Self-Hosted vs. Hosted eCommerce: How Do You Choose?

08/04/21 • 38 min

Plesk Official Podcast

Key Takeaways

Hosted vs. self-hosted is a lot like renting vs. buying. On the one hand, you can have 80% of your problems taken care of - you just need to worry about running your store and your business. But on the other, are the last 20% crucial to running your store or your business?
The common self-hosted solutions are Shopify, Volusion, and Big Commerce. There is also Etsy, and the Amazon Marketplace, which are a lot closer to hosted than self-hosted solutions.
The oldest self-hosted solution is Magento, but WooCommerce has gained considerable popularity in the last few years.
To get a better understand of what you need, it’s a good idea to start on a hosted solution. It lets you get up and running (and making money) as quickly as possible. Then as you outgrow the hosted solution, you can seek a self-hosted solution, like WooCommerce.
WooCommerce is currently the number 1 self-hosted solution. There are lots of add-ons and resources, making it flexible enough to support just about any type of store you need (with the right amount of work).
Another option Patrick mentions is a a hybrid approach. You have a self-hosted solution and you offload certain functions to SaaS products. Big Commerce does this with their WordPress plugin. Metorik does this with WooCommerce analytics.
There are also self-hosted partners that offer managed eCommerce solutions - like Plesk’s eCommerce Toolkit.
One problem Patrick sees a lot is people wondering why their WooCommerce site is slow. We covered site speed and performance in a previous episode, but Patrick’s advice: don’t cheap out on hosting. Find some good hosting with a company that will make sure your site is up and running, and working well.

Key Takeaways

Hosted vs. self-hosted is a lot like renting vs. buying. On the one hand, you can have 80% of your problems taken care of - you just need to worry about running your store and your business. But on the other, are the last 20% crucial to running your store or your business?
The common self-hosted solutions are Shopify, Volusion, and Big Commerce. There is also Etsy, and the Amazon Marketplace, which are a lot closer to hosted than self-hosted solutions.
The oldest self-hosted solution is Magento, but WooCommerce has gained considerable popularity in the last few years.
To get a better understand of what you need, it’s a good idea to start on a hosted solution. It lets you get up and running (and making money) as quickly as possible. Then as you outgrow the hosted solution, you can seek a self-hosted solution, like WooCommerce.
WooCommerce is currently the number 1 self-hosted solution. There are lots of add-ons and resources, making it flexible enough to support just about any type of store you need (with the right amount of work).
Another option Patrick mentions is a a hybrid approach. You have a self-hosted solution and you offload certain functions to SaaS products. Big Commerce does this with their WordPress plugin. Metorik does this with WooCommerce analytics.
There are also self-hosted partners that offer managed eCommerce solutions - like Plesk’s eCommerce Toolkit.
One problem Patrick sees a lot is people wondering why their WooCommerce site is slow. We covered site speed and performance in a previous episode, but Patrick’s advice: don’t cheap out on hosting. Find some good hosting with a company that will make sure your site is up and running, and working well.

Previous Episode

How to Speed Up Your eCommerce Site (and increase conversions)

Key Takeaways

Simplicity is the name of the game. You probably only need 1⁄3 of the features you want.
You don’t need complex faceting and search. Customers aren’t going to use those.
Hosting doesn’t matter most of the time when it comes to performance. Yes - shared hosting is less secure, but throwing hardware at a performance problem is a band-aid, not a solution.
Good hosting still can’t account for slow internet connections, and bloated sites will always load slowly there.
Stop relying on a caching plugin. It doesn’t make your site faster - it makes it look faster. You can’t just cache everything, especially on an ecommerce site.
Check performance with Query Monitor. It’s a great, free plugin for WordPress. Look for colors. Red is bad, Green is good! Look for numbers and make them lower.
Database hits are usually the culprit when it comes to ecommerce performance. Optimize your database calls (or hire someone to).
Post Meta is another thing that’s really detrimental to WordPress sites — there are a lot of database hits and complex queries associated with them.
As you evaluate features, try to cut away as much as possible. Ask yourself:
- How does this feature/plugin/add-on make me money?
- Are website visitors actually using this feature/plugin/add-on?

Key Takeaways

There are three pillars to SEO: Content, off-page SEO, and website technical structure
Content should include solid product descriptions, lots of photos, and clear terms. Remember; buying online doesn’t provide the same experience as buying in-store, so you need to fill the gaps. Content will helps us do that.
By the same token, don’t unintentionally create duplicate content! If you have similar versions of the same product (different colors, sizes, shapes, etc), create variations. Some search engines can lower your ranking if you have a lot of duplicate content, and variations prevent that.
When it comes to blogging, consistency is more important than quantity. Blogging once a month is the minimum to show people (and search engines) that you’re consistent.
- Ideally, releasing one piece of content per week would be ideal. But it doesn’t just have to be on your own site! Consider being a guest blogger and spreading the word about your brand and surrounding topics through other sites.
When it comes to off-page SEO, on top of guest posts, you can have affiliate programs and link exchanges. Since Google and other search engines consider backlinks (links back to your website or content) when ranking, getting your website linked on other websites, where relevant, can really help.
- Tools like Ahrefs and Screaming Frog can help you figure out whom to ask for a backlink.
- Reciprocity can sweeten the pot, but link-trading is also frowned upon by Google, so get creative!
Influencers can also play a big part of getting people to your site. Social proof is the lynchpin of selling online, so testimonials are great. But showing other people actually using and promoting your products is even better.
- When people look for social proof, we can apply the acronym EAT: Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. Find influencers with relevant audiences who understand and can honestly recommend your product.
Finally, when it comes to technical structure, again tools like Ahrefs can help figure out where the holes in your website are. Remember to get rid of or redirect 404 errors, obtain an SSL certificate, and make improvements over time to your content and website speed. Our Alberto Medina episode on Core Web Vitals should be a huge help on this!