PrestaShop server: how to choose the best one

A PrestaShop server must meet the PrestaShop 9 requirements (PHP 8.1–8.5, MySQL 5.7 or MariaDB 10.2 and up, at least 512 MB of memory for PHP) and have resources that match your traffic. For a small shop, good e-commerce hosting may be enough. With more visits or a large catalogue, a VPS is the better choice.

With an online shop, the server isn’t a detail. On a WordPress brochure site, hosting makes little difference. On a PrestaShop shop, with catalogue, filters, cart and payments, an undersized server makes the site slow right when customers arrive. In this guide we explain what you really need, which type of server to choose and what to check before buying, without the usual ranking of famous names.

What are the server requirements for PrestaShop 9?

PrestaShop 9 requires a Linux server with PHP 8.1 or later, a MySQL or MariaDB database and at least 512 MB of memory for PHP. These are the requirements from the official documentation as of October 2026:

Component	Requirement for PrestaShop 9
Operating system	Linux recommended (Windows works but isn’t actively supported)
PHP	8.1 to 8.5, 8.5 recommended
Database	MySQL 5.7 or MariaDB 10.2 at minimum, a recent version is better
Web server	Apache 2.4 or later, or Nginx
PHP memory (memory_limit)	at least 512 MB
PHP extensions	cURL, DOM, Fileinfo, GD, Iconv, Intl, JSON, Mbstring, OpenSSL, PDO, PDO MySQL, SimpleXML, Zip
Settings	allow_url_fopen on, allow_url_include off

If your shop is still on PrestaShop 1.7, remember that 1.7 doesn’t work with PHP 8.1 and later. Upgrading PrestaShop and upgrading the server need to be planned together. If you’d like us to handle the move, start with the free check-up for a PrestaShop 9 migration: same URLs or 301 redirects, customers and orders kept.

Hosting, VPS or dedicated: which server should you choose for PrestaShop?

There are four options. They differ in resources, cost and the technical skills required:

Server type	How it works	Who it suits
Shared hosting	Space on a server shared with other sites: processor, RAM and disk are shared	Small shops, few visits, modest catalogue
VPS (virtual server)	A slice of a server with dedicated resources you can scale up	Most growing online shops
Cloud	Virtual servers that start up and resize quickly, often pay-as-you-go	Seasonal peaks, campaigns, variable needs
Dedicated server	A whole physical machine just for you	Very large catalogues and high traffic, with a sysadmin on hand

In our experience the VPS is the sweet spot for most PrestaShop shops: the resources are yours, you can start with a standard plan and scale up as the shop grows. As a rough guide:

• fewer than 1,000 unique visitors a day and a modest catalogue: good shared hosting for e-commerce, not the cheapest plan;
• more than 1,000 visitors a day, lots of product combinations or frequent imports from a management system: a VPS;
• big peaks (Black Friday, TV campaigns, launches): a VPS or a cloud server you can boost for the peak period.

It’s only a rough guide. The theme, the installed modules and how well PrestaShop is optimised also matter: two shops with the same traffic can need very different servers.

What should you look at when choosing the best PrestaShop hosting?

The best PrestaShop hosting is the one that meets the requirements, has resources that suit your shop and support that responds quickly and in your language. Before choosing a hosting service, answer these 5 questions:

1. Do you need support in your language?
2. Can you manage a server yourself, or do you need a managed service, where the provider’s sysadmins take care of it?
3. How much budget do you have each month?
4. How big is your catalogue, counting products and combinations?
5. How many visitors do you have, and do you have peaks?

Then go through this list, item by item:

• Up-to-date PHP and the option to choose the version.
• Dedicated resources (CPU and RAM) and NVMe SSD disks.
• Automatic daily backups, with easy restore and copies kept off the server.
• Staging environment to test updates and modules without touching the shop.
• SSL certificate included and HTTP/2 or HTTP/3.
• Server-side cache (OPcache, and Redis if needed) and the option to set up cron jobs for scheduled tasks.
• SSH access and Composer, if you work with a developer.
• Servers in the European Union, for peace of mind with the GDPR.
• Support: channels, hours, real response times.
• Uptime guaranteed by contract (SLA), not just promised on the home page.

Support, speed of intervention and language are the three things that, in our agency experience, make the difference when something goes wrong. And sooner or later something goes wrong.

