Trade Desk
OpenCart hosting plans — A client's checkout is their cash register, and now it is your uptime
OpenCart is light on the server and heavy on the consequences — a slow admin annoys the client, but a failed checkout costs them money and they will phone you about it.
Straight answer first
Put the client's shop on our dedicated OpenCart plans, with PHP tuned to the platform, NVMe underneath and a catalogue that keeps pace as the product count climbs — the platform is cheap to run, so spend the saving on the things that make a checkout dependable.
For a reseller the interesting property of OpenCart is that it serves a catalogue on resources that would leave heavier platforms wheezing. That makes disk speed and PHP tuning very nearly the whole performance story, and it means a shop client can be profitable at a sensible price — provided you have priced the extensions and the peak weeks rather than only the hosting.
Written by the Hosting Seller staff · Checked 24 August 2026
NVMe
Storage under every client shop
Free
Domain, year one on annual orders
99.9%
Uptime target behind your promise
Flat
Price at renewal, per shop
Written for resellers and studios who look after small shops for other people. The hosting question is genuinely straightforward here. The commercial questions — what happens in December, who owns the extension that broke, what you promised about uptime — are the ones that decide whether the account is worth having.
Start from what a checkout failure actually costs. It is not a support ticket; it is the client's takings for the hour, and they will know the number. Everything on this page follows from taking that seriously rather than treating a shop as a brochure site with a basket attached.
What tuned hosting means for a shop
PHP 8.x with the right extensions already loaded, upload and memory limits set high enough for product imports, MySQL on NVMe, and caching defaults that leave cart sessions alone. Small details, but between them they are the whole difference between a shop that feels quick and one the client apologises for.
Generic hosting nobody has ever tested with a cart is the trap. OpenCart travels light, so it will install anywhere and appear fine on day one — and then a product import times out during the client's busiest week and you find out what was never configured.
The extensions are where your support hours go
Files, database, extensions and any vQmod or OCmod tweaks travel together when a shop moves, which is convenient. What is less convenient is that those same modifications are what breaks on an upgrade, and the author of a third-party module is not answering your emails.
Keep an inventory: every extension, its version, who wrote it, and whether it is still maintained. Do it once at the start of the relationship. It takes an hour and it turns the next upgrade from an investigation into a task.
What one shop costs you, and what to charge
The platform cost per shop is modest and fixed, and the order price is the renewal price, so your margin does not quietly erode at the anniversary. That is the easy half of the invoice.
The other half is attention: extension updates, a payment gateway that changed its API, an import that needs babysitting, and the hour in December when everything matters at once. Price that as a retainer with a stated allowance, and price out-of-hours work separately. A shop client who understands why there are two lines rarely argues about either.
The peak-season promise you should not make
Do not promise a client that nothing will change during their busy period and then also promise to fix anything immediately. Those two commitments fight each other. Instead, agree a change freeze with named exceptions, and agree what counts as an emergency worth breaking it for.
Then make the exceptions cheap to execute. Staging means an urgent fix is proved on a clone first, daily backups mean a bad change is reversible in minutes, and free SSL that reissues itself means one class of December disaster simply never happens.
The supplier writing this would like the account
We are a host recommending hosting, and we would rather say it than imply otherwise. No referral fee sits behind the recommendation, which is why the page can be candid about where the real costs of a shop client actually land.
Order an annual plan and the first year of the domain registration is on the house — useful when the client is counting first-year setup costs.
- Tests you can run before you commit a client
- One trade price, held at renewal
- Free migration for the sites you already host
- A refund policy with no small print
Why Hosting Seller
On every plan, as standard
PHP tuned for a cart
Extensions loaded, upload and memory limits set for product imports, and caching that leaves cart sessions alone.
Matched to this verdict
The Pro OpenCart plan is this page's recommendation made concrete — one flat price, essentials included, upgradeable in place.
Migration with the modifications
Files, database, extensions and any vQmod or OCmod tweaks travel together at no charge, checked before the DNS moves.
