Studies have shown that around 30% of all online retailers use dropshipping. Furthermore, experts believe that the dropshipping market size will increase substantially in the next five years — making it a great way to start your ecommerce journey.

The chosen ecommerce platform and web hosting provider play a massive role in the long-term success of any online business because they define your website’s functionality and performance. This article will review various hosting providers and explore the best options for hosting your dropshipping business.

Keep reading to learn the best web hosting for dropshipping businesses.

Why You Need Great Hosting as a Dropshipper

Dropshipping allows you to skip all production costs and the difficulties associated with bringing your products to the market. In addition, a lower entry threshold makes dropshipping an attractive option for launching an ecommerce business.

The technical aspects of starting a dropshipping business include choosing the right website building platform for ecommerce and a web hosting provider. It is hard to determine which one of the two is more important. Not all websites have the same purpose and, therefore, the same needs. Are you using a platform more popular for blogging or brochure sites? A host optimized for transactions and concurrent users will work better for ecommerce businesses. Consider whether the hosting provider of your choice is optimized for the specific needs of your business.

What does having the best web hosting for dropshipping look like for customers like yourself? It means having the best solutions for setting up and managing your ecommerce store already included. Look for a host that bundles ready-to-use tools and plugins that keep you ahead of the competition.

What Features You Need To Look For

A great web hosting provider doesn’t just have the best hosting powered by robust technology solutions. It should also be optimized and easy to set up for end-users.

Managed hosting has become a standard in the web hosting industry for an excellent reason. Between combining the best solutions and an expert team that reduces setup and maintenance processes – web hosting no longer means spending loads of time on routine startup tasks.

When choosing the best web hosting for dropshipping, here are the five most important aspects to keep in mind:

• Ease of use
• Price
• Optimization for Ecommerce
• Performance and scalability
• Support

Ease of Use

The chosen web hosting provider should make the website setup and management processes as easy and intuitive as possible. The end-user should be able to get their ecommerce website ready to receive traffic and orders without having to deal with any complicated tasks of preparing the infrastructure. The creation process is much more straightforward if web hosts include a site builder to set up your storefront.

Another important consideration is that you might eventually want to change providers. Is your store able to be migrated easily? If you’re using a closed source provider like Wix or Shopify, it can be a lot harder to move your store over quickly. Some options only provide highly customized solutions that can not be used outside of their ecosystem. This can put a temporary dent in sales if your site is down for a day (or a week).

Price

Web hosting prices vary greatly depending on the type of plan you choose and what features are included. While it seems like a cheaper plan might help you save money on the initial setup phase, consider the long-term. You may lose out on sales due to poor performance and support. You want affordability but you don’t want to sacrifice quality.

Optimization for Ecommerce

Website building platforms for ecommerce require extra attention and time to make everything work correctly. A great web hosting provider knows the best technology solutions and how to customize a chosen ecommerce platform to make use of the best functionality.

Some managed ecommerce hosting plans come prepackaged with the best add-ons and plugins, as well as custom solutions for dropshipping to ensure usability.

Performance and Scalability

The technology stack in use should be well optimized for the needs of ecommerce and any specific platform to provide best performance. As your site gets more traffic, more resources are needed. When you run out of resources, your site experiences significant performance issues. How well your website can handle increasing amounts of traffic is key for ecommerce success.

A good host will have scalability options. Autoscaling enables your site to take on more traffic without having to upgrade your plan at a hefty fee. Cheaper, unlimited plans often push you to upgrade to the next tier, and the tier after that, until you’re paying thousands of dollars you didn’t expect.

Support

The quality of support a web hosting provider maintains is extremely important. Ecommerce websites are even more prone to technical issues and difficulties that are often not easy to troubleshoot without a strong system administrator. The best web hosting provider for dropshipping has a team of technology experts that can help you with any website issue that may occur.

Check to see if they have multiple forms of support available. LiveChat is great, 24/7/365 phone support is better. Email is also a great option. Do they prioritize certain customers? Will you get stuck waiting a few days? The longer your site has an issue, the more sales you’ll lose.

Options For Dropshippers

All web hosting companies allow you to host ecommerce websites, but not all of them are optimized for online stores. Most of the time, you will need to set up everything on your own and suffer poor website performance because the technology stack used is not optimized for ecommerce.

Let’s review some popular web hosting solutions that have gained their popularity with ecommerce business owners.

Shopify

Shopify is one of the leading ecommerce platforms. Shopify hosting is often considered the best web hosting for dropshipping because it is easy to use and has a lot of add-ons available that benefit ecommerce sites. Its built-in store builder provides a handful of themes and other customization options for your storefront. You can get a website up and running in no time.

