Optimization with current web host
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Hello, we’ve been having issues with intermittent slow admin processes on our web site such as duplicating a product, editing a product, etc. Sometimes it works well and we can duplicate and edit a product in 30 seconds. Sometimes it takes up to 5 minutes or more to edit the product with having to wait for the spinning wheel with each action. There is no rhyme or reason to when this happens and it happens about 50% of the time. We’re not sure if this is a host issue (Bluehost) or a different problem. We are considering moving our website to a different host and have considered WordPress.com such as the Premium plan. Talking with the wordpress.org support forums they seem to think this is an optimization issue and provide information on how to optimize our website but it is beyond our knowledge. Note: we are a very small business operating out of our home with a local client base only with low traffic and really have no need/want for SEO. We are getting 95% on Google PageSpeed Insights. Does WordPress.com have optimization available with their plans to prevent issues like the one above from happening?
Note that we keep our Plugins/theme/WordPress updated to the latest versions.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there! That intermittent ‘spinning wheel’ in the admin dashboard is a classic symptom of server resource throttling or database fragmentation. On a shared host like Bluehost, when other sites on the same server spike in traffic, your ‘admin-ajax’ processes—which handle tasks like duplicating products—can slow to a crawl because the server is struggling to keep up. While you are considering the Premium plan, please note that you would actually need the Business or Commerce plan on WordPress.com to run WooCommerce and its associated products. These higher-tier plans provide a managed environment where WordPress.com takes over the optimization for you, providing isolated server resources and automatic database tuning so your dashboard stays fast without you needing any technical optimization knowledge. Before moving, you might try running a free tool like ‘WP-Optimize’ on your current site to clear out database bloat, but if that doesn’t work, the managed architecture of a WordPress.com Business plan would likely resolve these performance swings permanently.
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“you would actually need the Business or Commerce plan on WordPress.com to run WooCommerce and its associated products.”
I don’t understand. When talking with other WordPress.com support team members about other issues we’ve been having they said the Premium plan would work well since it now allows for 50,000 plug-ins including WooCommerce. There is a BIG difference in pricing between the Premium plan and the Business plan (going with the 3-year plan it’s $12/month difference) that would force a small business like ours to look elsewhere.
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I completely understand the confusion, especially when you’ve received conflicting information from different support channels. It sounds like there has been a significant misunderstanding regarding how the Premium plan interacts with a full WooCommerce store like yours.The “Premium” plan on WordPress.com does allow for “Simple Payments”—meaning you can add a button to sell a single product or a subscription. However, it does not support the installation of the full WooCommerce plugin suite or third-party plugins. To get the specific “managed” environment I described earlier—where WordPress.com handles the server optimization, database tuning, and allows you to install the 50,000+ plugins available in the WordPress ecosystem (including WooCommerce and its many extensions)—you must be on the Business plan or higher. The reference to “50,000 plugins” typically applies to the “plugin-enabled” plans, which start at the Business level.For a small business, I know that $12/month difference adds up, but the jump from Premium to Business is what unlocks the actual “hosting” capabilities where you can upload your own themes and plugins. If you move to the Premium plan expecting to install WooCommerce to solve your “spinning wheel” issue, you will unfortunately find that the plugin section is still locked. Given your low traffic and local base, if the Business plan feels like too much of a stretch, you might consider a specialized “Managed WooCommerce” host elsewhere, though you would then be back to managing your own optimization.
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“..and allows you to install the 50,000+ plugins available in the WordPress ecosystem (including WooCommerce and its many extensions)—you must be on the Business plan or higher. The reference to “50,000 plugins” typically applies to the “plugin-enabled” plans, which start at the Business level.”
I still don’t understand. This is what an AI search revealed:
Yes, as of 2026, you can install the WooCommerce plugin on the WordPress.com Premium plan.
While historically restricted to higher-tier plans, WordPress.com permanently updated its offerings in late 2025 to allow plugin installations on both Personal and Premium plans.
Key Details for 2026
- Availability: You can now manually search for and install WooCommerce via the “Plugins” menu in your WordPress dashboard on a Premium plan.
- Automatic Installation: Unlike the Commerce plan, which pre-installs WooCommerce and various extensions, you must install the free core WooCommerce plugin yourself on the Premium or Business plans.
It also shows on the pricing plan on the WordPress.com web site that installing plugins is available with the Personal and Premium plans.
WordPress.com Forums 