7 Best Magento Hosting Providers (2020 Reviews)
Want to start the best online shop with Magento?
We ranked all top go-to Magento hosting providers to list the best based on our comprehensive evaluation methodology.
Our Evaluation Methodology:
- We check all essential Magento hosting features: CPU, RAM, PCI compliance, specialized support.
- We evaluate what the user reviews say about each Magento host.
- We compare pricing packages, terms of service, and their restrictions.
Top 7 Magento Hosting Providers
1. SiteGround
BEST CUSTOMER SUPPORT
SiteGround has a powerful setup that allocates enough resources to handle Magento. It reinforces the offer with Magento caching, proactive server monitoring, and custom security. The support has helped countless users mitigate Magento’s resource usage. If you want to start small and expand when the time comes, SiteGround’s shared plans let you do just that.
If you’ve ever looked up any kind of hosting, you’ve probably heard of SiteGround. It is one of the most loved hosting providers and has a fierce reputation. Based on all manners of testing, the praise is well-earned.
What better provider to open these Magento hosting reviews.
What Sets It Apart
SiteGround has the mandatory 1-click install for Magento.
Of course, it doesn’t stop there. Although the shared Magento plans have the same price and similar features as regular shared hosting, they offer much more.
For one, the custom MySQL Query Cache does wonders for performance and security. Combine this with additional speed optimization, proactive server monitoring, and custom security, and you get one reliable solution.
SiteGround estimates that the largest shared plan can handle up to 100,000 monthly visitors, which should be taken with a grain of salt. The plans can handle this much with an average WordPress site, and Magento is much more demanding. Realistically and with proper optimization, the plans should be able to handle a few hundred visitors per day.
Your best bet is to go for the medium or the largest plan right away. This way, you take advantage of advanced caching and bypass the low inode limit on the starter plan.
Keep in mind SiteGround sets the PHP memory limit to 768Mb for all shared plans. This is plenty in most cases, but bare minimum for Magento 2 hosting. That being said, you can ask the support team to increase that for you.
Considering the price matches the regular shared plans, SiteGround is among the most affordable starter options. Once you outgrow the shared hosting, you can easily transfer to cloud or dedicated plans.
SiteGround Support
If SiteGround invests in anything, it’s support.
The knowledge base has tutorials on setting up Magento, performing basic tasks, and solving some common issues. It’s helpful for first-time users.
The support is available 24/7 and is among the most knowledgeable folk you can hope for. Magento users get access to Magento support, who can do a website transfer for you or fix the more common Magento issues.
Support agents are upbeat and often go beyond the call of duty to help. For instance, if your store is spending too much server resources, the support help you identify what is causing the problem. That way you can fix it without upgrading your plan.
The support team are professional and go above and beyond to provide top-notch Magento hosting.
SiteGround Around the Web
SiteGround gets overwhelmingly positive reviews.
Unsurprisingly, users like that the support is helpful and efficient. Many praise the support team for helping them reduce resource usage—a common occurence with Magento.
The few users who complain usually don’t like the resource restrictions on the shared plans. This is somewhat expected. Nobody enjoys seeing that resource limit warning. Still, Magento is probably the most demanding platform out there, and these are shared plans—restrictions are unavoidable. At SiteGround they are listed, while other providers hide the actual limitations behind marketing lingo like “unlimited usage as long as it doesn’t exceed the commonly expected usage.” Whatever that means.
SiteGround’s Magento hosting is one of the top services if you’re just starting out in ecommerce.
KEY FEATURES
Uptime: 99.99%
Support: 10/10
Loading Speed: 0.67s
Features: 9.5/10
Thing we liked
- Affordable starting point
- Expert configuration
- Top-notch support
Thing we disliked
- Limited starter plan
- 785MB PHP memory cap
Price: 3.95/month
Visit SiteGround
2. FastComet
HOSTING FOR DESIGNERS AND NEWBIES
As the name suggests, FastComet is all about speed. It has generous resource allocations and top-notch speed optimization—everything you need to run a fast Magento site. The support can help you set up your store, so you can get started without being an expert. All in all, FastComet is a reliable Magento host.
