13 Best PrestaShop Hosting (Feb. 2024): Free Themes & Support

Best Prestashop Hosting

Instead of all the expenses and restrictions with building a brick-and-mortar store, online services like the best PrestaShop hosting can empower entrepreneurs customize your store, attract customers, and make sales.

As a free and open-source eCommerce solution, PrestaShop serves more than 300,000 merchants globally — with an even larger community of developers ready and able to help you get started.

Read on for the PrestaShop web hosts that offer the savings, performance, scalability, and support that can help your business take off.

Best Overall PrestaShop Hosting

Anne-Charlotte compared PrestaShop to Legos because it enables entrepreneurs to build on as their companies expand. She and Co-Founder Nicolas Rohr spoke about Faguo’s omnichannel presence that now encompasses mobile, social media, and brick-and-mortar stores.

“We’re part of an ultra-connected generation, so it was really important to get our website up and running right from the start,” he said. “When we created Faguo about 10 years ago, you had to consider computers. Now, you have to consider smartphones.”

PrestaShop provides hundreds of responsive themes to serve mobile shoppers, who are expected to account for nearly 54% of all eCommerce sales by 2021. Once you customize your site’s design and configure payment and shipping methods, the platform provides countless features and modules to market and manage your store across a wide variety of channels.

“The idea is that customers can find the same information everywhere, wherever they go,” Anne-Charlotte said. “The idea was to be present and close to the community to be more transparent and bring to life Faguo’s entrepreneurial adventure as much as possible.”

As with WordPress, though, you’ll need a hosting environment to house all the PrestaShop installation and all your files. For that, we recommend A2 Hosting for being an industry leader in providing high-quality service at low prices. In addition to ample high-performance storage and bandwidth, upgraded hosting packages come with increased site acceleration and worry-free migrations. Learn more about A2 Hosting by clicking on our review below:

1. A2Hosting.com

A2 Hosting review

Monthly Starting Price $11.99

  • 20 times faster performance that boosts sales
  • 80+ software options: Magento, OpenCart, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, and others
  • Fully managed WordPress and server environments
  • Worry-free migration and 24/7 support
  • DDoS protection and layered security measures
  • Get started on A2 Hosting now.

ECOMMERCE
RATING
4.8 ★★★★★ Our Review

A2 Hosting: Our Expert's Review

Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com): For those who understand the importance of page load speed and sales, look no further than A2 Hosting. The company boasts premium storage, optimized security, and one of the most diverse portfolios of one-click software installations we’ve seen. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
30 days 100 GB SSD - Unlimited SSD New or Transfer 4 minutes

See other top hosts »

Best PrestaShop Hosting With “Free Themes”

When you start a new business, your website or online store represents a blank canvas. Sure, many shops have several common elements, but the world is your oyster when it comes to how you want to display and sell your products.

Beyond optimizing your online shop’s mobile experience, pay attention to simplified checkout processes; experts at Shortie Designs say you might be losing up to two-thirds of customers with a poorly designed conversion funnel. Look for designs that engage your visitors, making them more likely to return. Invest in stunning product photography, and spend time providing shoppers with in-depth descriptions about each item and its related options.

Screenshots of PrestaShop themes

Serving a wide range of businesses and industries, PrestaShop’s template marketplace has thousands of design options.

PrestaShop makes this easy by providing nearly 4,000 themes organized by software version, industry, style concept, and specific functionalities. In the platform’s add-ons marketplace, templates range from $70 to nearly $300.

Because of the sensitive financial and personal information involved with buying and shipping products, online stores are typically best served with a premium theme. Coding and security standards with free themes can be rather lax, leaving your business susceptible to attacks, sluggish to load, and off-putting to potential customers.

For those looking for more affordable ways to get started, however, your web hosting plan represents a chance to get your budget back on track. Because competition is fierce — particularly at the shared hosting levels of the industry — store owners can take advantage of feature-rich, seriously impressive plans for a fraction of what you may expect.

For less than $5 per month, you can expect to see unlimited storage, bandwidth, and email accounts, around-the-clock support, hundreds of one-click installations (including PrestaShop), strong managed security, a free SSL certificate, and one year of a free domain name registration. These feature-rich plans listed below are great for small business and those just getting started.