However, an important thing to keep in mind is that Shopify is proprietary. While you can successfully operate as a dropshipper never leaving the platform, moving away from Shopify isn’t easy. If you decide to migrate from Shopify to an open source ecommerce platform like WooCommerce or Magento, you’ll run into some issues, such as completely recreating your store from scratch. While there are benefits to both, understanding the differences between open source vs. proprietary software can help you decide which solution is right for you.

Shopify plan pricing starts between $29 to $299 monthly. They provide a handful of free basic themes, but the nicest options are premium. They can cost as much as $300. If you want advanced plugins, that’ll cost you too. Unfortunately, the additional charges do not end there. Shopify offers their own built-in solutions for payment processing. Like many ecommerce platforms, Shopify imposes transaction fees when using an external payment gateway.

Shopify ensures high performance and high scalability by using cloud-based infrastructure, the quality of which depends on which plan you have. When things go haywire, Shopify offers 24/7 email, chat and phone support. They also have a forum and knowledge base to help users find answers to frequently asked questions.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is another hosted ecommerce platform known for its user-friendly interface and quick ecommerce setup process. BigCommerce is similar to Shopify in many ways, as it is a full-stack ecommerce SaaS (Software as a Service) solution.

BigCommerce includes everything to launch and manage your dropshipping website fast and easily. It includes a website builder with a number of themes and extensions available. They also offer a number of apps and integrations for dropshipping.

Similar to Shopify, BigCommerce uses proprietary technology – so if you choose to move on to another ecommerce platform, you may face some difficulties during the migration process.

BigCommerce offers a few plans, ranging from $29.95 to $299.95 monthly. Prices for enterprise plans are not publicly available. BigCommerce does not currently impose any transaction fees, but there are payment processing fees.

BigCommerce offers a great level of scalability and has a built-in CDN. They also offer the same support options as Shopify including email, chat, phone, forum, and a help center.

SaaS vs. Self-Hosted Ecommerce Platforms

All ecommerce platforms form two big groups — SaaS or self-hosted solutions. Both Shopify and BigCommerce offer full-service SaaS solutions for ecommerce. Using a SaaS solution has its benefits, but also introduces disadvantages.

Using a SaaS for ecommerce means you have very limited control over how your website actually works. While web hosting providers like Shopify and BigCommerce try to offer a wide range of customization options and pre-made ecommerce operation solutions, you may be missing out on a lot of great tools.

Self-hosted ecommerce platforms like Magento or WooCommerce are free, open source solutions used by thousands of store owners. They’re also supported by a devoted community of developers. But self-hosted means the website-building process is separate from hosting.

Your dropshipping website may be a masterpiece, but choosing a cheap hosting provider with poor support and limited optimization for ecommerce will have repercussions. Chances are, you’ll experience bad performance and frequent downtime. So is it safer to go with a SaaS solution when choosing the best web hosting for dropshipping?

Web hosting that is fully optimized for ecommerce while giving you freedom and control over your website AND allows for endless customization is hard to find. It’s not impossible. What if we told you that a hybrid approach exists that combines the best features of ecommerce SaaS like Shopify – but retains the power of open source platforms like WooCommerce?

Hostdedi Has All the Features You Want as a Dropshipper

Hostdedi has transformed the world of web hosting for ecommerce by combining the best features of a SaaS solution and open source ecommerce platforms. That makes it the best web hosting for dropshipping.

Ecommerce content management systems like WooCommerce already have everything you need to build an ecommerce website for dropshipping. Numerous extensions can help you integrate third-party services to achieve extended functionality, or you can even develop an add-on of your own.

Hostdedi has taken the best of WooCommerce and extended its functionality to create a powerful website builder which can help you create a unique storefront with no coding required.

There are numerous reasons why StoreBuilder is better than the vast majority of ecommerce website building solutions. We’re fully optimized for ecommerce with a built-in CDN, advanced caching, autoscaling, and performance monitoring. We have curated the best WooCommerce extensions so you don’t have to test plugin stacks and figure out for yourself what works best.

Get the Best Hosting for Dropshipping With Hostdedi

Managed WooCommerce hosting with Hostdedi says “peace out” to hidden fees and lack of control over your store. With our impeccable performance and enhanced security, hosting with Hostdedi is truly unique. Check out our Hostdedi Managed WooCommerce Hosting plans to start your risk-free ecommerce hosting experience today.