Best Magento Hosting Services 2021

A reliable hosting provider is one of the key factors that determine the performance of any website. As for online store owners, this is particularly important: good page speed is essential if you want to provide comfortable shopping to your customers, to make them spend more time leafing through your website, and do not want to lose your revenue. Moreover, a well-chosen server significantly increases the security of online stores which remain the most attractive targets for hackers, since they can get access to users’ data and payment details.

In this article, we will describe in detail how to choose the right hosting provider for your Magento store depending on the tasks and needs of the business.

What issues you need to consider before selecting a Magento hosting provider

Before you delve into the selection of the right hosting, you need to make research to identify what store performance requirements will be desired. You have to consider such elements as current traffic volume, expected growth rate, your catching strategy, amount of products within your store, anticipated throughput. After the answers are ready, you can proceed with determining the characteristics of your future hosting provider:

Performance: CPU power and the number of processes launched simultaneously. It is a positive sign if the processor is loaded no more than 40%. It provides the required margin of assurance.
Bandwidth: The amount of data transferred for the selected time unit. The bandwidth for an average Magento store has to be at least 100 Mbps.
Random Access Memory: With eCommerce hostings, some stores are “heavier” than others. This makes it reasonable that they demand more RAM. Although either CPU or RAM requirements are determined by the busyness of the store. 1GB of RAM is a functional minimum for most middle-sized stores and start-ups – it all depends on how many products you have and how many visitors your online store is ready to accept simultaneously.
Disk subsystem performance: Servers with SSD storages are highly recommended as the best ones for Magento stores as far as they outperform those using cheaper HDDs.

Security is essential for all Magento stores. According to ZDNet, the number of hacked Magento 2.x stores doubles for the third month in a row. It is the PRODSECBUD which is the codename of a security flaw in the Magento 2.x CMS that is responsible for the spikes in the hacked websites.

Security essentials for hosting providers include:

an advanced firewall;
embedded DDoS protection;
server hardening;
auto backups;
SSL integrated.

The requirements for the Magento version should be taken into account, as well. It is crucial when choosing the best hosting provider. Thus, for example, Magento 2.3 requires at least 2 GB of RAM, a LAMP or LNMP stack, Linux x86-64, Apache 2.2\2.4 web server or Nginx 1.x server, and other requirements which you can easily find on the Magento official website.

Another issue you have to consider before selecting a provider is the level of technical support that will be needed. There are two options: either you need support on the part of hosting or you are able to manage it yourself. At the very least, Magento is a great CRM for building self-hosted online stores. If the first option is desired, then the question is what communication channels with hosting administration exist: email, phone, etc. That’s a big deal if a hosting provider goes with 24\7 support.

Next, you need to analyze the functions provided by different hostings in addition to their basic functionality in order to decide whether they are currently needed. It can be scalability, security services, SSL encryption, POP mailboxes, statistics, additional firewalls, etc. Such features can be provided either for an additional fee or can be included in tariff charges.

In order to reduce the response rate, you’d better choose hosting with servers located in the country where your customers are. So, if your target audience is UK shoppers, you’d better give pride of place to hostings with UK-located servers.

Finally, you need to determine what type of hosting is right for your Magento online store.

Hosting options for Magento stores

As mentioned earlier, there are two types of hostings, when it comes to tech support. Managed hosting means that it is the provider who will handle the hardware components to keep your server performance at the peak as well as to keep it secure. In an ideal scenario, you need to work with Magento ecommerce consulting as they will be able to adjust the server environment in a professional manner in order to integrate it into the running of Magento databases and code.

If you are tech-savvy enough, you may choose to go with the second option – self-managed hosting. In this case, it will be you or a specialist within your company who is responsible for patching, configuring, updating the server to provide its fail-safe performance.

Server Options for Magento Stores

Shared Server

What is a shared server and why is it still popular among business owners? The answer is simple – it is the cheapest option meaning that you rent only a part of a server without being its absolute “sovereign”. The option available only with managed hosting and practically makes you share the server environment with other “lessees”. It is cheaper but the consequence of such a benefit can be severe. The fact is that your website performance will depend on the other activity happening on the server. For example, your Magento store can be banned for your neighbor’s malicious activity or if other “lessee” fell victim to DDoS-attack, the performance of your site is likely to be ruined as well. There are other problems with shared hosting services: low page speed, lack of scalability, limited configuration. Nevertheless, the option performs well with startups and small-sized Magento stores.

VPS Server

VPS-hosting is one of the cutting-edge solutions on the market. In general, it is an efficient combination of virtual and dedicated servers. The space on a physical server is divided into several virtual servers. Thus, your personal space or a “segment” is configured and performed as if it were your own dedicated server. This is the most recommended solutions for the average Magento store due to its numerous benefits:

Advanced functionality. Business owners can host unlimited domains with unlimited subdomains, install any programs and applications, create their own versions of system libraries or modify existing ones, etc.
Reasonable price. It is one of the most decisive factors for many businesses. And VPS plans are definitely one of the strongest features of the solution. The servers cost cheaper as compared to buying a full-fledged and powerful machine which may cost up to tens of thousands of dollars.
Independence from hardware failures. VPS servers are not physically tailored to the equipment, therefore, if some troubles with their hardware have occurred, the servers can easily be copied and transferred to another machine.
Guaranteed exclusive ownership of hardware resources. If you use a VPS server, it is guaranteed that all the resources (the processor, RAM, hard disk) will belong to you. This makes the solution not only fast but independent of other clients.

Dedicated Server

A dedicated server is the most expensive option meaning that a client is provided with a separate physical machine that offers him tighter security and greater control. The option is essential for eCommerce websites with large traffic volumes as well as for all other websites and applications that require a high level of safety. The main advantages of the solution are:

The highest security level.
Full access to hardware.
Maximum performance.
More opportunities to solve specific problems.
The absence of necessity to share the server with websites of other clients.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud Hosting is a reasonable solution for those Magento stores that have at least 100 orders per day, as well as for businesses with high seasonality. As far as the key advantage of cloud hosting is scalability, it is perfect for online stores with extreme loads during events, holidays or sales, seasonal user spikes, and so on. This means that your site will always be fast and responsive but the necessity to pay for unused hardware is absent (although you still have to manage your hosting to avoid overpaying). Taking into account its scalability, flexible prices, and other advantages, it is no wonder that many experts consider cloud services as the future of hosting which inevitably will substitute both dedicated and share options.

Magento Hosting Options to Consider

There are thousands of options that are good for Magento online stores. They differ in prices, configurations, server locations, tasks they perform. Here are some of the most reliable ones:

AWS;
Nexcess;
Tenzing;
Byet;
Bluehost;
WebHostingHub;

Summarizing

The key factor that determines the choice of the hosting is the busyness of your store, the number of visitors and the orders it gets for the selected time period. Small stores without high loads can go with shared hosting since it is a modest solution for aspiring entrepreneurs. A VPS, as well as cloud hosting, are optimal solutions for a medium-sized and large store with constantly high traffic where a high level of performance and security is a must. As for dedicated servers, they are worth buying only if you are an owner of a large Magento store with large traffic volumes and a great number of visitors.