Managed or unmanaged PrestaShop hosting?

Managed PrestaShop hosting is a server where system updates, security, backups and monitoring are handled by the provider. With unmanaged hosting they give you the machine and you do the rest.

What changes	Managed	Unmanaged
Server updates and security	The provider does them	You or your sysadmin do them
Monthly cost	Higher	Lower
Skills required	None	Sysadmin-level
If the site goes down at night	The provider deals with it	You deal with it

If you don’t have a sysadmin on the team, choose a managed service: what you save on the monthly fee you’ll spend in lost hours at the first emergency.

How much does the server affect PrestaShop’s speed?

The server mainly affects response time (TTFB, the time before the first byte of the page arrives). TTFB in turn weighs on LCP, that is, how quickly the main content appears, one of Google’s three Core Web Vitals. As a benchmark, web.dev considers a good TTFB to be 0.8 seconds or less.

But the server doesn’t work miracles. Responsiveness to taps and clicks, measured by INP, depends mostly on the theme and modules: a heavy theme stays slow even on a powerful server. That’s why, when a client asks us for a “faster server”, we always check the rest too:

• theme: how much JavaScript and CSS it loads on every page;
• modules: how many are active and how many are really needed;
• images: weight and format;
• PrestaShop and server cache, configured correctly.

The theme is the reason we developed Flag Theme for PrestaShop 9 (€499 + VAT). In a Lighthouse lab test on the demo, mobile version, run on 2 October 2026, it scored 97–98 for performance. It’s a lab test on the demo, not a measurement on a real shop: on your shop, catalogue, modules and server count too.

Which hosting do we recommend for PrestaShop?

We’ll tell you what we use, and why. For our clients’ shops we’ve worked for years with Serverplan, an Italian hosting company. Whenever we’ve asked for help, even with problems that weren’t their fault, their staff did their best to fix them. Here’s what it states on its website today:

• 99.99% uptime;
• ticket support every day, 24/7;
• phone support on weekdays, during office hours;
• shared hosting, e-commerce plans (including PrestaShop), virtual servers, cloud and dedicated servers;
• cPanel available as an add-on.

In practice:

• for a small shop, with fewer than 1,000 visitors a day, look at Serverplan’s Linux e-commerce hosting, avoiding the cheapest plans;
• above 1,000 visitors a day, move to Serverplan’s virtual servers (VPS), which you can scale up as you go.

The Serverplan links are affiliate links: if you buy, we receive a commission, and the price doesn’t change for you.

Other well-known providers, such as Aruba, OVHcloud or SiteGround, also have plans suitable for PrestaShop. The provider’s name matters less than the configuration: use the list in the previous section to compare them.

Or: we manage the server for you

If you don’t want to think about PHP, backups and updates, there’s PrestaShop hosting managed by Flag: we choose the configuration with you based on your shop, and we take care of the server. Write to us and we’ll tell you which solution suits you.

When is it time to change server?

It’s time to change server when the shop slows down with little traffic, goes down at peak times or can’t be upgraded because the server is old. The most common signs:

• page TTFB often exceeds 0.8 seconds, even with cache enabled;
• the back office is slow when you save a product or import a price list;
• the site slows down or throws 500 and 503 errors during campaigns;
• the hosting doesn’t offer a PHP version compatible with PrestaShop 9;
• support replies after days, or not in your language;
• there are no backups, or nobody has ever tried restoring them.

Changing server shouldn’t cost you visits. Prepare the new server, copy shop and database, test everything on a temporary address and then move the domain at a quiet time. Also check that page addresses stay identical, so you don’t generate 404 errors.

PrestaShop server: in short

• Start from the PrestaShop 9 requirements: PHP 8.1–8.5, MySQL 5.7 or MariaDB 10.2 and up, at least 512 MB of memory for PHP.
• Choose the server type based on visits and catalogue: hosting for small shops, VPS for growing ones.
• Weigh up support, backups and speed of intervention before price.
• Remember that theme and modules affect speed as much as the server.

Got a slow shop, a server to change or an upgrade to PrestaShop 9 to plan? Our PrestaShop support takes care of it, from checking the server to the upgrade. If you’re starting from scratch, see how we work on PrestaShop e-commerce development: we choose the right server together from the start. And once the shop is fast, the next step is to increase conversions.