The very name tells you FastComet is obsessed with speed. It opened its doors to private clients a few years back and has been performing awesomely ever since.
It also claims to have the best hosting for Magento, so let’s see how its offer fares.
What Sets It Apart
FastComet gives you all the info right off the bat.
It suggests optimized FastCloud plans for Magento users.
Most retailers get the best results with the largest FastCloud plan. It offers a solid amount of resources—6 CPU cores and 6GB RAM. Of cource, decent speed optimization helps Magento run smoother.
FastComet also has data centers on 10 locations making it a suitable choice for many a global audience.
Magento store owners also enjoy tight security, theme and plugin installation services, and server monitoring.
FastComet has a substantial (and affordable) offer. Just don’t upgrade from the largest shared plan to the smallest VPS offering. It’s actually a resource downgrade and the starter VPS plan isn’t ecommerce optimized.
If you keep that in mind, you’ll have a fantastic experience with FastComet’s managed Magento hosting.
FastComet Support
FastComet support is top-notch. VPS and dedicated plans have a 10-minute response time guarantee, but the shared hosting users tend to get a response just as quickly.
FastComet has some real experts onboard, and their expertise goes way beyond server management. They’ll even help you integrate Magento extensions and fix any mistakes you might have made.
The support will often notify you and suggest a solution if a poorly configured section of your website is wasting resources. It’s invaluable if you want to save money and time as a website owner.
If you want expert Magento support, FastComet can provide it.
FastComet Around the Web
FastComet is another Magento host that instills high user satisfaction.
Most users praise the fast support, and many have anecdotes of the support team going above and beyond the line of duty to fix their store.
Some users complain that the “unlimited” shared plans are actually limited. It’s a standard practice to have a fair use policy to prevent resource abuse. Plus, FastComet is more transparent about the actual limits than most hosts.
It’s easy to see where the users are coming from, though. You shouldn’t let your resource spending get out of hand. Follow FastComet’s advice, and optimize your Magento store properly, and you can stay on the same plan for quite a while.
All in all, FastComet gives you a running start with Magento.
KEY FEATURES
Uptime: 99.99%
Loading speed: 1.27s
Support: Excellent support and knowledge base
Control panel: cPanel
Thing we liked
- Extensive offer
- Affordable
- Helpful support and add-on services
Thing we disliked
- Some plans are limited
Start Price: $1 / month
Visit FastComet
3. Cloudways
A specialist in CMS hosting, Cloudways combines the power of the public cloud with the seamlessness of managed hosting. Server management is complete with an assortment of robust features and an optimized server stack. If you’ve heard of the benefits of AWS for Magento but weren’t confident in your technical skills, here’s your chance to try it out.
Cloudways specializes in managed CMS hosting. It has a pristine reputation for hosting CMSs like WordPress, Drupal, and, of course, Magento.
Let’s see how good Cloudways is at its job.
What Sets It Apart
Many users realize that getting Magento hosting with AWS is a recipe for success. However, cloud hosting requires knowledge of server configuration and maintenance. Combine this with the complexity of Magento and you get a technical – and logistical – nightmare.
Cloudways has a nifty solution—you can use the infrastructure of a cloud computing service like AWS while it manages the server for you. You get all the advantages of the cloud with the straightforwardness of managed hosting.
You also get a custom control panel, so you can avoid the unwieldiness of cloud hosting.
Cloudways optimizes the server stack for speed and offers a few more speed optimization tools. You can also get additional services like a server transfer, Elasticsearch, CloudwaysBot, and more.
Some services are paid, though. For instance, backups cost $0.033 per GB.
The pricing gets complicated. You can choose from five different cloud computing services—AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, VULTR, and Google Cloud—each with a separate pricing model.
Cloudways also has the advantage of offering hosting in all data centers of the five cloud computing companies. So, if you need Magento hosting in India, Australia, or any other place not covered by US and Europe-based hosts, Cloudways is likely your best bet.
You can freely scale up resources as you would with any cloud hosting, and you pay for the resources you spend at the end of the month. On average, the price is about double what you’d pay if you host directly on the cloud service.