2. Hostinger.com

Hostinger Review

Monthly Starting Price $2.49

  • Unlimited everything, from storage to databases
  • FREE site builder & WP performance upgrades
  • FREE daily or weekly backups
  • Custom control panel and auto-installation scripts
  • SSH access & unlimited FREE SSL certificates
  • Get started on Hostinger now.

CHEAP
RATING
4.9 ★★★★★ Our Review

Hostinger: Our Expert's Review

Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com): As the shared hosting market becomes increasingly saturated, unlimited storage, bandwidth, and email accounts have become surprisingly average. Hostinger, however, extends the routine, expected metrics to greater lengths — the number of websites, databases, FTP users, subdomains, and parked domains are all unrestricted for most customers. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
30 days 50 GB SSD - 200 GB SSD FREE (1 year) 3 minutes

3. HostArmada.com

HostArmada Review

Monthly Starting Price $2.49

  • FREE cPanel integration and Softaculous apps
  • Auto daily backups and web application firewall
  • Reliable and redundant cloud servers
  • FREE SSL encryption and website migration
  • 99.99% uptime guarantee
  • Get started on HostArmada now.

CHEAP
RATING
4.8 ★★★★★ Our Review

HostArmada: Our Expert's Review

Lynn Cadet (HostingAdvice.com): HostArmada’s cloud network spans four continents, with datacenters in Europe, the US, Asia, and Australia. Its server redundancy and website optimization features allow users to run stable and performant sites for end users across the globe while running a simplified hosting environment. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
45 days 15 GB SSD - 40 GB SSD FREE (1 year) 3 minutes

4. ScalaHosting.com

ScalaHosting Review

Monthly Starting Price $2.95

  • 1-click install for WordPress, Drupal and 400 others
  • Unlimited email accounts, databases & bandwidth
  • 24/7 tech support for beginners and pros alike
  • 12-month or 36-month plan at $2.95 /month
  • Anytime unconditional money-back guarantee
  • Get started on ScalaHosting now.

CHEAP
RATING
4.8 ★★★★★ Our Review

ScalaHosting: Our Expert's Review

Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com): It's tough to argue with a shared hosting service that comes with all-SSD storage and unlimited bandwidth, databases, and email accounts. ScalaHosting provides all the above and several other premium features for a very affordable price. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
30 days 10 GB SSD - 50 GB SSD FREE (1 year) 6 minutes

See other top hosts for affordability »

Best PrestaShop Hosting Performance With “SSDs”

In addition to your products and your website’s overall user experience, performance and page load speed are some of the biggest factors that determine whether a customer will click the buy button. More than half of consumers indicated that slow websites were the top reason they would abandon a purchase, and 44% said slow transactions gave them more anxiety about a purchase.

Fast loading sites are more than just for show; website performance bleeds into and affects conversion rates, bounce rates, time spent on the site, pages per session, repeat visitors, and other metrics of success.

Performance is so important that it’s measured down to the millisecond. An extra 250 milliseconds, or a quarter of a second, is noticeable enough for visitors to stop going to your site in favor of a competitor’s, according to The New York Timesand that was in 2012. The consumer’s need for speed has only grown since then. (For reference, it takes you about 400 milliseconds to blink your eyes.)

Image showing a hard disk drive and solid-state drive

Hard disk drives are bigger, slower, and contain more moving parts than modern solid-state drives.

Fortunately, page speed is something you can work on. In addition to leveraging a content delivery network, which spreads your website information across a network of servers to put the data as close to your visitors as possible, site owners can pretty easily compress or reduce image file sizes, minify code, uninstall useless modules, and avoid including heavy homepage sliders, pop-ups, and other features on the site. Google’s PageSpeed Insights can provide a more technical checklist of issues to correct, such as reducing server load time, leveraging browser caching, and eliminating certain scripts.

Before you dive into all that, however, the first — and easiest — step you can take is hosting your online store with a provider that makes most of these adjustments for you automatically. A host’s decision to provide optimized infrastructure and upgraded hardware signals they’re invested in their customers’ success. Instead of offering the cheapest possible solutions and maximizing profits, the hosts listed below take those extra steps to ensure clients’ websites are always online and cruising at optimal speeds.

