There are many details to consider when choosing a Magento 2 hosting option for your eCommerce business. Before beginning the process, you should have a comprehensive understanding of what hosting is, the hosting company’s responsibilities, what you as the merchant are responsible for, and how to choose the best Magento 2 hosting company for your eCommerce store.
What Is Magento 2 Hosting?
Image via Flickr by Tim Reckmann | a59.de
It is important to understand what Magento 2 web hosting is. A hosting company such as IronPlane stores your eCommerce business on one of its servers, allowing potential customers to access your website via the internet.
Magento 2 Hosting Options
You have several Magento 2 web hosting options to consider:
Self-Managed Hosting
This option is available for eCommerce companies with the knowledge and time to self-manage. If you decide to self-manage your hosting, you assume responsibility for maintaining the server yourself, including:
- Server security
- Security updates
- Operating system updates
- Configuring the server for Magento optimization
Managed Magento 2 Web Hosting
With managed hosting, a hosting company is responsible for maintaining your Magento 2 eCommerce website’s server. eCommerce sites often have unique hosting needs. Magento Solution Partners such as IronPlane have demonstrated the ability to meet Magento eCommerce store hosting requirements, including:
- Security needs specific to Magento
- Applying server operating system updates
- Optimizing the server for Magento
- Providing 24/7 support and monitoring
Magento Commerce Options
You may also want to consider Magento Commerce services:
- If you’re considering migrating your current Magento 1 Enterprise site to a new Magento 2 site
- If you are a business with more substantial capacity needs and are just starting with Magento 2
Magento Commerce offers two pricing tiers. Both offer a cloud hosting option, called the Magento Commerce Cloud, to provide support for customized Magento eCommerce stores. Magento Cloud Hosting includes:
- High-speed content delivery network (CDN)
- Technical support available 24/7
- Performance management tools
When you select Magento Commerce, Magento hosts your eCommerce website along with any required infrastructure and optimization.
Why Hosting Providers Don’t Do Magento Updates
Hosting providers, even those specializing in Magento 2 web hosting, do not push Magento patches, upgrades, or updates for several reasons. The primary reason is that the hosting provider is not being paid to complete these tasks. If you’re paying for managed hosting, you are paying to have your eCommerce site hosted on that company’s server and for it to handle any server-specific issues. You are not paying the company to address problems with the website itself.
Because Magento is an open-source platform, users can decide if they are going to apply available patches, make upgrades, or install additional elements to their eCommerce store’s core code. Some companies choose to run their Magento eCommerce stores using Magento 1.4, never applying a security patch and implementing numerous core overrides.
Each Magento eCommerce site is customized to meet the unique needs of that site. This can include operating on various versions, applying a variety of security patches, and utilizing numerous extensions, some of which might be outdated.
Due to Magento’s open-source nature, it cannot provide blanket updates to users. Only apply updates, patches, and upgrades after carefully considering the effect they may have on your customized site. Pushing updates automatically can result in overriding or breaking some features on your site.
A Certified Magento Development agency can help meet your Magento eCommerce store’s unique needs before implementing website changes. IronPlane tests any suggested changes in a safe development environment, identifying how those changes might affect your eCommerce store and ensuring your site is working correctly before installing them onto your live website.
Choosing a Magento 2 Hosting Provider
Consider the following factors when selecting a hosting provider for your Magento eCommerce site.
First, identify your eCommerce store’s specific performance requirements. What level of traffic does your store receive? How many products are in your inventory? How many orders can you process at one time? Once you can answer these questions, the following three metrics can guide you in selecting a hosting provider:
- Processing capacity: the speed and number of actions your processor can complete at one time
- Bandwidth: the monthly amount of required data transferred
- Disk space: the amount of space needed to store your store’s files
Next, decide whether you will use a cloud, shared, or dedicated server:
- Cloud Server: a virtual rather than a physical server, giving you increased flexibility, control, and scalability
- Shared Server: a server and related resources that other website owners share with you; this is usually the most cost-effective option
- Dedicated Server: a server for only your store, which results in faster performance – a good option for sites with high levels of security and traffic needs
Third, you must identify the amount of support you will require from a hosting provider, decide whether you need the services of Magento Commerce or managed hosting, or determine if you can handle managing hosting responsibilities internally.
Finally, you must review the various hosting providers’ available features, including price, support hours, backups, server security, scalability, SSL encryption, PCI compliance, and firewalls.
IronPlane Can Help
Selecting the best hosting provider for your Magento eCommerce store is critical to the overall success of your business, as hosting directly affects your online store’s speed and performance. In doing so, you must understand what hosting is, what services hosting providers provide, and make sure you seek out the assistance of a certified Magento Development services agency such as IronPlane. We’ll help you apply upgrades, patches, and updates in a secure and safe way that won’t adversely affect your store’s operation.
IronPlane provides a hosting architecture built for your needs and a hybrid environment of cloud-based hosting with application servers, database, search, and multi-tenant and dedicated cache. Features include:
- Customization to meet your needs
- Scalability during high-traffic times
- The ability to co-locate within the country of origin with AWS server management
- 24/7 emergency support and monitoring
- Quality hardware from HP, Juniper, Cisco, and IBM
Contact the Magento experts at IronPlane today to get started on building your eCommerce business.