It’s a fair deal in most cases. Having an in-house expert manage your virtual server would be much more expensive and, unless you have a truly massive store, is rarely justified.
Once you sign up, Cloudways has a helpful calculator to estimate monthly spending. You can track resource usage from the dashboard, so you aren’t likely to overpay. It’s still beneficial to plan out your spending beforehand, though.
You can’t get email hosting from Cloudways. Many users go with a professional email service anyway, so it’s only a minor disadvantage.
All in all, the price is what you’d expect, and the infrastructure and tools you get are tough to beat. Cloudways might just have the best hosting for Magento, especially if your traffic is unpredictable.
Cloudways Support
The support quality is respectable. However, Cloudways seems to have outsourced at least its front-line customer support to Pakistan, presumably to reduce expenses.
The support agents are skilled communicators and know their way around hosting. Cloudways obviously prefers offering a quality service over saving a few extra bucks, unlike a few other hosts (*cough cough* GoDaddy).
Still, it’s not on the same level as hosts that put have their support in-house, like SiteGround or Nexcess.
One instance where this is obvious is with any queries that even remotely deal with code. These will always get rerouted to an “expert senior support agent.” This is likely a professional developer on the team.
Don’t get me wrong: Cloudways support resolves your problems, but getting rerouted to someone with real Magento experience takes time.
Cloudways Around the Web
Most users have had positive experiences with Cloudways.
Users love the practically infinite scaling of Magento cloud hosting. Many also enjoy the user-friendly control panel.
Funnily enough, a few users have had trouble with signing up. The signup process works now, but this has been a recurring issue for years. If the system rejects your email address, you can ask the support team to create you an account manually.
Cloudways offers a trial period of a few days. You don’t even have to enter credit card info, so you can check out the services without worry.
SHOW LESS
KEY FEATURES
Data centers: Truly global presence
Scalability: Doesn't get any better than that
Support: Excellent
Control panel: Proprietary
Thing we liked
- Near-infinite scalability
- Pay-as-you-go pricing model
- Free trial
Thing we disliked
- Somewhat slow frontline support
- No email solutions
Start Price: $10 / month
Visit Cloudways
4. Liquid Web
HIGH-END MANAGED VPS
Liquid Web offers high-end services for experienced users. Its VPS and dedicated plans are tuned to perfection to deliver sublime Magento performance. You can benefit from add-on services like security audits and PCI compliance assistance. It all amounts to a comprehensive and powerful Magento service.
Liquid Web has been in business for a long time. It also makes a few bold statements.
For instance, Liquid Web states it has the best customer loyalty in the industry. It also claims to have the fastest managed VPS out there. Sounds perfect for Magento, right?
Let’s see what Liquid Web has to back this up.
What Sets It Apart
Liquid Web styles itself a high-end hosting provider. This means it only offers VPS, dedicated, and cloud hosting—no shared plans. This is fine, since most Magento users go for VPS hosting.
If you outgrow VPS, Liquid Web has affordable dedicated servers. You can easily scale up to finely-tuned Magento dedicated hosting and keep growing your store.
Liquid Web creates a solid foundation with expert server configuration, robust security features, and speed optimization. You can easily get superb Magento performance.
Liquid Web also offers an array of additional services; naturally, some are paid. For instance, the support team can check if your store is PCI compliant and fix the security gaps. This feature is helpful for Magento, as securing your customers’ data is a major concern.
One minor downside is the fact that off-site backups are only available with a dedicated server. If you run a virtual Magento server, the backups are stored locally.
Otherwise, Liquid Web has a fantastic offer.
Liquid Web Support
Liquid Web guarantees fast support. It claims the support answers the phone and live chat queries in 59 seconds. The reply time for email tickets is 59 minutes.
Many users praise the support speed, and you can expect near-instant response times most days.
As for support quality, Liquid Web targets experienced users. The underlying assumption is that the support is there to help, but you can handle simple matters on your own.
As a result, the support tends to link to the knowledge base or give you a brief explanation and let you fix the problem. If you’re not sure what to do, you must make it abundantly clear to the support team.