The quickest, simplest way to tell if a host cares about website performance is to look for three letters: SSD. The acronym stands for solid-state drives, and they’re a modern type of storage device that can read, write, and access data up to 20 times faster than traditional hard disk drives. Feel free to read up on why SSDs represent the better storage option for performance-minded site owners, or skip ahead to learn more about our three favorite hosts for this important feature:

5. InMotionHosting.com

InMotion review

Monthly Starting Price $2.29

  • Shared business hosting with FREE SSD storage
  • FREE website migration with zero downtime
  • Develop in PHP, Ruby, Perl, Python, and MySQL
  • FREE drag-and-drop builder or WordPress
  • FREE data backups and FREE SSL cert
  • Get started on InMotion Hosting now.

SSD
RATING
4.9 ★★★★★ Our Review

InMotion: Our Expert's Review

PJ Fancher (HostingAdvice.com): InMotion Hosting trailblazed the SSD space, including free SSD storage in all server plans for maximum performance. Existing websites experience no downtime as InMotion Hosting transfers your site to its new home on InMotion’s network, and you can choose a West Coast or East Coast datacenter location. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
90 days 100 GB SSD - Unlimited SSD FREE (1 year) 5 minutes

6. Kamatera.com

Kamatera review

Monthly Starting Price $4.00

  • Customize your cloud environment for FREE
  • Work with a dedicated account manager
  • Dozens of Windows & Linux OS choices
  • Complimentary live chat support open 24/7
  • Launch in less than 60 seconds
  • Get started on Kamatera now.

SSD
RATING
4.9 ★★★★★ Our Review

Kamatera: Our Expert's Review

Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com): That's right, Kamatera gives new customers FREE access to high-quality VPS hosting for 30 days. Upgrade your bargain-basement shared hosting to a cloud server configured to your exact specifications for no cost. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
30-day FREE trial 20 GB SSD - 4 TB SSD New or Transfer 3 minutes

7. Cloudways.com

Cloudways review

Monthly Starting Price $8.25

  • SSD hosting, built-in cache, and FREE CDN
  • Your choice of 5 popular cloud providers
  • Optimized stack with Apache, PHP-FPM, and MariaDB
  • Support for the latest PHP versions
  • Get 25% OFF first 3 months with promo code HOSTINGADVICE
  • Get started on Cloudways now.

SSD
RATING
4.8 ★★★★★ Our Review

Cloudways: Our Expert's Review

Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com): Cloudways offers blazing-fast, SSD-powered performance with additional caching layered atop an optimized tech stack. Enjoy a performant cloud cocktail of Apache, NGINX, PHP-FPM, and a choice of MySQL and MariaDB databases. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
3-day FREE trial 20 GB SSD - 4 TB SSD New or Transfer 8 minutes

See other top hosts with SSDs »

Best “Cloud” PrestaShop Hosting

Speed is great and all, but even the best performance won’t matter much if your shop is always crashing and unavailable to visitors. Websites can go down for a variety of reasons — some are self-inflicted, others are beyond your control.

To prevent mishaps, be careful when updating your codebase, modules, or other software associated with your online store. If possible, create a staging environment to make sure the updates don’t break anything before you transition the changes over to your live site. Always take precautions to protect your website’s security. Oftentimes, attacks can trace back to exposing a known vulnerability in an outdated piece of software or oversimplified password.

One of the most frustrating causes of downtime, however, can actually come about when you’ve been too successful. You know how on Black Friday when so many people rush into a store at the same time, people end up getting hurt and things are broken? When too many people visit your online store at the same time, your servers feel the wrath and can get overwhelmed.

A quick way to deal with and prevent this potential outcome is to sign up with a higher level of web hosting service. Shared hosting is great for its affordability and features, but each client is given a relatively small share of a server’s computing resources. Plus, because so many customers have files on the same machine, one compromised website can bring a whole host of others crashing down with it.

Image of datacenter

Cloud hosting involves multiple servers sharing the workload and protecting against traffic surges and malicious attacks.

