Your store is running, orders are coming in, and then one morning the cart page takes eight seconds to respond. That is usually the moment you find out shared hosting has hit its ceiling. Sizing a VPS for an online store is not about buying the biggest machine just in case: you measure the real load, translate it into vCPU, RAM, and NVMe storage, then pick the plan that survives peak traffic without inflating the bill. This guide gives you the method, the warning signs, and the five NVMe VPS configurations from Open Vista with their prices.
Why a store does not size like a brochure site
A brochure site can serve the same page from cache to ten thousand visitors. A store cannot: every add-to-cart, every shipping calculation, every stock check, and every checkout page queries the database. The server works on every visit, and that work is what costs money.
- Every request touches the database. Product pages, category sorting, order history: caching absorbs some of it, never all of it.
- Carts and sessions live in memory. When RAM runs short, the system spills to disk and slows down exactly when a customer is about to pay.
- Traffic arrives in waves. An email campaign or a three-day promotion triples the load for a few hours, then it drops back.
- Checkout involves third parties. Payment providers call back to your server, and a dedicated, stable IPv4 address keeps those callbacks predictable.
- The data cannot be rebuilt. Orders and customer accounts need a restorable backup, not a cleanup effort later.
So the bottleneck is rarely bandwidth. It is available memory, random-access disk speed, and the number of simultaneous worker processes.
Measure first: the five numbers that matter
Two stores with identical visitor counts can need three times the resources of each other. Collect these five measurements before you compare plans.
- Concurrent visitors at peak, not daily totals.
- Database size and growth: catalog, orders, customers, translations.
- Page weight and request count: fifteen product photos per page cost CPU.
- Background jobs: catalog exports, stock syncs, invoices, order emails.
- Your last promotion: peak memory and CPU, slow pages, errors in the logs.
What a visitor count will not tell you
Three hundred visitors spread across a day and three hundred arriving within ten minutes of an email blast do not stress a server the same way. You size for the peak, with headroom; the daily average only tells you not to overpay the rest of the time.
When shared hosting stops being enough
Shared hosting splits one CPU, one memory pool, and one web server across dozens of sites. That is economical and perfectly fine for a brochure site or a store that is just starting. It becomes a hard ceiling as soon as one of these shows up.
- The cart slows down at peak hours, then returns to normal an hour later.
- Your scheduled jobs fail because the server considers them too resource-hungry.
- You cannot change the PHP version or adjust the web server configuration.
- A neighboring store saturates the machine and your site slows down with nothing changed on your side.
- You need root access, a staging environment, or a dedicated IP for integrations.
Recognize two of those and the question is no longer whether to migrate, but which plan to move to. The checklist of ten questions to ask before subscribing to a VPS covers the rest of the contract.
The five NVMe VPS plans and the store each one fits
Every plan is KVM-virtualized in the New York datacenter, the only one in production today — Rabat is announced but not open yet. Delivery takes under fifteen minutes and billing is monthly with no contract. Each plan includes one dedicated IPv4, unlimited bandwidth, root access, a management panel, automatic backups, a firewall with DDoS protection, 24/7 supervision, support six days a week, and a 99.9% SLA on infrastructure.
| Plan | vCPU | RAM | NVMe | USD / month | MAD excl. VAT / month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VPS-1G | 1 | 1 GB | 30 GB | $9.99 | 94.48 |
| VPS-2G | 1 | 2 GB | 40 GB | $19.99 | 189.06 |
| VPS-3G | 2 | 3 GB | 50 GB | $34.99 | 330.93 |
| VPS-4G | 2 | 4 GB | 80 GB | $39.99 | 378.22 |
| VPS-5G | 3 | 5 GB | 100 GB | $49.99 | 472.80 |
- VPS-1G, $9.99/month (94.48 MAD): a store that is opening, a short catalog, light traffic — or a staging copy to test an update on.
- VPS-2G, $19.99 (189.06 MAD): the first real step up, with more memory for the database and the cache as the catalog grows.
- VPS-3G, $34.99 (330.93 MAD): two vCPUs and 3 GB, the comfortable configuration for an active store.
- VPS-4G, $39.99 (378.22 MAD): four gigabytes for large catalogs, reporting, and integrations running side by side.
- VPS-5G, $49.99 (472.80 MAD): three vCPUs and 100 GB of NVMe, the headroom you want once the store becomes the core of the business.
Three sizing rules
RAM is almost always the first limit. Web server, PHP, and database share it; when it runs out, response times collapse even though the CPU is far from saturated. NVMe is not decoration. Random reads, cache rebuilds, thumbnail generation: that is where a fast disk shows up. The starting plan is not the final plan. Pick a provider whose upgrade path does not force a full migration.
Backups, DDoS, and scaling: what to expect
Backups
Automatic backups are included on every plan, which does not save you from checking frequency and, above all, restores: a backup nobody has restored is an assumption, not protection. Test one on staging and keep a copy of the database off the server that hosts it.
DDoS protection and SLA
The firewall and DDoS protection are included, and the 99.9% SLA covers infrastructure. It promises neither a response time for your store nor immunity from saturation caused by your own traffic. A denial-of-service attack gets filtered upstream, which means telling support at the first signs. Supervision runs 24/7 while support is available six days a week — keep that distinction in mind for sensitive operations.
Upgrading without breaking the store
Measure a week ahead, pick the plan that covers the expected peak, resize outside selling hours, then verify checkout end to end. If most of your traffic comes from Morocco while the server sits in New York, put a CDN in front of images and static pages: the server keeps only the dynamic rendering.
FAQ
How much RAM do WooCommerce or PrestaShop need?
1 GB is enough to open with a short catalog and few plugins. Once orders are steady and background jobs are running, plan for 2 to 3 GB: memory is what absorbs the database, the cache, and the peaks. Above that, 4 or 5 GB for large catalogs and parallel integrations.
Can I start small and upgrade later?
Yes, and that is the right approach. Billing is monthly with no contract, and moving to a bigger plan does not force a painful migration. Start on a plan that fits, measure for two or three weeks, then adjust with numbers instead of instinct.
Will a VPS handle a campaign spike?
For most stores, yes, provided you measured the peak in advance. With an indexed database and heavy pages cached, a 2 vCPU / 3 GB plan absorbs serious campaigns — a spike mostly shows up as memory pressure and concurrent processes.
What happens if I outgrow my plan?
The server stays isolated but slows down: processes queue and checkout pages stretch out. That is the signal to move up a plan, not the sign of an outage. Watch memory and concurrent connections so you anticipate instead of react.
Next step: size from real load, not a hunch
Three questions, in order: what is my real peak, which resource gives out first, and which plan covers that need with headroom. Store already live: collect the five measurements before you order. Store just starting: begin on VPS-1G or VPS-2G, test checkout, and let traffic decide the rest.
Browse the NVMe VPS range, compare configurations on the pricing page, then order from the Open Vista online store — delivery takes under fifteen minutes. Stuck between two plans? Describe your traffic and your catalog, and we will tell you which one is enough, including when the answer is the cheaper one.