Otherwise, the support is fast and competent. Still, Liquid Web is more geared towards experienced Magento hosting users.
Liquid Web Around the… Web
Liquid Web gets predominantly positive reviews. Satisfied users confirm the speed of the support and praise the powerful solutions.
Most negative reviews concern losing a website due to missing a payment. This is odd since Liquid Web’s policy is pretty loose—it waits 45 days before deleting the data because of an unpaid invoice.
You can’t blame Liquid Web for this. The support even says you should notify it if you can’t make the payment in time. They can hold off on discarding your data in such cases—a nice sign that Liquid Web cares about its customers.
Liquid Web offers a robust platform for Magento 2 hosting. It’s a bit advanced and leans toward the high-end solutions, though. If it’s your first Magento store, you might want to go with one of the more basic providers.
KEY FEATURES
Data centers: US and EU locations
Scalability Limitless, very smooth
Support: Top quality
Control panel: InterWorx, Plesk Web Pro, or cPanel Pro
Thing we liked
- Solid feature offer
- Effective support
- Handy add-on services
Thing we disliked
- Not beginner-friendly
Start Price: $29 / month
Visit Liquid Web
5. Nexcess
This company has been with Magento from the very beginning. Nexcess’ team has tremendous experience with everything from small Magento stores to vast enterprises. The plans are scalable, fantastic at handling traffic spikes, and come with a bunch of custom Magento features. If you can afford paying a few extra bucks, Nexcess is a tremendous provider.
Moving into the realm of more high-end solutions, we have Nexcess. It has been working with Magento since its first days, and many Magento users regard it as the go-to managed hosting provider.
Still, this only means something if it’s backed up by facts. Let’s see how Nexcess justifies its reputation.
What Sets It Apart
Nexcess has a superb server configuration. The security is extra tight, and everything is set up to provide fast Magento hosting.
You can also choose from a host of useful services. For instance, Nexcess helps you make your store PCI-compliant, which takes some significant administrative load off your back.
You even get a few custom modules, like Magento Sentry. It enables two-factor authentication for the admin panel.
Both shared and cloud hosting plans start at $49/month. Cloud hosting comes with a bunch of extra features that boost your store’s performance.
For instance, auto-scaling is enabled by default. If you overstep the resource limits, the server automatically scales up resources to handle up to 25 extra users.
Of course, you have to pay for the extra resources. The additional resource price depends on the plan, but you get 12h of free scaling. It is handy for getting the feel of the feature.
Auto-scaling is useful if you get traffic spikes for a few hours each week (as online stores often do). Auto-scaling only costs you a few dollars per hour and saves you from upgrading your plan.
Speaking of, you can choose from a wide variety of plans. Nexcess’s starter plan can handle about 100 daily visitors, while the largest bare metal server can handle hundreds of thousands.
Nexcess’s Magento hosting offers generous resources, but is more expensive than a host like SiteGround. All the features geared towards Magento make it worth it, though.
Nexcess Support
Nexcess support is top-of-the-line. The support agents are incredibly knowledgeable about Magento and all hosting-related matters.
Nexcess even goes a step further and offers a dedicated Magento support team.
With an average host, you have to contact a front-line agent and then get rerouted to a Magento expert. With Nexcess, you’re talking to a Magento professional from the get-go. This eliminates any unnecessary waiting.
The knowledge base has lots of useful info for those just starting out with Magento.
Nexcess’s support is hard to match.
Nexcess Around the Web
You can hardly find a Reddit thread about Magento that doesn’t mention Nexcess.
Users almost unanimously sing praise about the hosting platform. They love the helpful and fast support, easy migrations, and the overall smoothness of it.
A few users complain that migrating from a shared server to a dedicated machine can be bumpy. This is somewhat expected though—switching servers and horizontal scaling are tough to pull off.
All things considered, the sublime Nexcess Magento hosting justifies the praise.