Cloud hosting offers a simple, secure way to quickly scale up and down your server space and processing power. In this type of arrangement, several servers are networked together to share and duplicate your files. This redundancy means that if one piece of the network fails, the other servers can jump in and continue sending your site to visitors’ browsers. Plus, if you suddenly start seeing above-average amounts of traffic, additional servers can join the fight to help keep your website operational.

You typically hear about cloud hosting in the context of industry giants like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Although those services offer tremendous scalability and opportunities, they’re often extraordinarily hard to set up and maintain without an experienced IT department. Instead, we prefer to rely on traditional hosts that regularly serve small business owners and can offer easy-to-understand hosting configurations and support. Check out our favorite options below:

8. Kamatera.com

Kamatera review

Monthly Starting Price $4.00

  • Ultimate scalability with limitless customizations
  • Create and deploy servers in 60 seconds
  • Easily add load balancers and firewalls
  • Stellar 99.95% uptime guarantee
  • Sign up today for a 30-day FREE trial
  • Get started on Kamatera now.

CLOUD
RATING
4.9 ★★★★★ Our Review

Kamatera: Our Expert's Review

Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com): Starting with more than 60 operating system images to choose from, Kamatera is a strong option for developers who know exactly what environment works best for their project. Customize your cloud server as needed and deploy in less than a minute. Go to full review »

Setup Time Disk Space CPU RAM
5 minutes 20 GB SSD - 4 TB SSD 1 - 32 cores 1 GB - 128 GB

9. IONOS.com

1&1 IONOS review

Monthly Starting Price $4.00

  • Start with $100 in credit for your first month
  • Auto scaling with premium Intel processors
  • Customized operating systems (Linux or Windows)
  • Deploy Linux instances in less than 1 minute
  • Transparent costs and by-the-minute billing
  • Get started on 1&1 IONOS now.

CLOUD
RATING
4.8 ★★★★★ Our Review

1&1 IONOS: Our Expert's Review

Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com): Boasting 99. 998% platform availability, the popular cloud hosting services from 1&1 IONOS deploy more than 2,500 virtual machines each week. Go to full review »

Setup Time Disk Space CPU RAM
6 minutes 10 GB NVMe - 640 GB NVMe 1 - 24 cores 512 MB.- 48 GB

10. Cloudways.com

Cloudways review

Monthly Starting Price $8.25

  • Managed cloud hosting with 24/7/365 monitoring
  • Choose from 5 popular cloud providers
  • Auto-healing cloud servers with FREE backups
  • 3-day free trial with no credit card required
  • Host unlimited apps with no contract lock-in
  • Get started on Cloudways now.

CLOUD
RATING
4.6 ★★★★★ Our Review

Cloudways: Our Expert's Review

Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com): If you can’t beat the cloud provider behemoths, offer their infrastructure as a service. Cloudways gives customers their choice of cloud platform: AWS, Google, Linode, Digital Ocean, or Vultr. Go to full review »

Setup Time Disk Space CPU RAM
8 minutes 20 GB SSD - 4 TB SSD 1 - 96 cores 1 GB - 384 GB

See other top cloud hosts »

Best “Managed” PrestaShop Hosting Support

So, is your head spinning yet? Web hosting can be an intimidating endeavor, particularly if it’s your first time creating an online store. There’s a lot to consider, from speed and security to scalability and design. Adding an eCommerce store, with all the aspects of inventory management, payment processing, order tracking, shipping, and other procedures, make the online experience even more complicated.

For store owners who would rather concentrate on growing their business, improving their products, or growing their catalog, managed services can be a tremendous help. Managed hosting and dedicated customer support offerings mean the hosting provider will handle most, if not all, of the technical components of your online store. Depending on the provider and your budget, you may still need to oversee a few small components of your store, but your host’s experts will set everything up for you.

Managed support will be the most responsive and most helpful to business owners. In addition to recommending the services and options best tailored to PrestaShop’s needs, hosts will install the software and configure it for optimal performance and security. The services come at a bit of a premium, but many entrepreneurs find managed support saves them ample time and money in the long run.

