Pick the best hosting for your Magento store

There are many possible options when it comes to hosting for Magento e-commerce. Whatever you decide, you need to find a solution that’s fast and reliable. In this post, we show you four options you have. Analyze each option to make an informed decision on the best Magento hosting.

You can find many Magento hosting providers out there, but it’s crucial to start with the type of hosting that checks all of your boxes and offers seamless and reliable operation. There are four major types of hosting services:

• Free Magento hosting
• Shared Magento hosting
• VPS 
• Dedicated hosting for Magento

Let’s have a look at them.

Free hosting for Magento e-commerce

When running an online store, opting for a free service doesn’t make sense, especially given the fact you can easily find an affordable solution. 

The fact that this hosting is free is its one and only advantage. Unfortunately, the list of cons is much longer:

• Limited space (free hosting services often offer only 100-200MB of space).
• Transfer limit (in the event of a large number of visits, your site can be temporarily blocked)
• No customer service (in the case of free hosting, breakdowns happen very often, and you cannot count on the support and help from the service provider)
• Shared IP (yes, you have the same IP address as many other websites, which has a negative impact on your SEO, especially when they’re implementing some black hat SEO techniques)

Shared hosting for Magento e-commerce

Here, we have one high-performance server that’s being shared among many customers. As a result, a per-account cost is low.

PROS OF SHARED HOSTING

• Low price (server costs are spread over many users and, as a result, are relatively low)
• Customer support (unlike with free hosting, you don’t have to deal with maintenance and troubleshooting yourself, there is customers support to help you with any problems)
• Ease of use (typically, these hosting services come with an intuitive dashboard and users can do most of the things themselves)
• Scalability (in most cases, you can easily adjust shared hosting resources to your current needs)

CONS OF SHARED HOSTING

• Security (usually, you have no way of controlling potential problems such as cyberattacks)
• Stability (in the shared hosting model, up to 1,000 websites can be located on one server; Therefore, excessive usage of the server by one of the other users may adversely affect your Magento e-commerce)
• Limited access and management options (since some changes may affect other users, you don’t have that much flexibility in managing and accessing the server).

VPS

VPS stands for Virtual Private Server. It’s a hosting that is considered a mid-range solution between the dedicated and shared type of hosting. The fact is owners of small and medium-sized online stores usually decide to use a VPS server. Why is this a good option for your online store?

PROS OF VPS

• Guaranteed computing power (VPS servers offer a large amount of space for your data and almost unlimited data transfer)
• Scalability (at any time, the VPS server can be expanded and adjusted to your needs; VPS grows with your store)
• Security (with VPS, you enjoy the complete security of data stored on dedicated disk space; there are also frequent back-ups)
• Flexibility (unlike with shared servers, you are the administrator, and you have the freedom to install and remove software and system components)

CONS OF VPS

The VPS’ main con is the cost of its maintenance, which is much higher than in a shared setup. In addition, if you want to use VPS, you must have someone experienced in the field of installation, configuration, and updating of Linux or Windows Server.

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