Magento 2 Hosting Providers
Finding the right Magento 2 hosting providers is one of the most important decisions you will make for your eCommerce website. While many eCommerce business owners put endless hours into SEO, creating great content, and optimizing product search, they won’t do the necessary research to find the best web host for them. Yet without the quality web hosting services they need, their site performance suffers and frustrated shoppers abandon their site for that of a competitor.
Of course, when every hosting company seems to promise the same thing–guaranteed uptime, unlimited resources, and more–it’s hard to know which web host to trust. That’s why it’s important to know what you need before you begin researching web hosts. Some eCommerce companies need a blazing fast site above all else. Others may be most concerned with PageRank, credit card compliance, or an accessible technical support team. All of these issues are directly connected to your hosting provider, and different providers will excel in different areas.
When you know exactly what services you need (and those you don’t), and understand your website priorities, you can evaluate potential hosts by how well their track record, tech specs, features, specializations, and price structure meet your business needs. We give you the details on five Magento 2 Hosting Providers below, but first ask yourself these five questions to help you determine your eCommerce web hosting needs and priorities.
5 Questions To Ask When Choosing an eCommerce Web Host
Do I need a dedicated or shared server?
If your site runs on a shared server, you are sharing not only the server, but also resources like drive space, bandwidth, and memory with other websites. If it runs on a dedicated server, the server and all resources are exclusively yours. A dedicated server typically offers more control, flexibility, and security. However, shared servers can save money, require less technical maintenance, and are more than sufficient for many websites.
Do I need to be PCI Compliant?
Yes. If you are accepting credit cards on your site you must be PCI Compliant. Every eCommerce merchant must meet multiple data security standards that ensure your business can process, store and transmit credit card information in a secure environment. Look for a PCI compliant hosting plan from a web host that specializes in eCommerce compliance needs.
What type of support do I need from my web host?
If your web host is doing an excellent job, you will rarely need to contact a support team other than requesting an extra backup, or asking them to create a new dev site. However, if your site goes down–as almost every site does at one time or another–you will want a quick response. A company that monitors your site 24/7 and is always accessible to you may be one your most important criteria for a great web host.
What are my site speed requirements?
Site speed is a top consideration for any business. Fast web performance and page load speeds are essential to conversion optimization and search engine rankings. If your site uses dynamic content such as ads, photos and graphics, internal site search, or frequent redirects, you need all the speed you can get. A fast web host can improve and maintain site speed to help you stay competitive.
You may need assistance designing, optimizing, and customizing your Magento site. Choosing a host that has dedicated Magento professionals can absolutely save you a lot of time and stress. By partnering with a hosting company that can also help you upgrade and improve the functionality of your Magento site, all of your web operations will run much more smoothly. Plus, you will only have to make one phone call when seeking support for your eCommerce site.
5 Magento 2 Hosting Providers For Your eCommerce Site
Now that you have a better understanding of your web hosting needs, you’re ready to evaluate some Magento 2 hosting providers. There are a lot of web hosts out there, so we narrowed it down to the five of the most popular Magento 2 hosting providers options and reviewed them on their hosting specialization, speed, compliance, and support:
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Rackspace:
If you are running a large, high-volume eCommerce site, Rackspace is well worth considering.
Specialization: Rackspace is a platinum Magento partner with a focus on large e-retailers (think Fortune 500 list big).
Speed: You can scale your platform to maximize application performance and respond to periods of high traffic.
Compliance: Rackspace offers PCI Compliant servers with customizable security products for your Magento solution.
Support: They provide 24/7 technical support, email support, and Magento expertise.
Cost: Since they primarily serve the big-hitters, RackSpace prices are higher than average. Their lowest-cost web hosting package comes in at $246/month for 0-100 congruent users and fewer than 150,000 products.
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Nexcess:
If you want a one-time ready-to-launch Magento installation, give their scalable solutions a try.
