You can run your Magento website on a shared hosting plan, but should you?
In the world of web hosting plans, there’s shared hosting, dedicated hosting or some form of virtual private hosting. Each option comes with its own set of features and limitations. In the world of Magento eCommerce, it is particularly important to select the hosting option that will best support your Magento website and your business needs.
A shared hosting plan typically offers lower costs but higher risks. With various sites demanding server resources, performance of your website may be negatively impacted. While extremely rare, if a shared server goes down, multiple sites go down with it.
Another hosting option is a dedicated server which is expensive but allows for much greater control over your environment and resources. However, similar to a shared environment, if a dedicated server goes down, your site goes down with it.
Our recommended Magento hosting plan is what is called a virtual private server or a virtual private cloud. When properly configured, this environment can provide multiple availability zones, auto resource scaling, and regular load-balancing. These features provide much greater reliability and scalable performance. In this scenario, there is no longer a single point of failure for your website.
While not a type of hosting, it is worth mentioning that Magento websites can benefit from managed hosting. There are various degrees of support included in a managed hosting arrangement, but in general it assigns a network and hosting specialist to provide ongoing maintenance, security reviews, and performance optimization services throughout your hosting experience.
