The Ultimate Guide to Magento Hosting

Magento is one of the fastest ecommerce platforms available in the market. It is loved by developers, adored by designers, and cherished by store owners who want customized websites. Due to its flexibility, almost 10 percent of the ecommerce stores have Magento as their ecommerce platform.

Though Magento as an ecommerce platform is great for store owners to customize at their will, a major issue occurs when store owners are unclear about what type of hosting solution to choose for their ecommerce store hosting.

Unlike WordPress hosts that mostly consist of shared hosting solutions, Magento hosting is a little more sophisticated. It requires at least a dedicated server or a cloud hosting solution to work in an optimal way. You can’t host it on a shared hosting website because of the resources it requires. Even if you are able to do that it won’t work at full performance.

So, what is the workaround?

If you are someone who is looking to run their Magento ecommerce website at an optimum speed, then you need to choose a Magento hosting solution that is flexible, scalable, and cost-effective.

Further, we will also shed light on ways you can improve the speed of your ecommerce platform by choosing the best Magento host.

Let’s dig deeper.

Five S’s of Magento: Features to look for in a Magento Hosting Solution

While searching for a good host for your Magento ecommerce store, you need to focus on a few essential features. We have tried to explain these features in greater detail below.

Security

We all know that security is essential for all ecommerce stores. Without adequate security, your store will be vulnerable to hacking and data theft. Luckily, Magento comes with a few security features to keep your store safe from intruders, priers, and hackers.

It also comes with two-factor authentication to improve the dashboard security. Additionally, Magento offers frequent updates and patches to fix loopholes that are often created by hackers to gain access to ecommerce stores. Apart from these basic features, you can also disable file indexing, set up file backups, add SSL, CDN, and use SFTP to improve the security of your ecommerce store further.

Most hosting solutions offer SFTP over SSH, IP whitelisting, and SSL and CDN integration for free such as Cloudways. You can also switch to these hosting solutions for additional security measures.

Scalability

The problem with most ecommerce store owners is that they don’t envision the future. Because of this, they make the wrong decision and choose a shared hosting plan for their ecommerce store. Once they cross the limits the server has in terms of traffic and concurrent users, they have to switch again to a better host. But switching [migration] from one website hosting to another in later stages of your ecommerce business is not so easy. Imagine having 1000s of products, a lot of content, numerous backlinks, and much more. A store owner simply can’t afford even a single 404 during the migration process – something that is inevitable. That’s why, it is essential that you choose a hosting plan before deciding about the setup of your ecommerce store.

But while searching for a host, do know that not all hosting solutions are scalable. In fact, dedicated and virtual private hosting services are only scalable to a certain limit that you have paid for. During an event like Black Friday, when you can get 10 times more traffic than what you get on an average day, the servers can collapse.

So, what is the solution?

The solution is to search for a hosting solution that is scalable beyond the limits. This means the hosting server should vertically scale depending on the usage. Currently, AWS and Google Cloud offer vertical scaling option to the users.

Speed

While scalability and security are essential for any ecommerce store, another important factor is speed. Ecommerce stores simply can’t do business without a website that loads within seconds. Google now prefers websites that load faster and that’s why it has released its AMP framework.

While 70 percent of the website speed is dependent on the framework you use for business, 30 percent of it depends on the hosting service you have used.

That’s why it is important to choose a hosting solution that improves the speed of a website. But how do hosting solutions increase website speed? By adding advanced server-level cache, optimizing hosting stack, and adding FPC cache for Magento platform.

Fortunately, all this is possible at Cloudways ecommerce managed hosting service.

Suitability

The beauty of Magento ecommerce platform is that it is perfect for all ecommerce store owners who are looking to start an online business. The platform is easy to customize and most ecommerce store owners who are tech-savvy can customize most of the modules of Magento themselves.

If we talk about compatibility of Magento with hosting solutions, we will see that most of the hosting websites offer Magento on a few clicks using a third-party plugin Softaculous. Users can download the themes for free from Magento marketplace and that’s it.

But if you don’t want to go through all this, then the best option is to go with Cloudways that offers Magento with full-page cache at a single click.

Support

Last but not the least, store owners looking for Magento hosting solution should look for what type of support the hosting company provides. Most hosting companies promise 24/7 support, but they don’t offer any live chat option, nor is their number displayed on the contact page, making it difficult for the hosting’s users to contact them when in need.

Therefore, store owners should only search for hosting solutions that offer realistic 24/7 support through live chat, email, telephone, and even contact form.

What type of hosting to choose? Managed vs Unmanaged hosting

There is another debate about Magento hosting i.e. Managed and unmanaged hosting.

Managed Hosting

A managed hosting is a type of web hosting in which the host handles the maintenance and management of the servers. Clients simply get the required space for their business and go about doing it.

It is more effective for businesses who don’t have time to dedicate a server administrator for this job. This also saves them money and improves the efficiency of servers.

Unmanaged Hosting

In unmanaged hosting, the hosting company simply provides access to a server with an operating system. You will have to install everything on the server including base software like PHP, Apache, and others. Problem with an unmanaged hosting is that it is too much time consuming and can become costly in later stages of the business.

What hosting to choose for your Magento store?

Our recommendation is to choose a managed hosting service that is based on the cloud. This will provide you the flexibility you need to run store operations seamlessly. Also, it allows you to vertically scale your website whenever you need to.

One such service that is flexible and lower in cost is Cloudways.

Cloudways Magento Hosting

Cloudways managed Magento hosting service comes with a user-friendly dashboard, and tons of features to improve your business operations. Here are a few of its features that you as a Magento store owner would love.

• SSD-Based Magento Cloud Hosting
• Advanced Cache
• CloudwaysCDN
• PHP 7 Ready Servers
• Free Magento Full Page Cache
• 1-Click SSL Installation
• Two-Factor Authentication
• IP Whitelisting
• Seamless Vertical Scaling
• Managed Migrations
• SSH and SFTP Access
• Application & Server Cloning
• Staging Area & URLs

Conclusion

Now that you have read the whole article, we hope that you are more informed about the type of ecommerce hosting to choose for your Magento ecommerce business.

If you have something to add to this article, or if you think that the article includes some information that is incorrect, simply comment below and let us know your thoughts.