What Your Online Store's Hosting Actually Needs

A blog can survive slow hosting. A store cannot — every second of delay cuts conversions by roughly 7%.

Speed is revenue

Target under 2 seconds for full page loads, and under 600ms Time to First Byte. NVMe storage, PHP 8.3, and page caching are non-negotiable.

Uptime is trust

Downtime during a sale is lost revenue you never recover. Look for a 99.9%+ SLA — and check whether it comes with actual compensation or is just marketing.

Checkout-specific needs

• SSL everywhere — not just checkout pages.
• Enough PHP workers to handle concurrent checkouts.
• Daily backups — losing a day of orders is catastrophic.
• Staging environment — test plugin updates before they touch live checkout.

When to go bigger

Start on good shared hosting. Move to VPS or cloud when you consistently exceed 100+ concurrent users or run heavy plugins. Most stores never need more than that.