Is BlueHost a Good Choice for WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is the most used eCommerce platform that is widely used on the Internet. Its biggest advantage that you can make your e-store only in a few clicks, based on great Internet software called WordPress.
The first WooCommerce version was launched in 2011 and the product was bought by Automattic, the owner of WordPress.com in 2015. Since then, WooCommerce gets more development and other resources to be even more useful.
If you are wondering whether WooCommerce is good or not for your purposes, here are three numbers to help you decide:
- Over 3.3 million websites are powered by WooCommerce according to Bultwith.com
- 4.9% of top 1 million websites are using this software
- WooCommerce was downloaded more than 51 million times so far
It can be definitely your software if you want to launch your new store. Also, if you need more WooCommerce facts, please read our linked tutorial.
Key Features of WooCommerce
WooCommerce has many great features, or to be honest, all of its features are great. There are no weak assets packed in the software, however, most likely you won’t use all of them. There are key features what we should mention at WooCommerce, they are the biggest strength and almost all users can have benefit of them.
Quick Installation and Setup
Because WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, it can be installed only with few clicks. By activating it with another click, you have the plugin alive.
The Setup process is a Wizard, which guides you to make the basic settings, and set up your online store. Because there are many customizing options in the software itself, Setup Wizard is a fine tool to help you during the first steps.
Advanced Usage of Currencies, Taxes and Payment Gateways
If you ever handled payment methods of an online store, you know, it is one of the most difficult tasks of an e-store’s life. We are talking about payments and people’s money, so there is no place to make something wrong. On the other side, the payment providers require standardized methods to work with your site and you should follow the criteria.
WooCommerce helps you to add your payment gateways and solutions much easier and you can be sure that they will work. Your customers’ payments will be in safe and the whole process will be automatized.
If we are talking about money, we should mention the taxes and currencies too. In WooCommerce you have the chance to set up an unlimited number of taxes, usage cases and currencies. You can sell domestic or international, your prices will be precise and you won’t need to worry about accurate pricing for different customers.
Data Protection
Protecting your own data, your shops’ data and your customers’ data is even more important nowadays. The new rules of GDPR in EU, the national data protection laws in each countries force you to handle your data with care and store them in safe.
WooCommerce uses industry standard protection and measurements, so you won’t need to worry about data leak. You can also decide if your customers should register a user account or you allow the guest check-out. In the latter case, you might get more orders; however, by using user registration you can make coupons or other discounts for your returning customers. WooCommerce supports such customer advantages as well.
Product handling
The key of your online store is product handling, since you should upload your items and show them to your customers. WooCommerce has versatile assets to support these tasks, including the very detailed product profile pages, the advanced customization methods, using different kind of shipping, marketing and other management tools, etc.
Supporting professionals and industry
When something is such big as WooCommerce, a complete industry is based on it. So you can easily find free or premium WooCommerce templates for WordPress, developers, marketing gurus or even data entry employees who know this software.
WooCommerce has its own Theme Store and Extensions Store where you can get official extras for free of charge or some money. Of course, you can find dozens of well-known but independent stores around the World too.
User contribution
You can allow your users to rate and review the products and you can also answer to them. This way your store will look more professional and the user generated content mean free content and more sales!
Search Engine Optimization
All content or product pages can be boosted by SEO and WooCommerce absolutely supports this. If you spend efforts to write the SEO parts, your store will be more successful and will be different than a dozen other stores on the Internet.
Teamwork
WooCommerce lets you add your team members to your store. You don’t have to make them administrators, but they will be able to handle the reporting or purchases. A lot of statistic and analytics tools were also included, so you can keep your eyes on your goals.
Server Requirements of WooCommerce
If you plan to use WooCommerce, you should know about its server requirements to find the best host of it. Because it is a plugin of WordPress, first you should know the server requirements of this CMS.
What you will need for WordPress:
- PHP at least version 7.2 or greater
- MySQL at least version 5.6 or greater; OR MariaDB version 10.0 or greater
- supporting HTTPS
- an Apache or a Nginx is recommended, but you can use any of web servers which supports the above mentioned versions
What you will need for WooCommerce:
- the above mentioned resources
- at least 128 MB memory limit setting in WordPress (wp-config.php)
Few extra services, like CURL or fsockop support can be also needed for special tasks; you can read more about them on official WooCommerce website.
But basically the above mentioned server resources are needed to run WordPress and WooCommerce smoothly. Please be notified that most of web hosting providers still run PHP 5 on their servers, which is not actively supported since December 31, 2016, thus means more vulnerability and hacking possibilities than PHP 7.
For having a reliable and well performing web hosting provider, we recommend you BlueHost. Read further to know more why we recommend this company, and which special WooCommerce services you can benefit from.
