A small presentation regarding hosting types in WordPress and WooCommerce. What is important when choosing a hosting for your eShop and what it really matters at the end.

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

2. I am Frank Maounis
Co-Founder of Enartia
frank@maounis.com

3. Ecommerce Usage (World)

4. Ecommerce Usage (Greece)

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. Types of hosting

12. 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

13. 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)

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

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

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

17. 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

18. 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

19. DIY

20. DIY

21. DIY

22. 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

23. 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)

24. Identify quick Enterprise
Customers
• High quantity of data (or products) - independently
on traffic
• High quantity of traffic - independently on quantity
of data (or products)

25. Make your
Hoster be your
Partner not a
Vendor!

26. –Frank
Thanks