PrestaShop is a content management system (CMS) focused on creating online stores of all kinds in a simple way, without programming, and well organized with this tool, you can fully customize your e-commerce, create your design, add products, add descriptions, set prices, manage all purchases and sales, and even ship.
With all this, PrestaShop is one of the most popular CMS to create and manage online stores of any industry and size although there are many of the best hosting providers in the market, not all of them are suitable for PrestaShop.
PrestaShop features:
- Offers a wide variety of quality themes to make your store look beautiful and professional.
- A variety of add-ons, plugins, and premium support options.
- It has a WordPress-like control panel and a rich interface for building stores.
- PrestaShop can integrate with many payment providers, shopping cart solutions, tax rules, and carriers.
- It offers an integrated product catalog, promotions, coupons, email integrations, SEO for search location optimization, etc.
- Mobile responsive digital storefronts and checkout pages
- Create and ship customizable digital goods and products
- Set minimum purchase quantity.
- Track goods
- Manage shipping locations
What to consider when choosing the right hosting provider for your PrestaShop?
Processing power
PrestaShop is a CMS that consumes a lot of resources, as it is quite “heavy” because it is so complete. For this reason, you must have a powerful hosting plan with enough resources to run the complex PHP processes that are necessary for the website to function properly.
Fast storage
A PrestaShop hosting should run on SSD (NVMe) hard disks. This is due to the way the PrestaShop template system works, because it is very common for a lot of cache to be stored on the hard drive (very small files that need to be accessed very fast). Disk space is usually not relevant, but its read/write speed is.
PHP version
Although it is now common for web hosting providers to allow you to change the PHP version through the control panel, you should keep in mind that it is necessary to have the latest PHP version supported by PrestaShop. Details like this is where you can tell that a provider specializes in PrestaShop.
Fast and efficient web service
Along with SSD (NVMe) hard drives, another thing that greatly influences the speed of your website or e-commerce is the web service. The idea is to look for a PrestaShop hosting like Raiola Networks, where we use LiteSpeed Web Server on PrestaShop hosting or Nginx on PrestaShop VPS. What we do not use is Apache, a slower and less efficient web server. Also, on servers using LiteSpeed Web Server you could use LiteSpeed Cache to improve the loading speed of your website.
Safety and Security
The servers of a PrestaShop hosting provider should be protected with the necessary security measures to prevent hacks and other threats. It is also important to have daily backups.
Phone support, fast and in your language
E-commerce is a website or web page, but, as it is always transactional in intent, it requires more attentive and specialized support. A PrestaShop hosting plan should always have 24/7 phone support and a control panel with which you can fully manage your website.
Best PrestaShop hosting
- Hostinger
- ScalaHosting
- HostGator
- GoDaddy
- InterServer
Which PrestaShop hosting is recommended?
In both cases, we use servers with SSD hard disks (NVME) and last-generation processors that allow you to have a good platform to run PrestaShop hosting with guaranteed performance and security since, in the end, this is what you are looking for in an online store.
There is not universally recommended PrestaShop host since the right host varies according to the needs and conditions of each website. Providing an adequate layout for a website that is just starting out, while a website that is already selling or has other important needs requires advanced solutions for performance with object caching systems and optimizing the database to ensure fast loading and good stability.