Choosing the best web hosting for your needs is one of the key components to having a successful online business, especially when your business is running on Magento 2.
Past Magento 2 installation experiences made us deal with a lot of low performance, unsecured, unoptimized servers that transformed the eCommerce business in a time consuming experience with server issues for both the client and also for development team.
Main issues we encountered when installing Magento 2 themes and extensions on random unoptimized Magento hosting:
- not meeting minimum Magento requirements, details here.
- incompatible PHP version with Magento version installed on the server.
- incorrect Apache configuration for Magento version installed on the server.
- missing required PHP extensions, only partial extensions installed.
- PHP OPCache not enabled on the server, generating critical performance issues.
- incompatible MySQL version with Magento requirements.
- only partial necessary services installed on server's operating system.
- out of date operating system.
- incorrect permissions setup.
- low performance servers leading to very long time necessary to make basic configurations.
- difficulties configuring credentials and whitelisting due to improper hosting firewall settings.
- incorrect domain configuration or domain settings not working properly.
- xdebug installed on production server, can affect access to the storefront or Magento Admin.
- mod security false positive limitations, not able to save products, pages or changes in Magento 2.
- other random server specific issues.
While there are many factors to consider when choosing a hosting company for your store, here is a list of WeltPixel top considerations for a good Magento 2 hosting partner.
1. Mod Security False Positive limitations, unable to save products, pages, changes in Magento 2.
Magento 2 often triggers False Positive Mod Security exceptions in PCI compliant hosting leading to an inability to save/edit your products, CMS pages, settings or even inability to access the store. Various security rules are usually triggered when you add/edit your pages and products; in these cases, a hosting specialist needs to identify the false mod_security triggering and whitelist it. If you do not have a good hosting partner that can do that for you really fast you’ll continuously experience problems and limitations with your Magento 2 store and you’ll be dependent of a development team that may not be available as fast as hosting support.
Not using a PCI compliant hosting may lead to severe security issues, the inability to install certain extensions and inability to use certain payment methods. Using a PCI compliant hosting, dedicated for Magento 2 should be the top priority point on your list when choosing your hosting partner.
2. Store Performance
Your customers value web speed and reliability. A faster, more reliable website will have positive effects on your customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, conversion rates and revenue. Hosting companies that specialize in Magento hosting know what is needed to get Magento running quickly and reliably. They tend to have the right resources to allow your store to provide a better shopping experience for your customers.
Hosting performance for Magento 2 is a matter of combining top of the line hardware with heavily optimized software configurations like Database Performance Tuning, Operating System-level Tuning, Web Server Optimization, Network Optimization, Security Enhancements and Backup Strategy. Magento 2 specialized hosting companies have identified all the above through rigorous testing of hardware and software configurations, allowing them to offer a transaction per second throughput increase by as much as 1,000%.
You could install Magento on a low-powered, unoptimized hosting plan, but Magento is resource hungry, and the result would be a sluggish and laggy store. Performance matters for any website, but it’s of crucial importance for Magento 2 eCommerce websites.
3. Hosting experience with Magento
You may want to choose a partner with as much experience as possible on hosting Magento websites as you want potential problems and requests to be solved by professional staff that have worked with Magento before and understand how Magento works, especially Magento 2. While it’s entirely possible to switch hosting providers, taking time to choose the correct partner will save a great deal of time and money in the long run.
4. Support Quality
Support is of great importance when choosing a hosting partner and good support means you’ll get a response promptly from someone who knows what they’re talking about. You don’t want to be stuck with a hosting company that is difficult to get a hold of when you need to make changes. You should choose a company with 24 hour a day, phone and email support. You can also find included Magento installation and setup services, free hosting migration, proactive uptime and performance monitoring, Magento upgrading, patching and a lot of other useful things.
5. Scalability
If you’re stuck on a low-grade hosting plan, then making the move to a more powerful hosting plan might require migrating to another hosting company. This is completely possible, but the smooth scaling provided by a good hosting company, with the help of an experts in Magento, is significantly more desirable.
6. Security and PCI Compliance
An e-commerce hosting provider should give the security of cardholder data the highest priority and constantly monitor the network and business processes in order to meet PCI requirements. All critical applications and libraries including the system Kernel should be kept up to date with nightly updates. Advanced Policy Firewall should be installed and configured for maximum security and packet throughput performance and reliability.
Security rapports and scans from the hosting provider are welcomed, you want a hosting that cares about your store and your clients security. Being able to point out potential security risks can save a great deal of time and can direct your Magento development team exactly to the location where your Magento 2 store is vulnerable. Your Magento store security can be easily accomplished by good collaboration between your hosting partner and your Magento partner as each party needs to keep their applications and security patches up to date.
7. Backups
Your data is the most important asset for your online business and losing your data could mean months or years of hard work vanished. You should pay attention to the characteristics below, especially to the automatic daily code and database backup. If anything happens with your Magento 2 store, yesterday's backup or last week's backup could turn up as a life saver.
- Automatic code and database backup every night
- Period of retained backed-up data
- Redundant secure backup systems
- Continuous data protection
8. Magento Partner
Possibly the easiest and smartest decision is to choose a hosting provider among the official Magento hosting partners. These companies have vast expertise within the platform and are not only able to provide the required environment, but can also ensure technical assistance during the installation and deployment phases, or even fix some technical issues. It’s certainly a great advantage.
The WeltPixel top choices for Magento 2 managed hosting are Nexcess Cloud Hosting, Aspiration Hosting, RoseHosting, and JetRails.
Our preferred hosting provider, Nexcess, the original Magento web hosting provider, implemented a Secure Isolated Platform (SIP) which is an entirely self-contained and fine-tuned eCommerce hosting environment. Their SIPs include a ready-to-launch Magento store with the most current release and optimizations for maximum performance. Nexcess offers a full range of Magento 1.x and 2.x hosting options in the US, UK, Netherlands, and Australia.
Aspiration specializes in high-performance Cloud hosting services with the main focus on Magento Hosting solutions, as well as other PHP Applications like SimpleMachines Forum (SMF), WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc.
RoseHosting offers fully-managed Magento VPS hosting powered by enterprise-grade NVMEs. All hosting plans have 100% uptime, free 24/7 fully-managed support, free website migration, free backups and free server monitoring, security and optimization. Get 50% off the first month on managed Magento VPS hosting using the coupon code WELTPIXEL50.
The JetRails formula for customer success is that they function as your in-house operations group from their main headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. They have a dedicated team devoted to your infrastructure and will interface directly with your developers and project managers. Working with JetRails is like annually reinvesting millions of dollars in infrastructure operations, hardware and facilities. Their focus is on the speed, security, uptime and stability of your website.