Some of the added benefits of managed support include: additional and proactive server monitoring, enhanced security (especially important for eCommerce transactions), automated data backups, reduced operating costs, and increased peace of mind. The three hosting providers we’ve listed below are known across the industry for providing timely support, affordable services, and impressive infrastructure. Learn more from our reviews below:

11. SiteGround.com

SiteGround review

Monthly Starting Price $2.99

  • Low-cost managed WooCommerce stores
  • FREE payment processing and adjustable shipping
  • Test changes to your online store in a staging area
  • Pre-installed SSL security and auto daily backups
  • 100% renewable energy match
  • Get started on SiteGround now.

ECOMMERCE
RATING
4.2 ★★★★ Our Review

SiteGround: Our Expert's Review

Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com): The legendary WordPress experts at SiteGround have extended their expertise to online stores delivered through WooCommerce. Enjoy managed updates and industry-leading support with SiteGround’s cloud-driven infrastructure. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
30 days 10 GB SSD - 40 GB SSD New or Transfer 6 minutes

12. A2Hosting.com

A2 Hosting review

Monthly Starting Price $11.99

  • 20 times faster performance that boosts sales
  • 80+ software options: Magento, OpenCart, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, and others
  • Fully managed WordPress and server environments
  • Worry-free migration and 24/7 support
  • DDoS protection and layered security measures
  • Get started on A2 Hosting now.

ECOMMERCE
RATING
4.8 ★★★★★ Our Review

A2 Hosting: Our Expert's Review

Alexandra Anderson (HostingAdvice.com): For those who understand the importance of page load speed and sales, look no further than A2 Hosting. The company boasts premium storage, optimized security, and one of the most diverse portfolios of one-click software installations we’ve seen. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
30 days 100 GB SSD - Unlimited SSD New or Transfer 4 minutes

13. InMotionHosting.com

InMotion review

Monthly Starting Price $2.29

  • Fast and secure hosting for WordPress and WooCommerce stores
  • FREE domain, backups, SSDs, and SSL certificate
  • Server-level caching and scalable storage
  • 400+ free and paid extensions to grow your store
  • SPAM Safe™ Email with IMAP support
  • Get started on InMotion now.

ECOMMERCE
RATING
4.4 ★★★★ Our Review

InMotion: Our Expert's Review

PJ Fancher (HostingAdvice.com): InMotion Hosting boasts modern NVMe SSD storage, dedicated caching, and scalable resources to deliver blazing-fast page loads your customers will appreciate. We recommend taking advantage of the premium web host’s managed WooCommerce offerings, but new store owners shouldn’t hesitate to check out the cheaper shared hosting options, as well. Go to full review »

Money Back Guarantee Disk Space Domain Name Setup Time
90 days 100 GB SSD - Unlimited SSD FREE (1 year) 5 minutes

See other top eCommerce hosts »

Pro Tip: Pay Attention to PrestaShop Hosting Requirements

Once you decide PrestaShop is the right eCommerce platform to power your business, you’ll naturally want to make sure the surrounding technologies are up to the task. Many hosting plans, including those listed above, come equipped with one-click PrestaShop installations, plenty of storage, and ample memory resources.

However, you’ll need to make sure those computing resources closely match your site’s needs both now and into the future. For instance, an established business will require premium services compared to a hobbyist looking to set out for the first time. Does your hosting provider handle domain registrations? What about security measures? Performance upgrades? Paying attention to the fine print can make a measurable difference in your site’s success and user experience.

As for PrestaShop itself, the platform recommends these specifications for your hosting environment:

  • Apache 2.x, NGINX, or Microsoft IIS web server
  • PHP 5.6+, MySQL 5.0+, and FTP access
  • PHP memory limit of at least 128MB and upload file size limits at least 16MB
  • Domain name (or subdomain) and SSL certificate
  • Mcrypt, OpenSSL, Zip, Curl, GD, and PDO PHP extensions
  • Memcached, Apc, and OpCache caching frameworks

PrestaShop provides an impressive installation guide, as well as instructions on adding PrestaShop to a local environment or computer. Basically, any host worth trusting with your business website should be able to provide these standard services. Don’t be afraid to set your sights a little higher, as the more modern technologies will serve to boost performance, reliability, and scalability in the future.

If you’re still a little unsure or hesitant about taking on this project yourself, don’t be afraid to contact a PrestaShop expert to help with initial configuration, migration, third-party integrations, custom development, or marketing.

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