WooCart Feature and Marketing Review

WooCart and Facebook

There’s a Facebook Group called WordPress, WooCommerce Tips and Help Zone that is has WooCart as a platinum sponsor. Interested in what WooCart provides, I started doing some reading on their site to see how they stand out compared to other providers.

WooCart and their Marketing Claims

Overall WooCart is positioning itself as a WooCommerce specialized hosting provider. Here are just some of the claims they have and specific features geared towards WooCommerce.

• Google Cloud Hosting.
• Smart staging with order sync
• Experienced WooCommerce Support.
• Full-page caching where data is stored in RAM instead of SSD storage.
• WooCommerce optimized database based on MariaDB with automatic adjustment of query search cache and InnoDB pools parameters, among others. More than 32 total parameters are automatically deducted based on load.
• Automatic smushing of source images using pngquant or Jpegoptim. It is done outside of PHP workers during a time when the store is not under load.
• Web Application Firewall (WAF) that blocks common attack vectors, like SQL injections, plugin injections, etc.

You can read more about their technical features on their Under the Hood page.

Digging Deeper

I really like what WooCart has done, and how transparent they’re. I stumbled upon a section on their site that spoke about how you’ll save money using WooCart. It’s on their pricing page and here’s a screenshot.

This was a huge surprise, as all of these premium services do actually provide added value and are considered to be the top of their respected markets. When you compare the different services listed with the feature descriptions on their Under the Hood page. It doesn’t really add up.

Here’s an example of what’s missing.

NewRelic

There are no details on their server, plugin, and page metrics which is described on their Under the Hood page. And they have memory, CPU, and storage usage correlated to plugin and theme upgrades and downgrades as a coming soon.

Missing New Relic Features

• Most Time-Consuming Transactions
• Transaction Breakdown
• Database queries
• Code-level transaction metrics and traces.
• Application Histograms & Percentiles
• Time Spent in Database Calls
• Slow SQL Report
• Database Call Response Time and Throughput
• SQL Query Analysis
• Alert Policies
• Availability Monitoring
• Advanced Alerts
• Custom Dashboards

WP Rocket

WP Rocket does full page caching which is already covered with WooCart’s full-page caching implementation. However, there are definitely some features missing in-regards to on-page performance tweaks.

Missing WP Rocket Features

• Sitemap Preloading
• Database Optimization
• Google Fonts Optimization
• Lazyload
• Minification / Concatenation
• Defer JS Loading
• DNS Prefetching
• WordFence

WordFence

I use WordFence free and Paid, so I’m bias when it comes to reviewing WordFence and any other security product. WordFence is an application level WAF, it’s technically a Layer 7 but ultimately goes beyond as it’s built into the application versus sitting outside as a service or physical device. But it also has other useful features.

WordFence Missing Features

• Real-time IP Blacklist
• Real-time Firewall Rule Updates
• Real-time Malware Signature Updates
• Leaked Password Protection
• Advanced Manual Blocking
• Country Blocking
• Repairs infected files.
• Scans for infected files.
• Two-Factor Authentication
• And more…

Sentry

I love Sentry, it’s a SaaS and self-hosted piece of software that monitors errors on your site. For WordPress, there is a plugin available that works well. When an error occurs it’s logged with a PHP code trace and will send an email or post to slack.

Missing Sentry Features

• PHP Code Traces
• Email and Slack Notifications

Conclusion

I’m interested to try WooCart’s platform. The database configuration changes on the fly seems like a really good feature, as well as the syncing orders with your staging and production.

The marketing comparing premium services and plugins to WooCart’s own features is mis-leading. There’s definate gaps, some of which are huge. I wrote this article because I feel like customers should know.