KEY FEATURES
Data centers: 3 US locations
Scalability: Excellent
Support: The best Magento support
Control panel: Proprietary
Thing we liked
- Robust plans
- Lots of custom features
- Great scaling
- Experienced support
Thing we disliked
- Costly compared to a few other options
Start Price: $40 / month
Visit Nexcess
6. Krystal Hosting
Krystal Hosting is proud of its honesty and transparency. You get fantastic features, including backups every four hours, PCI-compliance assistance, and a free domain name as long as you’re hosted with it. The company goes to great lengths to ensure maximum customer satisfaction—which can be seen in overwhelmingly positive user reviews. Krystal Hosting would be the top Magento provider, but its only data center is in the UK.
Krystal Hosting is the largest independent hosting provider in the UK (and they’re “not selling”).
Apart from priding themselves in being honest, transparent, and environmentally friendly, the management of Krystal Hosting enjoys a good joke. Their website is full of good-natured quips at other hosting providers’ expense.
So, if you like a host with a healthy dose of humor, check out what Krystal Hosting has in store for Magento users.
What Sets It Apart
Krystal Hosting nails Magento hosting basics with a blazing-fast server configuration, speed optimization tools, and tight security.
You get backups 6 times a day, which is awesome for an online store!
It also goes out of its way to ensure PCI compliance. Unlike the paid version of Magento, Magento Open Source is not PCI-compliant by default, so this is a great help.
You also get a free domain name for as long as you’re hosted with Krystal. It saves a few bucks a year.
Krystal Hosting is a fantastic Magento hosting provider, but its only data center is in London.
It offers the best Magento hosting the UK, and you can get fantastic performance in Western Europe. As for other locations, your best bet is to go with one of the other providers.
Krystal does include some wording that presents cPanel and Let’s Encrypt SSL like awesome, exclusive features. In fact, these are standard among quality hosts. It’s a bit misleading.
Krystal Support
If you go for the Magento-optimized plans, you get 24/7 emergency phone support. Live chat is only available during business hours.
The support is solid. Krystal Hosting maintains that it has a strong in-house support team and that it has no plans to outsource it.
The claim about support quality checks out. The support is very responsive and professional. Even the Krystal CEO occasionally communicates with users via email.
All in all, you get fantastic support with Krystal Hosting.
Krystal Around the Web
Users praise the usual things—fast server speeds, great support, and useful features.
Krystal Hosting gets mostly positive reviews. So much in fact, it seems unreal, but even the best Magento hosting providers get a negative reaction here and there.
Still, the PR department does go to great lengths to appease users with legitimate grievances. Krystal Hosting’s great reputation is warranted here.
They even sent one user apology flowers with her refund.
All hosting providers encounter a few bumps in the road. Even AWS has outages. It’s good to know that Krystal holds itself accountable and makes up for the damage done.
Krystal Hosting is a fantastic host with a great sense of humor. It offers a 60-day money-back guarantee, so check it out if you want U. Magento hosting.
KEY FEATURES
Data centers: 1 UK location
Scalability: Very solid
Support: Excellent, Magento specialists
Control panel: cPanel
Thing we liked
- Excellent security
- Fantastic in-house support
- Perfect for UK users
- Transparent and proud of it
Thing we disliked
- Only one data center
Start Price: $37/ month
7. Sonassi
Sonassi used to build Magento websites before it switched to high-end hosting. While most hosts build a few custom features, Sonassi created an entire operating system for Magento. And that’s just the beginning—the company excels at practically all levels of service. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better provider for Magento, but this comes at a steep price.
Sonassi specializes in ecommerce hosting. The company started out building Magento stores, before fully switching to hosting services—the staff has real Magento experience.
Sonassi is now owned by Iomart and uses its cloud infrastructure. Let’s see what this Magento hosting solution can do for you.
What Sets It Apart
Sonassi uses Iomart’s data centers, meaning your audience can access your site from 25 different locations—great for avoiding latency issues.
Sonassi went surprisingly far and made an operating system called MageStack. This solution is tailored specifically for Magento 2 hosting. Its purpose is to make horizontal scaling easier and boost the overall Magento performance.
MageStack is based on Debian Linux, so using it is similar to any other Linux hosting out there.
Sonassi software engineers point out making Magento fast as a whole gets better results than going for aggressive caching. And they have a point—caching is useful, but it can’t completely resolve some crucial issues like a slow checkout page.
