Product Mix
WooCommerce vs shopify — One of these pays you a retainer, the other pays you once
A client wants a shop, and the platform you recommend decides whether you are their host and retained partner or a contractor paid once at launch.
Straight answer first
Recommend WooCommerce when you want the hosting, the retainer and the long relationship, and Shopify when you want the build fee and nothing else — because the platform choice decides which of those two businesses you are in.
This is not a judgement about which software is better. It is an observation about where an agency can stand. A self-hosted shop sits on an account you control, which means you host it, secure it, back it up and get paid monthly for doing so. A hosted platform keeps all of that, and pays you for the build.
Written by the Hosting Seller staff · Checked 24 August 2026
NVMe
Storage under every store
Free
Domain on annual orders
99.9%
Uptime commitment held
Flat
Price when it renews
Most comparisons of these two are written for the shop owner, who is asking about transaction fees and themes. For an agency the question is different and considerably more important: which one produces recurring revenue and which one produces a project.
Both can be the right recommendation. The mistake is making it accidentally — recommending the platform you find easier to build on without noticing that it also decides whether this client is worth anything to you in eighteen months.
Where an agency actually earns on each
On a self-hosted shop, your income has three parts: the build, the hosting, and the care plan that keeps the thing patched, backed up and working. The second and third arrive every month whether or not you are winning new work.
On a hosted platform, you have the build and whatever ongoing marketing work you can win. The infrastructure income belongs to the platform, and so does the relationship at renewal time.
Put a number on it before you next make a recommendation. Take a typical store client, model three years both ways, and the gap will be larger than any difference in how long the build takes.
What you inherit when the shop is yours to host
Everything the platform used to absorb. Plugin updates that touch a live checkout, a payment gateway extension that breaks after an update, PHP version changes, a database that grows with every order, and a security obligation on a site that stores customer details.
The tools make it manageable rather than magical. Staging copies mean an update is tested against the client's own catalogue before it reaches the checkout; daily backups with a restore you run yourself mean a bad deployment is fifteen minutes; Imunify360 watching the account means you are not relying on the client to notice.
What makes this profitable is scope. Write down what the care plan covers — updates, backups, uptime monitoring, a monthly check — and what it does not, such as new features and third-party app support. Unbounded scope on an ecommerce client is the fastest way to lose money on your best account.
The peak-trading test
Ask yourself what happens on your client's busiest day of the year. Not whether the site can take the traffic, but whether you can. Who is watching? Who deploys nothing that week? Who answers at nine on a Saturday evening in December?
Agree a freeze period with every store client: no plugin updates, no theme changes, no experiments during their peak. Put the dates in the care plan. It is the single most professional thing an agency can do for a retail client, and it costs nothing.
Then size the hosting with headroom rather than precision. Launch Store carries one store with 10 GB, 1 TB of bandwidth and up to 5,000 products; Pro Store takes 25 stores, 2 TB and 25,000 products; Elite Store takes 100 stores, 5 TB and 100,000 products on 3 cores and 6 GB. Buy the tier that leaves you calm in December.
Where to put it, and when to move it up
Start a first store on the tier that fits its catalogue and traffic, and upgrade in place when the numbers move. Upgrades apply to the account rather than requiring a migration, which means a growing client is a billing change instead of a weekend and an apology.
Keep the essentials off your cost sheet: free SSL on every site you host, daily backups, a domain free for year one on annual orders, and mailboxes on the client's own domain so order notifications are not coming from a free address.
If you are hosting several client shops, separate accounts are not optional. One compromised store must never be able to take another client's checkout offline, and a reseller plan is what makes that separation affordable.
Stores you can host, and bill for
Store hosting sits on the same reseller shelf as everything else, so a client's shop can live in its own cPanel account with its own limits, under your brand and inside your care plan.
NVMe underneath and LiteSpeed in front are standard rather than premium extras, and the renewal figure matches the order figure, so a three-year retainer quote does not become a problem in month thirteen.
- Separate account per client store
- Staging before anything touches checkout
- Daily backups, restores you run
- Upgrade in place as the catalogue grows
Why Hosting Seller
On every plan, as standard
Recurring, not one-off
A self-hosted store means hosting and care-plan revenue every month rather than a build fee and a fond farewell.
Test before the checkout sees it
Staging copies so a payment extension update is proven against the client's own catalogue first.
Recovery in minutes
Daily backups with restores you run at account level, which is what makes a bad deployment survivable during trading.
Catalogue headroom
Tiers up to 100,000 products with 5 TB of bandwidth, so the December conversation is about sales rather than limits.
Isolation between clients
One account per store, so a compromise on one client's shop never reaches another client's checkout.
Prices that hold
Renewal matching the order price, so the hosting line in a long retainer stays the number you quoted.
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
Decide which business this client is for you
Retainer or project. Make the platform recommendation follow that decision consciously, rather than discovering the answer in year two.
- 2
Write the care plan scope before the build
Updates, backups, monitoring and a monthly check are in. New features and third-party app support are out. Say so in writing while the client is still excited.
- 3
Agree a peak-trading freeze
Named dates with no updates, no theme changes and no experiments. Put them in the plan at signature, not in an email in November.
- 4
Size for December, not for launch
Pick the tier that leaves headroom on the busiest week of the client's year. Upgrades apply in place, but calm is cheaper bought early.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- A separate cPanel account for every client store
- Store tiers from 5,000 up to 100,000 products
- Bandwidth from 1 TB up to 5 TB depending on tier
- Staging copies for testing updates before the checkout sees them
- Daily backups with restores you can run at account level
- Imunify360 watching every client store you host
- Free SSL on every site, reissued automatically
- NVMe storage and LiteSpeed caching as standard, not as a premium tier
- Mailboxes on the client's own domain for order notifications
- Upgrades applied to the account in place, with no migration
Across the Counter
Things people ask us all the time
Can I host and bill a hosted-platform store the way I host a self-hosted one?
No, and that is the whole point of this page. On a hosted platform the infrastructure and the renewal belong to the platform, so your income is the build plus whatever ongoing work you can win. If recurring revenue is what you are trying to build, recommend the platform that leaves the hosting in your hands.
What does a store client expect me to cover during peak trading?
More than they will say out loud. Agree it in advance: a named freeze period with no updates or changes, an agreed contact route for their busiest days, and a documented restore procedure. Do that at signature and December is calm; leave it and December is a negotiation held at speed.
Which tier should a client's first shop go on?
The smallest that fits the catalogue and traffic with headroom. Launch Store handles one store with 10 GB, 1 TB of bandwidth and 5,000 products. Pro Store takes 25 stores, 2 TB and 25,000 products. Elite Store takes 100 stores, 5 TB and 100,000 products on 3 cores and 6 GB. Upgrades happen in place, so buying two tiers ahead is margin spent early.
Who is responsible when a payment extension update breaks a checkout?
You are, in the client's mind, which is why the care plan has to describe how updates happen. Test on a staging copy, deploy in a window, keep the previous backup within reach, and never update a payment path on a Friday. The obligation is manageable; the surprise is not.
Read next
NVMe Hosting Plans
The disk under a client's catalogue, and what NVMe changes about how a busy shop behaves.
LiteSpeed Hosting
LiteSpeed caching in front of client stores, and where it stops being the answer.
WooCommerce Hosting
Store hosting to resell, with staging, daily backups and catalogue headroom included.
Ecommerce Hosting
Ecommerce accounts sized by catalogue and bandwidth, for the client shops on your books.
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Keep the hosting, keep the client.
Client stores in their own accounts, with staging, daily backups and catalogue headroom, all sitting under your brand.
See WooCommerce Hosting plans