting plan, which again highlights the importance of choosing the right WordPress hosting solution. For example, Hostdedi provides iThemes Security Pro, the industry-leading premium WordPress security plugin, for free on all fully managed WordPress hosting plans.

WordPress Plugins and Extensions Pricing

Prices for most premium WordPress plugins range from $10 to $100 monthly, although sometimes you can purchase a lifelong subscription. You can substantially reduce your WordPress website costs if your hosting plans include premium plugins installed by default. Regardless of what plugins you choose, do not install any software from unverified sources. This can put your website at great risk, which can then turn into hundreds of dollars spent on malware remediation.

Hostdedi offers Plugin Installer, a custom catalog of the best plugins and extensions on WordPress, WooCommerce, and StoreBuilder hosting plans. Hostdedi Plugin Installer makes it easier to choose the best solutions by offering everything you need to customize your website, carefully selected by the Hostdedi’ team of WordPress experts.

Monthly WordPress Costs

Typically, monthly WordPress website costs are comprised of hosting, domain registration, design costs, and plugin subscription expenses. Those can vary dramatically depending on the type of website you are running, the chosen WordPress hosting provider, and the software solutions you choose to extend the native capabilities of WordPress.

If you are building a small WordPress website which does not require using a premium theme or any paid plugins, you can significantly reduce your WordPress website costs. In this case, your WordPress costs will be defined by WordPress hosting and domain registration expenses, and can be as low as $10-20 monthly.

For medium-sized and large websites, including ecommerce sites, monthly WordPress website costs can range from $100 to a few thousand dollars, depending on the chosen WordPress hosting plan and types of plugins installed. Moreover, most mission-critical WordPress websites, including huge WooCommerce marketplaces, often require hiring a developer or even a whole team dedicated to web development and maintenance, which results in higher costs.

How to Estimate the Cost of Building a WordPress Website

To estimate the cost of building and managing a WordPress website, you need to take three main aspects into account.

• Website type. Clearly define what type of WordPress website you would like to build. Depending on whether it is a blog, an online portal for your business, or an online store or marketplace, WordPress website costs will vary significantly.
• Hosting. Shared, cloud, VPS, and dedicated hosting — the many types of WordPress hosting available in today’s saturated market can meet diverse requirements of all business owners. Monthly hosting costs can range from $10 to $1000+  depending on the type of hosting and features included in the hosting plan.
• Website design and functionality. WordPress plugins and themes define the design of your WordPress website and its functionality. Consider which features you absolutely need and which can possibly be included in your hosting plan, so you can reduce your monthly WordPress website costs.

The Cost of a WordPress Blog

A blog is the easiest to build and the most affordable type of website you can create using WordPress. Moreover, blogs are natively faster and more secure, which results in lower requirements for the features WordPress hosting plans and plugins need to provide.

Lower Requirements for Hosting and WordPress Add-Ons

There is a simple explanation for that. WordPress blogs have significantly less dynamic content compared to business websites and ecommerce, so it requires fewer hosting resources to work correctly. Blog posts remain unchanged, which means that static content largely prevails on WordPress blogs. This ensures better performance with lower requirements for server infrastructure, and a reduced attack surface.

WordPress Website Design Costs

There are a large number of free WordPress themes that will help you design your blogs. The most popular and widely used of them include GeneratePress, Kadence WP, and OceanWP.

WordPress Blog Total Costs

The cost of running a WordPress blog typically ranges from $15 to $30 monthly, which includes WordPress hosting and domain registration costs. If you would like to use a premium theme or install a number of paid plugins, your monthly costs can double or even triple, reaching $100-$150.

The Cost of a Small Business Website

A small business website sits between a WordPress blog and an online store when it comes to the costs associated with bringing it online. The amount of dynamic content and the additional features you may need can vary greatly depending on your goals and what exactly you are planning to host.

Higher Requirements for Security and Performance

Your website represents the image of your business online. It’s important for your site to have great performance and security to make sure that your business is well represented. Moreover, if you accept inquiries from your customers or even store any customer data, you will need to make sure that their sensitive information is secure on your website.

Design and Functionality

You can still use free WordPress themes to design your business website, as those would meet all your requirements in most cases. You may need to use premium plugins, which can include security, search engine and performance optimization solutions, and email software.

WordPress Business Website Total Costs

The cost of running a WordPress business website can be as low as $15-30 monthly. In most cases it will reach $50-150+, especially if you install premium plugins, sign up with an email service provider, or choose a bigger WordPress hosting plan.

The Cost of Building an Ecommerce Website on WordPress

With the rapid development of ecommerce, online store owners face more challenges than ever before. Online stores and marketplaces built on WooCommerce require high performance and advanced security measures in order to provide a safe and enjoyable shopping experience. It inherently results in higher website building and maintenance costs.

Security and Performance

Dynamic content, sensitive customer information, and accepting payments significantly extends the list of software solutions you will need to use. Moreover, you will need to ensure fast page load times. If your product catalog loads slowly, your potential customers will find another seller.

Choose high-performance WooCommerce hosting with advanced security features, such as a CDN, SSL certificates, and PCI compliance.

Ecommerce Functionality

WooCommerce is a robust ecommerce platform that offers a wide range of built-in solutions for product catalogs, payment processing, and pricing management. There are a number of premium plugins and extensions that simplify most ecommerce management tasks as your online store grows and attracts more customers.

WordPress Ecommerce Website Total Costs

Ecommerce businesses cost more to build and host. A small online store will cost you $30-80 to operate monthly. Midsize and large ecommerce websites require a monthly budget of $100-1000+ depending on the number of daily visitors, orders placed, and the additional functionality you wish to implement.

How Much Should a WordPress Website Cost?

With its extensive native capabilities, WordPress allows you to design and build a website without any coding skills or huge investments. WordPress hosting pricing, domain registration fees, and what theme and plugins you select are the main factors determining your WordPress website costs.

How much should a WordPress website cost? There is no definitive answer to this question. If you plan to build an online business using WordPress, think of what functionality you absolutely need on your future website, and find the best WordPress hosting solution depending on your budget and the features you would like to see included.

Hostdedi can save you hours looking for the best WordPress hosting solution. Whether you are building a blog, a business website, or an online store, we are ready to accomodate your needs. Hostdedi takes pride in powering thousands of mission-critical websites, keeping your business online no matter what. Providing unrivaled performance, enterprise-grade security, and the best support in the industry for over two decades, we know exactly what your online business needs.

Fully optimized for WordPress and WooCommerce, Hostdedi fully managed hosting plans include premium solutions for designing and managing your website.

Unlock the power of WordPress with fully managed WordPress and WooCommerce hosting plans from Hostdedi.