MageStack, however, gives you a performance boost across the board. Of course, you can use caching on top of it for extra performance boost.
Apart from the unique OS, you get useful features for Magento like a PCI-compliant environment, server monitoring, and offsite backups.
Sonassi lets you customize your Magento server based on the resources you need. If you’re not sure, you can enter store size and traffic, and Sonassi will suggest a configuration.
However, it specializes in larger stores, meaning the smallest server handles up to 4,000 daily visitors. It has 8 CPU Cores running at 3.50 GHz, 16Gb of RAM, and 400Gb SSD Storage.
The price is around $310/month with an annual subscription. This goes up if you pay month-to-month or biannually. Sonassi also charges a setup fee if you opt for monthly payments.
You can get plenty of resources and easily add multiple servers, so you get practically infinite scaling. The solution is geared towards larger stores, though, so the solutions are all in the high-end VPS price range.
Sonassi Support
Sonassi has three levels of support, two of which are paid.
Server monitoring only comes with the paid tiers, which is a disadvantage. You can also pay for emergency developer interventions. This service is useful in a clutch, but it can’t replace regular developer maintenance.
The support team is awesome. The staff are experts in Magento hosting and will keep everything running smoothly for you. Agents even engage in online discussions and help out people hosted with other companies.
You can get fantastic support, but certain services are extra.
Sonassi Around the Web
Sonassi gets positive reactions, but very few users have reviewed it online.
The lack of attention probably stems from the solutions being fairly high-end. Sonassi’s target audience are large retailers, companies, and resellers, i.e., users who need powerful solutions and are willing to pay for them.
To sum up, Sonassi offers efficient and unique solutions. However, it is designed to be the best Magento hosting service for established retailers. If it’s your first Magento store, you might want to get a VPS plan with one of the other hosts. If you have a massive store, though, Sonassi can support it.
KEY FEATURES
Data centers: Truly global presence
Scalability: Sublime
Support: The best Magento specialists
Control panel: MageStack
Thing we liked
- OS Optimized for Magento
- Top-of-the-line features
- Tremendous technical team
Thing we disliked
- Pricy
- Charges a setup fee if you pay month-to-month
Start Price: $310/ month
Magento Hosting - the Best Way to Sell Online
Running a Magento store with poor hosting is like having a shiny new Lambo with a run-down old engine. Will it even work? Even if it kind of works, you don’t have to be a genius to know what’s holding you back.
Unfortunately, for all its brilliant features, Magento is a resource hog. That’s the reality of things. Only a top hosting provider will make this platform be all it could be for your business.
Luckily, Hosting Tribunal is the place to look for quality Magento hosting. I reviewed a variety of providers claiming to have the best hosting platform for Magento. Unsurprisingly, only some actually made good on their claims.
Keep reading these Magento hosting reviews to find which providers are worth your time and trust.
How We Ranked the Best Magento Hosting Providers – Our Review Process
In the world of ecommerce, Magento is a different animal. A regular hosting provider can run WooCommerce or PrestaShop flawlessly, and still crumble under Magento.
Magento’s higher requirements call for much stricter testing. Here’s how I ensured the hosts listed here could handle the challenge.
- Review the plans—Even a small Magento store can eat up a big chunk of server resources. The first step was to check if the host offered enough resources and supported the necessary technology to run a Magento store.
- Magento-specific solutions—Magento as a CMS has specific quirks. Quality Magento providers often introduce custom solutions that make your Magento store faster and/or more secure.
- Test ease of use—Magento isn’t the most straightforward platform by any means. That said, a Magento-specific host can take some of the burden off your shoulders. The less work you need to do, the better.
- Check the support—Magento users might need assistance more often than the typical website owner. A support team that just follows a troubleshooting script is of little use. The support team needs enough Magento experience to detect and help you solve even subtle problems.
- Check reputation—Magento users invest a lot into their stores, and you can bet they take the investment seriously. If something is fishy about the hosting provider, you can be sure they’ll voice their concerns. I conducted interviews and sifted through user reviews to see what they had to say.
