Performance guide · Nottingham
Nottingham: the checkout is the page you cannot cache
Every store optimisation guide tunes the pages that were already fast. The cart, the checkout and the account area are where the revenue is, and they run the full stack every time.
The short answer
On a WooCommerce store the cache covers the catalogue and stops at the cart, because cart, checkout and account pages are session-bound and must be built fresh for every visitor. Measure those three separately from the rest of the site, because they behave nothing like the pages that pass your speed test.
HostingFast runs store hosting on NVMe with LiteSpeed and cart-aware caching, plus Redis for object caching. Sprint Store is $4.19 a month billed annually and carries a 1 TB bandwidth allowance with room for 5,000 products.
By the HostingFast team · Reviewed 15 August 2026
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Cut of your sales
A lot of the local web ends at a card form: chain head offices, wholesalers running trade portals, and the student-city churn of small shops that open and close inside a term.
So the page opens where the money is. The checkout first, then where the time goes inside a WooCommerce request, then what capacity actually means during a peak week, and finally the number worth reporting afterwards.
Checkout is uncacheable, by design
Cart contents, prices after a coupon, shipping estimates and the account screen are all specific to one visitor's session, so serving them from a shared cache would be a bug rather than an optimisation. Cart-aware caching keeps the catalogue cached while letting those pages through, which is exactly what you want and also why they stay expensive.
Time them individually. Load a product page, add to basket, open checkout, and read the waiting phase on each document request. A store with a 40 ms catalogue and a three-second checkout has a very specific problem and a general speed test will never surface it.
Where a WooCommerce request actually spends its time
Object caching first: without Redis holding the results, WooCommerce re-derives a great deal on every request. Then the autoloaded options row, which grows quietly as plugins come and go and is loaded in full on every single page. Then the queries themselves — variations, meta lookups and anything an extension bolted onto the cart totals.
Check the autoloaded size before anything else; it is a one-line query and it is a common cause of a store that feels slow everywhere at once rather than on one template.
What capacity means during a peak week
Catalogue traffic is absorbed by the cache and costs you almost nothing. Checkout traffic consumes a PHP worker for its whole duration, so the concurrency you can sustain is set by how many people are transacting rather than how many are browsing.
That is a useful ratio to know before a promotion. Widen cache coverage on the browsing side, trim query count on the transacting side, and only then look at moving up a tier or onto a VPS — plan changes happen in place with no migration and no downtime, so the decision can wait for evidence.
Measuring the number that pays
Track the checkout step timings alongside the site-wide vitals, because a store's revenue lives in the funnel rather than in an average. Interaction to next paint at or under 200 ms on the cart page is worth more than a perfect score on a landing page nobody buys from.
Then confirm with field data. Search Console's report reads real visits at the 75th percentile over a rolling 28-day window, which includes the customer checking out on a phone in a car park rather than the one on your office fibre.
Store hosting that understands the exception
Cart-aware caching keeps the catalogue served from LiteSpeed while the cart, checkout and account pages are built fresh, with Redis object caching and NVMe storage underneath. Sprint Store starts at $4.19 a month billed annually with 10 GB of storage, a 1 TB bandwidth allowance and room for 5,000 products.
Nobody takes a percentage of your takings, and the rate you sign up at is the rate you renew at — so growth shows up in your margin rather than in your hosting bill.
- .co.uk registered and renewed alongside the plan
- Cart-aware caching with Redis object caching
- In-place upgrades, no migration when you change plan
- No setup charge, and no percentage of your sales
Why HostingFast
Standard on every plan
Cart-aware caching
The catalogue is served from cache while the cart and checkout are built per session — the distinction a generic caching plugin usually gets wrong.
Redis object caching
Query results and derived values stay in memory rather than being rebuilt on every request, which is where a WooCommerce store gets most of its time back.
Stated store limits
Sprint Store covers 10 GB of storage, 1 TB of bandwidth and 5,000 products at $4.19 a month billed annually. Numbers you can plan a catalogue against.
No cut of your revenue
Hosting is a fixed line on the invoice. A busy December changes your margin, not your bill.
Upgrade in place
Plan changes run from the client area with no migration and no downtime, so capacity decisions can be made in the week they are needed.
Support through the peak
Engineers on shift at every hour, first reply inside two hours and inside one when a site is down. Trading does not stop at five.
Quick Start
From order to online
- 1
Time the funnel separately
Product page, add to basket, checkout. Three measurements, because the cache treats them completely differently.
- 2
Check the autoloaded row
One query tells you how much wp_options is loading on every request. If it is large, that is your site-wide slowness explained.
- 3
Confirm object caching is live
Redis holding the object cache is the single biggest lever on a WooCommerce store. Verify it is actually being used, not merely installed.
- 4
Rehearse the promotion
Push load at a staging clone with checkout in the path, see what degrades, and fix it before the campaign email goes out.
Built In
Loaded onto every plan
- Cart, checkout and account pages timed separately from the catalogue
- Redis object caching confirmed as active, not just installed
- Autoloaded options size checked and kept in hand
- Cart-aware caching rather than a blanket page cache
- Staging environments for testing changes before they ship
- A daily backup you can restore mid-promotion without opening a ticket
- In-place account upgrades — no migration when you change plan
- NVMe SSD storage on every tier, not just the expensive ones
- Human support on duty every hour of every day
- No setup charge, and no percentage taken from your sales
Frequently Asked
What people ask us most often
Why is my checkout slow when the shop pages are quick?
Because the shop pages are cached and the checkout cannot be. Cart contents, coupon pricing and shipping estimates belong to one session, so every checkout request runs the full PHP and database path. Measure that request on its own, then reduce what it does: object caching, fewer extension hooks on cart totals, and a timeout on any external shipping or tax lookup.
Does Redis actually make a difference on a small store?
Yes, and often more than expected, because WooCommerce derives a lot on every request regardless of catalogue size. The check worth doing is whether the object cache is genuinely connected rather than merely installed — a plugin present and inactive is a common and completely silent failure.
What does Sprint Store include?
10 GB of NVMe storage, one store, 1 TB of bandwidth, one core and 2 GB of memory, and room for 5,000 products, at $4.19 a month billed annually. Cart-aware caching, Redis, free SSL and a daily backup come with it, and the renewal rate matches the first term.
How do I prepare for a promotion without over-buying?
Rehearse it. Clone to staging, drive load through the full funnel including checkout, and note what degrades first. If the catalogue holds and the checkout does not, the fix is query work rather than capacity. If it genuinely is capacity, the plan upgrades in place with no migration and no downtime, so you can decide late with evidence.
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Make the checkout the fast bit.
Cart-aware caching, Redis and NVMe with no cut of your takings — and a plan that upgrades in place when the promotion works.
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