Havenswift Hosting has been trading since 2006 and has run e-commerce servers since 2007. We do not only host CubeCart, we write software for it: twenty-three of our own CubeCart plugins and four of our own CubeCart skins are sold on this site, and full CubeCart support is included with every CubeCart hosting plan rather than sold as an add-on.
Any host with PHP and MySQL can run CubeCart. These six things are what a CubeCart specialist adds.
Support for the software, not only the server. Full CubeCart support is included on both our CubeCart shared hosting and CubeCart fully managed hosting plans. A question about a tax setting, a shipping band or an order that will not save is answered on the same ticket as a question about the server.
Installation and the initial configuration. CubeCart installation and basic setup are free on every CubeCart site we host. The setup includes the small configuration changes a new store needs and that a general host has no reason to know about, along with advice on the built-in SEO settings.
Upgrades. Deferred upgrades are a common reason a CubeCart store ends up in trouble. Each skipped release makes the next one larger, until the store is several versions behind, on a PHP version that is no longer supported, with extensions that will not run on anything current. Getting out of that position costs more than staying current would have done.
Extensions written and maintained by the people hosting the store. Every one of our plugins and skins declares support for all current CubeCart 6 releases, and we update them when a core release requires template or hook changes. An unmaintained third-party skin or plugin is a common reason a store cannot take a core upgrade.
Encoded extensions that survive a PHP change. Encoded files used to be tied to the PHP version of the encoder that produced them, so a PHP upgrade could break a commercial extension in a way that looked like a CubeCart fault. Every encoded extension we supply runs on all PHP versions from 7.4 up to and including 8.5, so moving your store to a newer PHP needs no rebuild and no new download.
Server settings chosen for a shop. A choice of PHP version so you can match what your CubeCart release and its extensions need, memory limits and execution times sized for bulk product imports and image uploads, Redis available for object caching and Memcached for session storage, and page caching configured so that one customer’s basket is never served to another. SPF and DKIM are configured from the start. Mail authentication that is missing or wrong is a common fault we find on stores migrating to us, and it is an expensive one: order confirmations landing in a spam folder generate support tickets and refund requests.
Both run on the same servers and both include full CubeCart support. The difference is who applies the upgrades and whether you hold cPanel access.
CubeCart shared hosting gives you cPanel with one-click CubeCart installation and upgrades, free SSL issued and renewed automatically, a choice of PHP version, Redis object caching and Memcached session storage, daily backups you can restore yourself, and email on your own domain. There are four plans, E-Commerce 1 to 4, which differ in disk space, bandwidth and mailbox limits. This is the right plan if you are comfortable running your own upgrades and want direct access to the files and database.
CubeCart fully managed hosting moves the maintenance to us: installation, core upgrades with your skin and plugins checked for compatibility first, plugin and skin upgrades kept current alongside the core, security patches applied to individual files without waiting for the next full release, and backups taken and monitored. cPanel access is not provided, which is what makes the state of the installation something we can guarantee; skins and plugins are installed through the CubeCart Extension Marketplace from inside the store admin. On request we provide up to two FTP accounts restricted to the skins and images directories, so a designer can work on a skin and you can upload images by hand without the rest of the installation being exposed. There are four tiers, Bronze to Diamond, and a fourteen day trial.
If your catalogue runs to many thousands of products, or your traffic is heavy and sustained, a fully managed plan or a dedicated server will serve you better than shared hosting. Tell us your product count and your busiest month’s traffic and we will say which one fits.
CubeCart 5 introduced code hooks, which let a developer run code at defined points in the application without editing a single core file. That is why a well-written plugin survives an upgrade: there are no core edits for a developer to reapply, so you can take a new CubeCart release as soon as it appears. Since 5.2.0, small changes can be made through Code Snippets using the same hooks, with no plugin at all.
We publish twenty-three CubeCart plugins of our own, each with its own page describing what it does. They cover ground the core deliberately leaves out: document attachments against customers, orders and manufacturers, a wishlist and gift registry, drop shipping, Mailchimp and Google Merchant Centre feeds, structured data markup, a vertical category menu, checkout changes and admin order entry. Support for all of them is included if your store is hosted with us.
Tell us what you are trying to achieve rather than which plugin you think you need. The answer is often a setting you already have or a short code snippet, and we will say so. Where nothing existing covers the requirement we write custom plugins, and we build payment gateway integrations for providers CubeCart does not support out of the box.
CubeCart ships with one skin, Foundation, built on the Smarty template engine and intended as a starting point for development rather than as a finished design. The skin decides how many stylesheets and scripts load, how images are sized, how the store behaves on a phone, and what markup search engines see for your products, including whether price and availability appear in results. A skin that is no longer maintained will eventually stop you upgrading CubeCart, because new core features often need template changes.
We have designed and continue to develop four CubeCart skins: Retail Therapy, which takes a different layout approach from the conventional CubeCart arrangement, and Nautical, Party Time and Trade, the last aimed at stores selling to business and trade customers. Every skin we supply includes our Skin Configuration plugin at no charge, which moves a growing list of skin settings into the CubeCart admin. Because those choices are stored as configuration rather than as edits to template files, a new release of the skin can be installed without losing them.
Before buying any skin, from us or anyone else, ask when it was last updated and which CubeCart versions the developer currently supports.
Migrations are free and we do them regularly. We copy the store across, get it working, let you test it, and change DNS only when you are satisfied, so nothing goes live until you say so. On a fully managed plan the store is also brought up to date as part of the move.
Our CubeCart tutorials page gathers our guides by subject: running a store day to day, shipping, tax and payments, security, marketing and search, and release notes for each new version. They are written for store owners who are comfortable in the CubeCart admin rather than for developers. Support questions we are asked more than once tend to become tutorials, so if something you need is missing, say so.
CubeCart is a shop and nothing else. There is no content management system to configure around it and no page builder to learn, the admin puts orders, products, customers and reports where you would expect them, and it is light enough on server resources to run well on shared hosting where a comparable Magento build would need considerably more behind it. The licence is a one-off purchase, the data sits in your own database, and there is no monthly platform fee and no percentage of your sales. It has been in continuous development since 2003.
It is not always the right answer. If you already publish content in WordPress, WooCommerce puts the shop in the same place. If you need several storefronts with their own domains, themes and prices from one installation, OpenCart includes multi-store as standard. If you have a complex catalogue, multiple currencies and trade pricing, Magento is built for it and is unnecessary for anything simpler. We host all of them on the same servers.
Tell us what you sell, roughly how many products, and where your customers are, and we will tell you which platform fits. If you have a store that is not performing and you are not sure why, that is the conversation to have before spending money.