Specialization: A Magento platinum partner for medium-to-large sized businesses. Their Magento Secure Isolated Platform (SIP) Plans. Each SIP is self-contained and designed for eCommerce hosting with a ready-to-launch Magento store included.
Speed: Shared enterprise servers range from 16-24GB RAM. Disk space, data usage, and CDN Data Traffic also vary. Nexcess also offers an optional service they call “Varnish Web Application Accelerator” to speed up Magento sites.
Compliance: All Nexcess servers are PCI compliant.
Support: While Nexcess offers well-reviewed 24-7 customer support among Magento 2 hosting providers. Customers must pay more for a “managed option” to receive monthly system administration, troubleshooting, updates, and more.
Cost: Nexcess charges $599.95 for install and configuration of their service. After the initial installation, technical support costs $149.95 per hour. You will have to look elsewhere (and pay more) for email support and Magento Security updates.
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Amazon Web Services (AWS):
Best for the tech-savvy business owner who knows exactly what they need and can stay on top of server usage.
Specialization: AWS is a gigantic cloud services company that is seeking to do it all. They offer cloud website hosting solutions that are notable for their flexibility. The ability to choose what services you would like to take advantage of is one of the biggest benefits of AWS. However, it’s also their biggest challenge.
Speed: They boast Amazon CloudFront content delivery network (CDN) that is used to deliver your entire website using a global network of data centers.
Compliance: Only parts of AWS are PCI DSS compliant. Make sure you select a PCI cloud compliant option.
Support: AWS offers a service called Trusted Advisor to help you provision resources–but it’s an online service that doesn’t connect you with a support person or Magento expert. For additional charge, you can get AWS Support with 24/7 technical assistance.
Cost: Varies widely. Figuring out what services you need and the costs associated with them can become a calculation nightmare. Each service has a different fee structure and “add as you use” formula. When scaling up becomes automatic, budgeting becomes very difficult.
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Web 2 Market:
When you want one company to host, develop, and customize your Magento site, with flexible hosting options.
Specialization: A full-service Magento development, hosting, security, support, and optimization company for medium-to-large businesses. Their focus is on medium to large companies.
Speed: Both shared and dedicated servers are built specifically for Magento performance optimization, and come with performance tuning.
Compliance: Their hosting is 100% PCI Compliant and built specifically for Magento.
Support: Web 2 Market offers a 24/7 helpdesk and has a team of programmers and certified Magento expert programmers ready to provide individualized, hands-on training.
Cost: Email support is included in all Web 2 Market hosting plans. They also include Varnish and Turpentine caching on all of dedicated hosting levels at no additional cost. Plans start at $169 per month for a shared server and $495 for a dedicated server.
- SiteGround: Best for small sites with minimal web traffic and storage needs.
Specialization
: SiteGround focus is on the small companies. At the base level you will be limited to one website, 10,000 visits a month, and only 10GB of web space. But for brand new companies with small sites and little traffic, this might be just what you need.
Speed: Again, because their market is small and start-up companies, their base package deliver 10GB web space. They promise 99.9% uptime, plus compensation if you experience more than 0.1% downtime in a year.
Compliance: PCI compliance is not offered until tier three.
Support: SiteGround has 24/7 support agents on the phone, but no development support is included.
Cost: Their base package starts at $3.95 per month. However, as smaller companies grow, they will quickly see they will need additional resources not in the lowest plans. Backup and restore services are not available until their tier three solution, and extra caching is an add-on at any level. Also once your first contract runs out, you will no longer be entitled to the lower price as the renewal fees cost more.
High Performance Magento Hosting For Serious eCommerce Businesses
If you choose Web 2 Market as your development and Magento 2 hosting providers of choice, you can count on deep Magento experience and expertise. Web 2 Market provides all the services you need to get the very most out of your Magento investment, including a Free Magento Speed Test. Be sure to contact our Web 2 Market Magento Certified Solution Specialists for advice and support along the way.