Want the best PrestaShop hosting provider for your online store? don’t want to waste your time with configurations and server problems? So, this is what I’ll talk about today. We’ll show you the best web hosts for Prestashop, they come with secure servers, fast loading time, professional customer support, lots of themes, and much more.
Building a website for your eCommerce business needs your intention to choose the best service first, and focus on your products with the right optimizations.
Table of contents
PrestaShop web hosts
Here is the shortlist of the best PrestaShop hosting companies:
1. Liquid Web (fastest Prestashop hosting)
Liquid Web should be your first option for starting an eCommerce site on Prestashop. The web host offer dedicated resources like RAM, CPU and it’s our recommended managed web hosting provider for people who look for security, speed, and reliability.
Hosting your online store with this company will save you a lot of time compared to other web hosts. That’s because you’ll never need to waste your time with support tickets. There are professional experts to fix your site problems or make things work well.
There is a great team of engineers behind the scene that you can contact and get help in real-time time. But wait, you don’t have to waste the time with support tickets, it’s a premium web host that owns the most sophisticated data centers in the USA and the company has a powerful monitoring system 24/7. So, in addition to the fast servers and good hosting, if a problem happens, it will be fixed instantly.
Liquid Web is the best PrestaShop hosting that you can count on and forget security issues with other providers.
2. HostGator
With its cloud infrastructure, HostGator is one of the best Prestashop site hosting solutions. There is a cPanel control panel, FTP and SFTP, free SSL, and of course Papa payment options for your online store to collect payments.
HostGator is the leading in affordable web hosting services, so, you get what you expect as pricing but with good quality hosting. The server is protected against DDoS attacks, and there is no worry about getting help when you need it. Professional customer support can help you in every step of your site-building process.
3. InMotion (affordable Prestashop hosting)
With affordable eCommerce hosting, InMotion is the second-best web host we recommend. They have cheaper prices and that’s good in terms of money-saving. But don’t look for prices only.
If you think that your Prestashop store will need a lot of resources, then, choose the above web host. Or use any dedicated plan from InMotion.
We don’t recommend shared hosting plans for Prestashop. The only reason to choose a low-cost plan is if you think that your store is new and will get little traffic.
PrestaShop pre-installed
You don’t even need to install the software, it’s true that there is auto-installer software for online stores, but you can get a ready-to-use and Pre-installed store within minutes.
I verified other companies, and unfortunately, I couldn’t find any other hosting offers that service except InMotion. They have a checkbox during the sign filling form, so, the customer can select PrestaShop to be installed for him completely for free.
Pro-level support
Without professional customer support, there is no way to be a successful online store owner. Here is why: Sometimes, you may install the best-recommended tools, plugins, and themes, but without any change, the site may face issues and even payment problems.
That can be the result of a new update with PrestaShop itself or with your own settings and configuration.
After that, as a business owner, you’ll need to contact the support team and solve the problem. But what if you can’t reach that team? And what if there is no real phone support and expert technician?
You see? Phone support is the first option to look for, make sure to use web hosting that lists the phone number on the website. Also, I recommend live chat and also emails in case the phone is busy.
PHP 7 PrestaShop hosting
Does this matter? Can PHP 7 make a difference to your store speed and conversion?
The answer is Yes, PHP 7 is the latest PHP version that’s faster 3 times than the previous version. And because PrestaShop uses PHP and MySQL queries, it’s better to have a fast server first, and the latest software installed and configured properly on it.
Also, it looks like many PrestaShop add-ons or modules are working better with PHP 7, so, when you install the old version, they will work slower and even incorrectly. So, to avoid all these problems and have a well configured and optimized online store, the latest PHP version is what really makes the difference.
With popular web hosts, you’re not allowed to have a custom PHP version, and even if they do, you should contact them to enable it. That’s why using InMotion for your online store project is highly recommended and helps you generate more sales because you use fast hosting.
It’s fast because it has
- SSD servers
- PHP 7
- Optimized servers
- Fast network uptime
- Caching system
- Latest hardware and software technologies
Spam email filtering
This is not an option in my own experience if you have an eCommerce website, and you have good traffic, you may receive spam emails.
The bad news is that these emails can waste your time and make your inbox full of junk. So, it will be hard to find legitimate emails from your partners and people who look to work with you or buy a product.
The good news is that InMotion uses advanced email filtering techniques. So, they scan the emails and auto-detect the spammers, Then, the software filter the bad emails and only accept the real email that is not marked or reported as a spammer.
What about the refund?
InMotion offers 90 days of money back, so, you have the time to test your PrestaShop site. If you’re not happy, you get your money, no question asked. Unlike
Domain and store migration
Normally, when you want to move a website to a new hosting, you need to do it manually or pay the new hosting to do it for you. But in our case, things are different, the company moves your entire site completely for free.
So, an expert technician will move your site files, account email, and everything without any downtime. In other words, your old web store will still work even when moving it, and when the DNS propagation is complete, you’ll have the same installation work on the new server.
If you want to transfer a domain name, then, it’s also free, the company will add credits to your domain name registrar, so, you can use it to pay the domain transfer fees. What’s better than that?
Choose your data center
This is great because it gives an extra speed boost to your site. There are two data centers in the United States. When you create your account, you’ll find 2 options, one in Los Angeles, and the other one in Washington DC.
Take your Prestashop site security seriously
Since the rise of SSL certificates because of the Google update, websites started adding it faster. Even, there is a non-profit organization called let’s encrypt that offers free SSL for 3 months. So, it’s not a problem anymore to secure your site connection with web browsers.
On the other side, free SSL is only valid for a single domain and not sitewide. So, you can’t use it for all your product pages with your company name on it.
That’s why purchasing your own professional site-wide SSL is highly recommended. You can get one from your hosting provider, or from sites like Comodo, instant SSL, and more.
For SSL installation, I recommend asking customer support to do that for you. There is something called CSR, and it’s better to do professional requests and install the certificate the right way.
Keep in mind that customers want to know if your site is secure or not before buying anything from you. So, it’s better to show that your business is registered and add the phone number and also the address on the website.
Shared Prestashop hosting or VPS?
Don’t be overwhelmed with choices and options, you can start with secure and fast hosting. There is no need to think about limitations as there is no limit on the disk space and also the bandwidth. However, keep your usage in the normal range and avoid overloading the server especially with outdated tools.
A shared hosting solution should work well with any online store project with hundreds of visits per day. If you think you’re building something bigger and you will bring lots of traffic from social media or even organic, then, go with a VPS. That will make the site load faster and you’ll avoid lots of problems.
The above PrestaShop hosting services offer both, shared, VPS, and even dedicated servers for any professional eCommerce project. So, you get the most secure environment to accept payment with PayPal, credit card, and more options.