- Read the terms of service—93% of people skip reading ToS. Providers know that, and if there’s any fine print they want to hide, that’s where it’s hidden. I checked ToS so you don’t have to.
- Compare features and pricing—Let’s face it—Magento hosting that is worth its salt doesn’t come cheap. Magento is so taxing on the back end, the hosting has to be more expensive than if you hosted, for example, WordPress.
Still, although higher prices are to be expected, you shouldn’t let anyone rip you off. The pricing model has to be fair.
You’ll find all that info in the reviews below. Keep reading to find out who has the best hosting for Magento.
What is Magento
Magento is a potent ecommerce platform. It powers the websites of giants like Coca-Cola, Ford, and Nike—quite a portfolio.
Magento has the advantage of being insanely flexible and scalable. You can start with a small store and build it up into a billion-dollar business without changing platforms.
Magento has enough benefits to fill out several articles. Suffice it to say it’s one powerful piece of software.
Magento Requires Specialized Hosting
All the power and versatility Magento provides has a tradeoff.
It gobbles up server resources faster than probably any other CMS. Which means you need a powerful hosting solution to sustain it.
This, invariably, comes at a price. Although the pricing varies from host to host, it’s almost always more expensive than if you were running WordPress or a simple shopping cart.
It’s difficult to say which hosting solution is best. The right hosting for you depends, by and large, on your traffic. You can check out the reviews above to learn what might be the best Magento hosting for you.
Another problem is that Magento is deceptively difficult to master.
If you just scratch the surface, Magento seems straightforward enough. You can manage most day-to-day tasks with little technical knowledge. Sure, some things like simple speed optimization require dwelling into SSH and knowing a bit of code. You’d have to handle the same thing with other CMSs, though, right?
The problem is, the deeper you go into managing a Magento store, the more you’ll realize its complexity. And you can go quite deep. Even professional PHP developers can get lost for months on end before becoming confident with Magento.
Bottom line—if you have no experience with running a Magento website, you’ll likely need outside help, which can get costly. Finding a developer who is Magento-certified is really the only way to ensure a positive result. Which brings me to my next point.
Consider if you can get help from a certified Magento developer before you start. Magento experts are in high demand, especially now that everyone is transferring to Magento 2. Make sure you have an expert at your disposal before going down that road.
What Makes Magento Hosting Different?
If you’re new to Magento, you might wonder why all the talk about the best Magento hosting. Won’t Magento work on any hosting platform?
It’s a legitimate question. The answer: sure, Magento will run on just about any Linux server as long as it supports the needed technology.
If you’re not sure, here are the requirements for the latest version of Magento:
- Linux x86-64
- Apache 2.x/Nginx 1.x
- PHP 7.1.3+/7.2.x
- MySQL 5.6+
However, Magento users aren’t typically looking to start a run-of-the-mill ecommerce website. Instead, they are making an investment to take advantage of Magento’s benefits like speed, stability, or SEO-friendliness.
The issue is that Magento burns through server resources really quickly. A poor choice of hosting can offset all the inherent advantages of Magento and make everything a colossal waste of money.
If you do go with one of the quality Magento hosting companies, here are a few advantages you can expect:
First, a small starter plan can’t handle as much traffic with Magento as it would with WordPress, and the providers know this. Magento-optimized hosts allocate enough server resources.
Many experienced Magento users will advise you to get as much CPU power and RAM availability as you can, but shoot for 4Gb of RAM or more. In some cases, you can do with less if the provider has an awesome configuration. Still, this is a solid starting point and should be more than enough for handling a few dozen orders per day.
A bigger problem with shared hosting providers is that some set the PHP memory limit too low. This is an advantage for most sites, since it prevents poor PHP scripts from hogging all server resources.
For Magento hosting, it’s a problem, as you often need a Gigabyte or more reserved for PHP processes. A quality host should set the limit higher even though it’s shared hosting.
Speaking of support, the team should have agents with Magento experience onboard.
If a hosting provider deals with different types of hosting, you can’t really expect every frontline agent to be a Magento expert. That said, the host should have at least one certified Magento developer, if not several.
