Seeking Advice on Optimizing a Large WooCommerce Store

[donnasr...@gmail.com]

Hi, all,

I have a new client with a WordPress WooCommerce site hosted on GoDaddy that has grown to around 5,000 products. They add 20+ new products every week through an import process.

The import process has been getting progressively slower, and editing pages — primarily built with Beaver Builder — is sometimes sluggish as well.

I’m looking for advice on performance optimization and scalability. Are there hosting or server upgrades we should ask GoDaddy about first, or is it time to consider migrating the store to Shopify instead?

Thanks so much you all!

Donna
Delite Web Design

[T C]

Hi Donna.  Lots to unpack here - mostly a costs vs benefits vs timeline conversation.  A few thoughts:

1. The cheapest and quickest way to get to a faster site, in theory, will be to increase the cpu and ram on the server.  You'll need a vps (or similar), ideally with dedicated resources.  If they are on a cheap shared server at GoDaddy, then this will likely be a big price bump for them (but still cheaper than the alternative...see below).  You'll need to do a basic WP migration to the VPS and, perhaps, GoDaddy would include that as part of their upsell. Competing hosting providers almost certainly would include the WP migration in the upsell to the VPS.
2. Streamlining and optimizing WooCommerce is a big project.  This has bigger 1-time costs but the upside is you'll pay less for hosting long-term.
3. Shopify is great at speeding up and improving the checkout, but you're almost certainly miss all the great things that WP brings when it comes to customization and content editing.  You'll also need to do a full migration - so, again, 1-time migration costs + monthly hosting fees that might be comparable to the VPS mentioned in #1 above.

Is this helpful?

Toby

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[David A]

Hi Donna,  

As Toby said, Shopify probably is the next tear that you may need but here is a comparison of others that it may be helpful.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mpls-stpaul-wordpress/CAFV3fmnx_%2BHZZjDHX%3DvW_QyHgC19nmwEvsAdnvuCnT%3DBrC5DhQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[David A]

Donna,

I did not include Magento Open Source, but It would be similar to Shopify Basic

Thanks, David.

On May 28, 2026, at 10:57, David A <slp...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Donna,  

As Toby said, Shopify probably is the next tear that you may need but here is a comparison of others that it may be helpful.

[Bobbi Jo Woods]

GoDaddy for domains is good. For hosting? Not recommended.

If you plan on migrating your WordPress/WooCommerce site to another host, the fastest way is using the Duplicator plugin (easy, and I've used it for years, the free version should suffice unless your site + DB is over 400 GB). Also, keep in mind that most website hosting platforms offer free incoming migration for new hosting customers.

hosting.com is where I have most of my client sites, but my partner and lease an 80-CPanel server and a VPS server with them, so I'm biased. If you want performance, I would recommend using their VPS service. 

Shopify migration might be a solution, BUT keep in mind, they basically own your client's data. Plus they'll be paying not just for the Shopify platform/hosting service, but also additional credit card transaction fees, and you may lose a lot of control over your site's features, layout, etc. (having to change to different everything and you're at the mercy of the 3rd party limitations). I like using Stripe.com for payment processing, too. It's about half of what Authorize.Net and others charge.

To speed up WooCommerce, you may wish to look into optimization tasks.

If your client is a larger business with many employees, they may decide all of these upgrades are worth the cost. Just my two cents.