Why do WP hosting companies have separate packages for WooCommerce hosting?

Hi Jane, That's a great question, and the reasoning may not be immediately apparent at first glance. You certainly can install the WooCommerce plugin on any installation of WordPress. And if you're only planning to sell a few products to a relatively small audience, you'll likely never encounter any issues, even on an inexpensive shared hosting account. If you plan to sell lots of products, or have lots of customers visiting your site (think, “Black Friday”), what you'll quickly discover is that WooCommerce is very resource intensive. Most shared hosting servers will crash with just a few customers checking out at the same time. Those hosts who specialize in providing dedicated Managed WooCommerce hosting have spent a great deal on optimizing their servers — and in some cases, even modifying the underlying WooCommerce core code — so that your store will load quickly, and scale to handle large bursts of traffic, if you need it. Nexcess is one hosting company that's gone even further, by providing premium plugins and themes that would otherwise cost you hundreds of dollars if you were to purchase them on your own. Nexcess includes cart abandonment tools, Affiliate WP, ConvertPro, and advanced analytics via Glew.io, plus the popular page builder plugin, Beaver Builder, and themes like Astra Pro and Kadence. These are tools that you'll likely want to add to your WooCommerce store at some point, and they're all included. With all that, Managed WooCommerce hosting from Nexcess still starts at just $19/month, which is a bargain... even if you compare that to other Managed WordPress hosts that aren't optimized for WooCommerce. That's why we recommend Managed WooCommerce hosting if you plan to run an online store using WooCommerce. Again, you can start out with the WooCommerce plugin on just about any hosting plan. But when your store starts getting more traffic, you'll want to consider Managed WooCommerce hosting. Hope this helps!

Hi Shawn Thanks for the response, I understand now. I'm planning a shop that will sell online courses [hosted on a separate Moodle installation] integrated using Edwiser Bridge. I want to incorporate some static pages in the shop too; is that possible with a WP site with WooCommerce installed? Would I create the static pages in WP or WC and should I therefore opt for WC managed hosting? Lots of questions there I know, sorry!   Jane :-)

Yes, you'll create your static pages in WordPress. You'll create your products in WooCommerce, which will in turn, populate the individual product pages in your shop. And no, you don't need to opt for Managed WooCommerce hosting... until or unless your site receives a lot of traffic at once. Once that's the case, you'll want to consider Managed WooCommerce hosting. Hope this helps!