It’s just a practical consideration. An experienced Magento developer can quickly identify common Magento problems and help you resolve them. On the other hand, unqualified support will probably make a huge mess you’ll have to pay to fix.
The benefits of managed Magento hosting don’t stop there. The hosting provider can configure its servers to maximize your store’s performance and security. Plus, you’ll often get useful custom solutions.
Of course, this isn’t the only way to get these benefits. You could easily rent a server, configure it yourself, and install any solutions you need. However, it would take experience, resources, and perhaps a whole developer team to match the functionality of the hosting providers above.
Providers with Magento-specific services are simply the most cost-effective way to get the most out of your online store.
A Few Final Words
You now know what makes the best hosting for Magento. The top companies all have a money-back policy, so take one or two of the most promising providers above for a spin and see how it works for you.
Common Questions about Magento Hosting
What is the best hosting for Magento?
It depends on your needs. Bigger stores with more revenue need more powerful hosting. Yet, getting more resources usually means paying more. Ideally, you should get hosting that lets your store run at full power without being too expensive.
For hosts who want to start small, SiteGround and FastComet offer affordable solutions. If you’re not sure about the resources you’ll need, Nexcess’ auto-scaling and Cloudways’ pay as you go pricing model are a safe choice.
How much does Magento Cloud cost?
Magento doesn’t list a specific price for Magento Cloud. What you pay is negotiable, and Magento should give you an option to pay month-to-month to make the subscription more manageable.
According to official data, though, Magento Commerce Cloud starts at $40,000/year. The price increases if your gross revenue is higher than $1 million.
In short, the hosted version of Magento is expensive. It’s a great asset if you can afford it, but it’s pretty much reserved for stores with six-figure earnings and higher. Liquid Web is geared towards users, fluent in Magento, while Sonassi is best for large stores. Krystal Hosting is fantastic overall, but it only has a presence in Western Europe.
You can check out more detailed reviews of all the hosts above and see if any works for you.
Is Magento free or paid?
Magento offers both a free and a paid solution.
One is called Magento Open Source. You can download it for free and host it anywhere you want.
Note that the free solution comes with its own set of expenses—hosting, a theme, extensions, and probably a Magento developer. Even though the solution is technically free, it can easily cost you upwards of $1,000/month.
The second solution is Magento Commerce. It is a licensed solution, meaning you host it on your own servers as well. It comes with extra functionality compared to Magento Open source. Its price depends on your GMV.
The third solution is Magento Commerce Cloud. It works as a SaaS, meaning you get a hosted Magento solution. The features are identical with Magento Commerce, but you get hosting from the guys who created Magento. It’s as powerful as Magento gets.
The tradeoff is that it’s even pricier than the self-hosted Magento Commerce.
What you choose will depend on your needs—Magento Open Source is the go-to solution for most stores. Commerce and Commerce Cloud are only worth it for larger enterprises. Still, neither solution is cheap.
How much is Magento per month?
It depends on the solution. Magento Open Source is free to download, but you still have to pay for hosting and any themes and extensions you use. Plus, Magento 2 developers are sort of pricey, but they are a must if you have no experience with the platform.
There’s no official pricing for Magento Commerce on the Magento website. The price is negotiable, though, but rather high. You have to contact support about it, but expect it to be around $22,000/year, if your GMV doesn’t exceed $1 million.
As for Magento Commerce Cloud, the prices usually start at $40,000/year. The pricing is steep, true, and it only makes sense for stores with at least six-figure earnings.
Magento is looking to tweak its pricing model. The prices above are based on official data, but they are subject to change. Keep them in mind as ballpark numbers only.
Does Magento offer hosting?
It depends on which solution you go with. Magento Open Source is free and suitable for all but the largest businesses. You have to purchase Magento hosting from a provider, though.
The only Magento version with hosting included is Magento Commerce Cloud. This is a much more powerful solution out of the box, but it is geared towards established retailers.
If you’re just starting out, your best bet is to review the hosting options above and see if something fits the bill. Established companies looking to upgrade their ecommerce game may benefit from Magento Commerce solutions as well.