Original Ahosting WooCommerce benchmark
Apache vs LiteSpeed for WooCommerce: Cart and Checkout Performance
Under equal WooStart limits, LiteSpeed reduced median WooCommerce cart, checkout and add-to-cart response times by approximately 55 to 64 percent compared with the tested Apache stack.
Tested 24 August 2026 by Ahosting Technical Operations. Measured on two production-style cPanel and CloudLinux lab stacks.
Key result
55-64%
lower median latency on empty cart, filled cart, checkout and add-to-cart requests.
Measured result for these environments, not a universal guarantee.
Download the Full PDF Compare WooCommerce PlansExecutive Summary
We tested the same WordPress 7.1, WooCommerce 11.0.1 and synthetic 50-product catalog on controlled Apache and LiteSpeed sites. Both accounts used the published WooStart CloudLinux limits.
- Empty-cart median latency fell from 1,183 ms on Apache to 428 ms on LiteSpeed.
- Filled-cart median latency fell from 722 ms to 283 ms.
- Filled-checkout median latency fell from 696 ms to 285 ms.
- Add-to-cart median latency fell from 683 ms to 307 ms.
- All published scenarios completed with zero failed requests and zero CloudLinux resource faults.
WooCommerce Response-Time Results
Median HTTP response latency is shown below. Lower is better.
| Scenario | Apache | LiteSpeed | LiteSpeed reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cached home | 9 ms | 10 ms | Effectively tied |
| Cached product | 12 ms | 8 ms | 33.3% |
| Product with session | 5 ms | 5 ms | Tied |
| Empty cart | 1,183 ms | 428 ms | 63.8% |
| Filled cart | 722 ms | 283 ms | 60.8% |
| Filled checkout | 696 ms | 285 ms | 59.1% |
| Add to cart | 683 ms | 307 ms | 55.1% |
Transactional Throughput
| Dynamic scenario | Apache req/s | LiteSpeed req/s | LiteSpeed multiple |
|---|---|---|---|
| Empty cart | 4.11 | 10.93 | 2.66x |
| Filled cart | 3.92 | 9.85 | 2.51x |
| Filled checkout | 4.10 | 10.00 | 2.44x |
| Add to cart | 2.73 | 6.09 | 2.23x |
Cached pages were fast on both stacks. LiteSpeed's larger practical advantage appeared on cart, checkout and add-to-cart requests that still require WooCommerce, PHP and database processing.
Equal WooStart Account Limits
Both benchmark accounts
Complete tested stacks
Apache: Apache, PHP-FPM and WP Super Cache on a Xeon Silver 4214R node.
LiteSpeed: LiteSpeed Enterprise, LSAPI/LSPHP and LiteSpeed Cache on a Xeon Silver 4114 node.
Both nodes had ample available memory during the test. The accounts, application version and product data were controlled; host hardware and execution paths were not identical.
Choose Between 2 WooCommerce Environments
Shared server
WooStart
For new, smaller and growing stores with moderate dynamic demand. Includes the CloudLinux account limits used in this benchmark.
Review WooStartVPS
WooPower
For sustained concurrent checkout, large imports, busy account areas or custom workers that need dedicated virtual CPU and RAM.
Review WooPowerMethodology and Limitations
A real anonymous WooCommerce session containing a product was used for filled-cart and checkout tests. No payment, email or order submission occurred. Public pages were warmed before cache tests. The final measurement window was checked for HTTP failures and CloudLinux faults.
- The synthetic catalog does not reproduce every store, theme, plugin set or traffic pattern.
- ApacheBench measures HTTP response behavior, not browser rendering or Core Web Vitals.
- The Michigan source is origin-proximate and does not represent worldwide visitor latency.
- Results describe the tested configurations and are not a universal guarantee for every deployment.
Choose WooStart Shared or WooPower VPS
Start with the environment that matches your uncached cart, checkout and background workload.