Why to Choose BlueHost for WooCommerce
BlueHost is a web hosting company was founded in 2003 and it is widely known as one of the most reliable company in the industry. The numbers also show the same, around 2 million domain names are maintained by BlueHost and its sister companies, making BlueHost one of the largest web hosts in the World. Read our detailed BlueHost review to find out more about this company.
The company has different kind of hosting packages, including the entry-level shared hosting, and the more advanced VPS hosting or Dedicated Server hosting as well. It also made a special product line of WooCommerce hosting packages, what are designated to run this eCommerce software.
The key benefits of BlueHost WooCommerce packages:
- Free domain name: You can get a domain name for your website for free of charge.
- Auto-install of WooCommerce: The software is auto-installed of such plans, so you can use your own instance immediately.
- Free SSL encryption: Your site will automatically get the free SSL protection, so your customer and website data will be encrypted on the Internet. A big plus is that modern browsers like Chrome, Firefox and more will show to your customers that your site is safe.
- Free dedicated IP address: In opposite to shared IP where your neighbors on the server and you have the same IP, you will have a unique IP address, dedicated only for you. So, if one of your neighbors makes illegal things on the Internet, it won’t hurt you.
- PPC credits: You will get PPC credits as gift which can be used to advertise your site for free.
- 24/7 customer support: If you already had a broken website and had to wait for help because your former hosting provider did not provide support on the evenings or weekends, you know why 7/24 support is vital. BlueHost’s support can be reached via email, telephone, live chat and the ticketing system. There is also an exhaustive knowledge base on the site, covering all possible topics.
- Unlimited bandwidth: All website visits indicate bandwidth usage, since your data is carried from your hosting provider’s server to the visitor’s home. Once the bandwidth limit is reached, your website will be unavailable, unless you pay more. The WooCommerce plans include an unlimited bandwidth usage, so your website will be never switched off.
- Friendly refund policy: BlueHost offers a 30-day money-back guarantee for WooCommerce hosting plans. You can freely ask the refund for your hosting package in 30 days, extra purchases, like domain names are not refundable. If you got a free domain name and you ask the refund for your hosting plan’s price, you will be billed $15.99 for the domain name but you can keep the domain. You can even move it to another registrar without questions, after the 60-day registration period.
BlueHost WooCommerce Plans
BlueHost has 3 kinds of WooCommerce Plans, so you can use the most suitable one for your purposes. All of them were developed for WooCommerce and provides you a different level of resources. You can start with the first plan but more advanced plans have more powerful assets.
Starter Plan
In this plan you will get 100 GB storage to store your data. You can add 1 parking domain, 5 sub domains and create 5 email accounts. PPC credits are also included in the value of $50.
Regular price: $13.99/month, special discounted price starts at $6.95/month.
When do you choose it: for starting your store for the best price.
Plus Plan
In this hosting plan you will get an unlimited storage and also there is no limit to how much parking domains, sub domains or email accounts you add. A Spam Protection for 1 domain name and $100 PPC Credits are also included.
Regular price: $17.99/month, special discounted price starts at $8.95/month.
When do you choose it: When you want to use the bigger amount of PPC Credits and your store starts to grow.
Pro Plan
The most advanced hosting plan gives you all features which Plus plan does, plus you will get a few extras as well. They include daily website backups, domain privacy tool, Spam Protection for 2 domain names and $200 in PPC credits.
Regular price: $31.99/month, special discounted price starts at $12.95/month.
When do you choose it: If your store has great traffic and/or you want to do the most to avoid the spam, hacks and other annoying things against your business.
Beside the above enumerated WooCommerce plans, BlueHost offers lots of other plans for various needs. Please read our detailed article where we review each hosting plan offered by BlueHost.
How to start a WooCommerce store at BlueHost
After you choose the desired hosting plan of the above mentioned ones, you can quickly start your own business. Just follow these steps:
- Click on the green SELECT button at the Hosting plan you like the most.
- Add your newly registered or already existing domain name as the next step.
- Create your user account and provide your payment information.
- Wait while WooCommerce is auto-installed.
- Select your theme of your store.
- Add your products, taxes and payment information.
That’s all. Your new site can be done easier than ever. You can also purchase additional services, like additional domain names, premium SSL certification, SpamExperts filtering for emails, additional domain privacy, SEO tools and more.
Before we conclude, please take a look to the pros and cons of BlueHost.
Conclusion
In the title of this article was asked a question – Is BlueHost a Good Choice for WooCommerce? We can say: definitely YES. The special WooCommerce hosting packages were designated to run WooCommerce, so just choose the most suitable to you, and follow the above mentioned steps. Only in few minutes, you will have your working eCommerce site live!