Is your checkout costing you sales?
You've built a great PrestaShop store — your products are solid, your design looks sharp, and traffic is flowing in. Yet there's that nagging feeling that something's slipping through the cracks — those mysterious abandoned carts and vanishing sales that never make it to the finish line.
Maybe you've tried quick fixes — a caching module here, an optimization tweak there — only to find that the problem persists. These patches might make your site feel faster, but they rarely address what's really happening where it matters most: your checkout.
The truth is, the issue runs deeper. At the heart of most checkout drop-offs lies a hidden culprit — poor hosting performance. In this guide, we'll dig into how your server's foundation could be silently sabotaging your conversions — and show you how to fix it for good.
The silent killer: how checkout latency drains your margin
These days, webmasters are well aware of the utmost importance of site speed. It's a constant race to achieve the lowest possible page loading times, as visitors are becoming increasingly demanding and losing interest after even the slightest delay. According to an Akamai industry study in retail, a 100 millisecond delay can hurt your sales by 7%.
This rings especially true with ecommerce projects.
You might have the most stunning-looking website, and stack it with lucrative products. Still, your business success will highly depend on how fast the client can breeze through the entire sales process.
We've all been there.
We might trust an unknown brand if their deals look great, but according to Deloitte, slowly loading pages, especially during checkout, are still a major red flag. Users are very mindful that reputable vendors do not compromise when it comes to payment processing, so the issue definitely lies with the website they are shopping from.
So they leave. And rarely look back.
It's a simple fact, really — server latency during checkout directly increases cart abandonment and causes a measurable drain on revenue.
But what can you do about it?
The wrong fix: why more modules can make things worse
The problem with module-rich applications, like PrestaShop, is that for every little bump in the road, many developers just think "no worries, there is a module for that."
You want to enhance security? Many plugins await.
Want help with your technical SEO? Just download an add-on.
Need to add a pretty contact form to your site? That's right — just install the corresponding module.
The problem with this approach is that each new add-on adds a strain to the server and slows down your PrestaShop website. Even if we are talking about lightweight and optimized plugins, each new one adds more layers and makes each request pass through an increasing number of obstacles.
The same goes for your checkout speed. Numerous PrestaShop modules promise enhancements, optimizations, and advanced caching to help you reduce ecommerce page loading times.
And we haven't touched the delicate subject of compatibility.
While add-ons can generally be compatible with your PrestaShop core version, their combination can easily create conflicts, redundancies, and update problems.
Our advice?
Keep modules to a minimum and always look for ways to optimize your own environment before relying on third-party enhancements to do the job.
The real solution: a hosting architecture built for PrestaShop
The simple truth is that you can build a great-performing website and optimize to perfection, but it will still lag behind if its hosting environment is not up for the task. Your underlying server and its host determine:
- How fast will your PrestaShop website process client requests
- How well your site will perform under heavier load
- Will your website stay constantly online as traffic grows
- How quickly and efficiently will you deal with unexpected problems
Simply put, without a stable and reliable provider, your ecommerce shop checkout is bound to experience issues that will scare potential clients away.
A high-quality hosting setup provides the necessary processing power, memory, and bandwidth to handle traffic efficiently, thereby reducing page load times and improving user experience.
A great example is ScalaHosting.
Here we have a client-centric provider with an eye for technology innovations and real, human support. The company is a strong contender for the fastest hosting company out there, backed by some unique hardware and software solutions:
- AMD EPYC 9474F 48-Core Processors - Top 2% in various CPU benchmarks, one of the fastest in both single-thread and multi-thread performance.
- NVMe SSD - the fastest storage solution on the market, a step forward from traditional SSD disks.
- SPanel Control Panel - developed by ScalaHosting, this super lightweight yet feature-stacked panel can be integrated with LiteSpeed/OpenLiteSpeed for ultimate performance.
- Redis Manager - stores data directly in RAM, resulting in latencies of microseconds and the ability to process millions of requests without slowdowns.
Regarding support, ScalaHosting provides technical assistance through live chat and ticketing, resolving most issues within 15 minutes. This is crucial for PrestaShop online shops as ecommerce businesses cannot afford even the slightest downtimes and service interruptions.
Final takes
In the race to speed up PrestaShop, many store owners focus on surface-level solutions, such as caching modules and front-end tweaks. But as this article has shown, the true bottleneck often lies deeper — in the hosting environment itself. Slow server response times, inadequate resources, or unstable infrastructure can quietly derail the checkout process, leading to cart abandonment and lost revenue.
A fast, reliable, and properly configured hosting setup isn't just a technical detail — it's the foundation of every smooth, high-converting customer journey. Investing in a robust server environment doesn't just make your PrestaShop site faster — it protects your sales and strengthens your brand's credibility where it matters most.
Running your store on PrestaShop? This is the perfect moment to switch to ScalaHosting and take advantage of our high-performance managed cloud platform, purpose-built for ecommerce speed and reliability.
To make your move risk-free, we’re offering up to 6 months of account credit for your existing hosting contract.
If you've paid $100 for a one-year plan with XYZ hosting provider, we will credit your ScalaHosting account with $50 so you don’t lose a cent of what you’ve already invested.
Why move to ScalaHosting?
- Free and effortless migration — our team handles everything for you
- Not satisfied? We’ll migrate you back for free — zero risk
- Up to 6 months of hosting credit for your remaining contract elsewhere
- Anytime money-back guarantee — we are the only hosting provider that lets you request a refund at any time, no questions asked
- Premium support by PrestaShop experts
- Faster load times and improved performance from day one
- Your online store deserves a hosting platform designed for growth.
Start your free migration today and claim your hosting credit with ScalaHosting.
Rado has 15+ years of experience in the web hosting industry, working across technical, operational, and customer-facing roles. Having witnessed the rapid evolution of hosting technologies firsthand, he’s developed a deep understanding of how performance, security, and reliability shape online success. His perspective helps him anticipate user needs and translate complex infrastructure topics into practical insights for site owners and developers.
