WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, so it runs on the same SQLite-backed WordPress install our one-click installer sets up. For the majority of stores — boutique shops, service businesses, small product catalogues — this works without any special configuration.
Here's what you actually need to know.
How the Database Works
WordPress on TrueCore uses SQLite via the official sqlite-database-integration plugin. WooCommerce uses WordPress's standard database API ($wpdb), so it works transparently with SQLite — no separate database, no credentials to configure.
Your orders, products, customers, and inventory all live in the SQLite file inside your wp-content/database/ directory. This file is included in your backups on every cycle.
Where SQLite Performs Well
SQLite handles WooCommerce well at typical store scales. A shop with hundreds of products and dozens of daily orders will run without issue. Reads are fast — SQLite can process thousands of read queries per second on modern storage.
The constraint is concurrent writes. SQLite serialises writes — only one write can happen at a time. For a checkout process, that means one order being placed at a time at the database level.
For most stores, customers are not placing orders simultaneously in the same second. Concurrent write contention is a theoretical limit that most shops never approach in practice.
What Actually Limits WooCommerce Performance
In practice, the bottlenecks for WooCommerce are PHP workers and RAM, not the database.
WooCommerce with a standard set of plugins (payment gateway, shipping, reviews) uses 64–128MB of PHP memory per request. An uncached product page runs 150–300ms of PHP. Checkout pages are heavier.
PHP workers set the concurrency ceiling. If your plan includes 4 PHP workers and 5 requests arrive simultaneously, the fifth waits. That's where perceived slowness comes from on a busy sale day.
Caching recovers most of this. Install a caching plugin and cache your catalogue pages aggressively. WooCommerce-aware caching plugins automatically exclude the cart, checkout, and account pages — those must run PHP because they're unique to each visitor.
Setting Up WooCommerce
- Install WordPress from the Add-ons tab in your portal
- In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New and search for WooCommerce
- Install and activate — WooCommerce's setup wizard runs automatically
- Add products, configure your payment gateway (Stripe, PayPal, or any standard WooCommerce payment plugin), and set your shipping zones
No database credentials to configure. The SQLite integration is already in place from the one-click installer.
Payment Gateways
All major WooCommerce payment plugins work normally. Stripe, PayPal, Square, and others connect to their respective APIs over HTTPS — the local database type is irrelevant to them. Your payment gateway handles the actual transaction; WooCommerce just records the order.
What Plan to Use
WooCommerce itself starts at Ember (£20/mo) — Flameling is static-only and has no PHP runtime, so it can't run WordPress or WooCommerce at all. If you only want a static product showcase without checkout (built with Hugo, Eleventy, or hand-written HTML), Flameling works fine. For a real WooCommerce store with active traffic and checkout volume, Ember gives you PHP-FPM workers, higher memory limits, and 12-hour backups.
If you're running a store with hundreds of concurrent visitors during promotions, Blaze or Inferno is appropriate — more workers means more simultaneous checkouts without queuing.
Backups
WooCommerce order data is in your SQLite file, which is backed up on your plan's schedule. Before any major sale or promotion, use the on-demand backup in your portal to take a snapshot — this gives you a clean restore point if anything goes wrong.