Staging for the risky upgrade
Prove an extension update on a clone before the client's checkout ever meets it, which is the whole answer to peak-season nerves.
Certificates that renew themselves
Free SSL on every site, reissued before it lapses, so an expired padlock on a shop is a problem you never have to have.
One trade price, held at renewal
The order price is the renewal price, so the margin on a shop account does not erode at the anniversary.
Price Tags Compared
How we compare with the household names
Typical sign-up and renewal prices across the market, set next to ours — the second number most comparison charts leave off.
| Line item | Hosting SellerBest seller | Typical big-brand host | Typical budget host | Typical loss-leader |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price / mo* | $2.42/mo | $4–$6 | $2–$4 | $1–$3 |
| Price at renewal / mo | $2.42/mo | $10–$15 | $8–$12 | $4–$6 |
| Renewal price on the entry plan is unchanged | ||||
| SSL on every plan | ||||
| Site migration included | ||||
| The entry plan uses NVMe storage | ||||
| Entry plan gets a backup daily | ||||
| Live human support, 24/7 |
*The number in our column is the cheapest plan on our shelf, priced on an annual term and pulled live from the very catalogue that feeds the pricing page, so it cannot drift out of date. Other columns show the ranges shared hosting tends to advertise inside each bracket: introductory rates that normally ask for a one-to-four-year commitment, then climb once that term expires. Naming individual competitors and printing their prices is something we have stopped doing. A figure we cannot re-check on the day you read it has no business sitting in front of you. So compare us with whoever you are genuinely weighing up, and read the renewal line first. That line tells you more than the headline ever will.
First Steps
From choosing to live
- 1
Inventory the extensions on day one
Every module, its version, its author, and whether anyone still maintains it. One hour now saves the next upgrade from becoming an investigation.
- 2
Agree the change freeze in writing
Name the peak weeks, name what counts as an emergency, and name who authorises breaking the freeze. Do it before the season, not during it.
- 3
Move the shop with trading continuing
We migrate it free and check the copy works before DNS changes hands, so the old shop keeps taking orders until the new one takes the traffic.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- PHP versions picked per site, tuned with the extensions a cart expects
- NVMe SSD storage on every shelf, not just the top one
- Staging copies so an extension upgrade is proved before it goes live
- Free SSL on every plan, reissued before it lapses
- A backup taken daily, with restores you run yourself
- Free migration including vQmod and OCmod modifications
- WebP image optimisation built in and costing nothing per shop
- Spam and virus filtering fitted to every mailbox you create
- Nothing added at setup — no joining fee, ever
- The renewal price on the tag matches the order price
Across the Counter
Things people ask us all the time
What should I promise a shop client about uptime?
Only what you can stand behind. The platform carries a 99.9% target with a pro-rated credit on any month that falls short through a fault at our end. Above that sits the client's own code, their extensions and their payment provider — so promise a response time for those rather than an availability figure you do not control.
Who pays when a third-party extension breaks the checkout?
Decide before it happens. The usual fair split is that you carry the diagnosis inside the retainer and the client carries the fix if the module needs replacing. What ruins these relationships is the diagnosis being free, unbounded and repeated.
Will a client's OpenCart shop move without losing modifications?
Yes. Files, database, extensions and any vQmod or OCmod tweaks all travel together at no charge, and we check the copy works before the DNS changes, so trading never stops. Keep your extension inventory to hand and the check takes minutes rather than an afternoon.
Can I set the PHP version for one shop without touching the others?
Yes — versions are chosen per site from the control panel, so an older shop and a current one sit side by side on the same account. Extensions and per-site settings live in the same screen, and none of it needs a support ticket from you.
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A step-by-step order of work for a move your visitors never spot: which files to copy first, how to carry email across without losing one message, the right moment to repoint DNS, and the two mistakes behind nearly every hour of downtime people ring us about.
Host the shop like it is a cash register.
Tuned PHP, NVMe underneath, staging before every extension update, and free migration with the modifications intact.
See OpenCart Hosting plans