What should you pay attention to when choosing Magento hosting?

A magento store naturally needs Magento optimized hosting. When you orientate yourself in the field of Magento hosting, you probably can’t see the wood for the trees after a short time.

Magento is known for its popularity as online store software and that is partly due to the many (heavy) functionalities and possibilities the platform brings.

Choosing the right Magento hosting can be difficult, but we are more than happy to help you.

In this article, we explain what you should pay attention to when choosing the right Magento hosting solution.

You will be provided with 7 practical elements to think about during the consideration of the right Magento hosting.

But what is good Magento hosting exactly? At Hipex, we use the following definition:

Good Magento hosting is fast, reliable, flexible and secure and is hosted by a Magento-specialized hosting provider that thinks along actively with the customer.

1. Make a choice: Managed or Unmanaged hosting

To make the right hosting decision, it is first good to know the difference between Managed hosting and Unmanaged hosting.

With Managed hosting, you will get hosting managed by the web host itself. Your hosting provider relieves you in many areas. Think of setting up the backup process, adjusting hardware, further developing and updating software, security issues etc.

With Unmanaged hosting, you only get a server including an operating system which you have to set up yourself.

This includes the required software and setting up the backup process. Because the host does not need to do much for it and you have to do most of the work yourself, this type of hosting is a lot cheaper than Managed hosting.

So, if you have good technical knowledge, know a lot about hosting, have time to manage your hosting and if you are willing to save costs, then Unmanaged hosting might be something for you.

Don’t you want to worry about your hosting any longer, and want to be assured of reliable and stable hosting. Managed hosting will be the solution for you.

At Hipex, we only offer Managed hosting, because we believe that hosting is specialization. We strive for full unburdening of your hosting.

2. Does the hoster offer generic hosting or only Magento?

When selecting the right hosting provider, it might be a good idea to figure out if the hoster is specialized in one or multiple e-commerce software platforms. We mean: does the hoster support multiple e-commerce solutions such as WooCommerce, Joomla, Shopware, Drupal, customized or does it focus only on Magento?

You can imagine that a specialization in one software solution works better than when the host focuses on more than one software platform. When specializing in one, perhaps two software platform(s), you are able to tailor your hosting as a web host. You can set up your servers for specific plans in order to achieve the best performance possible.

Another big advantage is that you can make use of the customer service more efficiently and in a specialistic way. They do not need to know everything about all different types of e-commerce software, but a lot about only one or two software platforms. This will also help you as a customer.

For example, Hipex’ support team consists mainly of IT professionals that know much about PHP and Magento. This enables them to view any issues within the application with you.

3. Technical specifications

The technical specifications of the various hosts are quite different. So, take a critical look at this. In order to get a good idea of what is important for the technology, we have listed 4 items that are important, according to us, for optimized Magento hosting:

Specific MySQL configuration

Not every shop is the same, as some shops require a specific MySQL configuration. It is important to have flexibility in this, so you can configure your MySQL optimally for the setup you have. Magento is very MySQL-heavy, making it very important to optimize it.

NGINX configuration

The most efficient way to capture certain things at the highest possible level is to configure the web server.

Although we believe there are advantages working with NGINX, alternatives (like Apache) comply as well when you want to be flexible as an online store and implement optimizations independently.

You want to be self-sufficient (as it’s the case with Hipex) and not be dependent on a telephone number and/or ticket system.

Developer tools (like Magerun)

Magerun is an extensive tool for Magento developers that is used for making your magento stores management easier by applying automation.

In order to be able to test more and to handle software development more professionally, more and more development clubs and developers are busy with automatic deployments and continuous integration.

If you want to go really far in the automation of a lot of regular development tasks (think of testing, putting codes live etc.) you want to have a hosting platform that automates many of these tasks by the means of an API.

Think of performing tests, setting up an environment or breaking down one after deleting a feature branch, for example.

Varnish Caching

For many online stores, performance is extremely important. So, adding a good caching solution is a priority for those stores.

There are many caching solutions available, but if we look at the Magento-world, we notice Varnish has the biggest market share.

Varnish is a standard feature of Magento 2. Finding good Magento 2 hosting without full and extensive support of Varnish is not possible.

4. Monitoring

Of course, a web host must do everything and be transparent in its communication. Things you want to have monitored for an online store are:

• Uptime
• Storage
• Technical items (load, CPU, memory, HDs and temperature)
• Checkout

Furthermore, it is strongly recommended to support integration tests as well, this will ensure the whole process (from visiting the landing page to placing an order) will be monitored.

5. Level of support/customer service

Of course, your hosting partner will do everything for you to let the hosting run as stable as possible. However, that there will never be any problems is utopia. In practice, it is often more unruly than many hosts let you believe.

When everything runs smoothly you will be undoubtedly satisfied, but a good Magento host distinguishes itself by the level of support it offers and the way it thinks along with clients.

By adopting a proactive attitude, you are constantly looking for opportunities for improving speed and performance.

Some questions you can ask yourself:

• Are they 24/7 available (SLA possible)?
• How do they deal with downtime?
• How many problems are resolved during the first contact?
• Is there always Dutch support available?
• Are backups available?
• Are notifications sent to the customer?

With these questions in mind, you can start reading reviews from the different hosts. Take a critical look at and pay special attention to the level of customer service. Products are easy to copy, excellent customer service not.

6. Costs

Not entirely unimportant for many people is the price of Magento hosting. The annoying thing about this is the costs vary a lot. This has to do with many variables, such as the choice between Managed or Unmanaged hosting.

But that is not the only thing.

The costs of hosting are also dependent on the number of visitors a magento store has, but also, for example, the number of orders, products and the overall application size.

Be critical when comparing costs. Do not compare apples to oranges, and map

the number of visitors, orders and products in advance.

7. Security

This is probably the most important element of all. Without good security, you don’t have much of your hosting. Be sharp on this!

But what should you pay attention to? We understand that as a relatively unknown person, it is difficult to estimate which host has good security measures for Magento and which does not.

Does the hoster offer the following by default, or do you have to pay extra for it? Check at least the following ones:

• Whitelisting
• DDoS protection
• SSL
• Web Application Firewall (WAF)
• Bot Protection

Hosting recommendation

Because we understand that selecting the right host can become a technical process, we’d like to provide you with some advice. With our many years of experience of Magento hosting, we are the specialists in this field!

Would you like to get more information about the hyperfast Magento hosting of Hipex?