Hosting Types in WordPress and WooCommerce

I want my eShop!But what is this “hosting” thing?

I am Frank MaounisCo-Founder of Enartia [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Ecommerce Usage (World)

Ecommerce Usage (Greece)

What are the WooCommerce pains

• You just added WooCommerce plugin to your WordPress and now is slow.

• Don’t worry. This is a very common problem and is due to the way WordPress manages all eCommerce functions

• Google says that a 100-400ms slower site reflects to User Experience (UX) so on sales as well

SQL Options• A dedicated cluster: the most expensive but by design

the more availability (in theory 99.999% uptime)

• A mysql replica: not so expensive, but less uptime (about 99.9%)

• A single mysql: the cheapest, but worst uptime (95-99%)

• NOTE: The uptime numbers are related to the mysql service aliveness/availability, issues like disks are full, potential corruptions or others can affect any of three solutions and make availability to go down

Type of Hosting is important

• The problem is that product pages are coming directly from the DB(classic MySQL server speed bottleneck)

• So hosting a WooCommerce on different infrastructure is seriously impacting your eShop

Scale is not about SKUs or revenue

• When working on sites that need to support high volumes of traffic, like on a Cyber Monday, SKU count won’t help you

• Also revenue is not a metric because also incomplete sales also have a performance cost that needs to be considered

The metric of scale

• The most effective way to measure how well a WooCommerce store will scale is to use “Add to Cart” events or ATCPM

• 200 ATCPM for about $100k / month revenue

• 2.000 ATCPM for about $1MM / month revenue

To host/scale you need expertise in

• Payments gateways

• PCI compliance

• Network redundancy

• Hardware for a failover

• MultiDC deployments

• CDNs

• Load Balancers

• Varnish/Redis cache

Types of hosting

1. Are you a geek dev? Try it locally with Docker!

• How: Download Docker Toolbox and choose your image

• Cost: Free (Yes! but not for public sites)

• Pros: Quick at your laptop

• Cons: You have to be a dev

2. Do you have time and need a solution at the cost of a coffee?

• How: Using a Shared Hosting solution

• Cost: Usually starts around 3-10 euro / month

• Pros: The cheapest way to get online

• Cons: You need time to install WordPress and WooCommerce. You manage everything. Based on shared resources (not suggested for eShops with traffic)




3. Do you care about your time and you have a bigger eShop?• How: Using a managed Wordpress Solution

(suggested for agencies and devs)

• Cost: Usually starts around 15 - 25 euro / month

• Pros: Multiple installs, Managed updates, backups, security and performance (CDN, caching / database optimisation / PHP workers etc)

• Cons: You still need to add and configure WooCommerce via the Wizard

4. Your eShop is making money. You don’t want to spend time on infrastructure?

• How: Using a managed WooCommerce Solution

• Cost: Usually starts around 25 - 100 euro / month

• Pros: Optimised WooCommerce, 1-click demo content, marketing and payment gateways ready, shipment tools ready, SSL, CDN, Caching

• Cons: High price

DIY

DIY

DIY

Before you choose a hosting solution please

• Understand that eShop hosting is different than common hosting

• Your customer makes MONEY (don’t go cheap on him)

• Your customer PAYS MONEY to vendors like Skroutz, AdWords, Facebook

• Your customer PAYS MONEY to affiliates

Do your homework

• Understand your (or your customer’s) needs

• Understand WooCommerce and it’s pains

• Do proactive load testing

• Plan for a failure with your hoster (warm backups, cold deployments, hot infra)

Identify quick Enterprise Customers

• High quantity of data (or products) - independently on traffic

• High quantity of traffic - independently on quantity of data (or products)

Make your Hoster be your Partner not a

Vendor!

–Frank

Thanks

Hosting Types in WordPress and WooCommerce

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