Top 5+ Best Fastest Magento 2 Hosting in 2020
Magento 2 has been released in on November 17, 2015, to replace Magento 1 and compared with Magento 1, there were a lot of new improvements for this best eCommerce platform. On the flip side, these changes also make Magento 2 one of the most resource-intensive opensource eCommerce platform. Just like traditional business, the rule of success for every online business lays on how they satisfy their customer and make them happy to purchase products, therefore, hosting plays an important role in this game. If your Magento 2 store has a poor performance, visitors will likely leave and do not make their purchase decision.
Choosing the best hosting for Magento 2 could be a headache for every store-owner as not all users can try different hosting providers before making their final decision. Here at Magenhosting.com, we will do this frustrating task for you. Our review is based on actual data and real experience we have collected when working with different Magento 2 projects.
To save your time, here is our list of the top 5 Magento 2 hosting service providers, these companies are consistently the top Magento 2 hosting companies in the industry when it comes to quality and service:
Top 5 Magento 2 hosting service providers
Rank numberProviderMagento 2 optimizationsLoadtimesSupportOverall ratingPrice (from)
#1 SiteGround
- Easy Magento 2 installation with Softaculous
- Advance security
- Supercacher strong caching system
- SG-git for repo creation
- SSD on all plans
Loadtimes: 600ms
Supports:
- Phone
- Livechat
- Knowledge base
- Ticket response time: 3 hours
- Common Magento 2 issues
Start Price: $3.95/month
#2A2hosting
- Magento 2 installation with Softaculous
- Magento LiteSpeed cache (LiteMage cache)
- CSS&Javascript merging
- A2 Optimized Magento features for auto Magento 2 optimization
- SSD for all plans
Loadtimes: 825ms
Supports:
- Phone
- Livechat
- Ticket response time: 5 hours
- Common Magento 2 issues
Start Price: $3.92/month
#3 Nexcess
– Redis Cache and Memcached.
– Percona Server with XtraDB
– Dedicated SAS disk to store database
– APF (Advanced Policy Firewall)
– PCI-compliance
– APC (alternative PHP cache)
Loadtimes: 634ms
Supports:
- Phone
- Livechat
- Ticket response time: 5 hours
- Expert support for Magento by experienced Magento developers
Start Price: $19.95/month
#4 Cloudways
– ThunderStack formula.
- 3 Steps Magento 2 installation
– Full Page Cache plugin
– Cloudways CDN
– Optimized LAMP
– Auto-scalable container-based Kyup cloud infrastructure
Loadtimes: 588ms
Supports:
- Phone
- Livechat
- Slack channel
- Ticket response time: 2 hours
- Common Magento 2 issues8
Start Price: $10/month
#5 Aspirationhosting
– Free LiteMage cache system
– KernelCare rebootless kernel
– Aspiration CDN network on over 50 cities worldwide
– PCI-compliance
Loadtimes: 750ms
Supports:
- Livechat
- Ticket response time: 3 hours
- Webdev support
- Common Magento 2 issues
Start Price: $9.95/month
What make a hosting the best hosting to run Magento 2?
There are 5 key factors you have to look at before choosing a hosting to run your Magento 2 store
- Does the hosting meet Magento 2 system requirements?: In order to have a smooth Magento 2 store, your hosting need to meet Magento 2 system requirements.
- Hosting support on Magento 2 issue: When operating a website, especially Magento 2 platform, you will see a lot of arise problems and sometimes you can’t solve them without the support of your hosting provider. We recommend to purchase hosting from a provider with good Magento 2 support, preferably Magento certified developer in support team.
- Magento 2 optimizations: Magento 2 website requires a lot of resources, not just hardware but also software in order to run smoothly. When choosing a good hosting, we will also look into what Magento 2 optimizations hosting providers provide in their plan to support a Magento 2 website. Some optimization such as: caching, installation tool, CDN, debug tool are very important.
- Hosting uptime: Uptime is the time your hosting has stayed up and run. The store should be running up all the time to avoid losing any sales, thus, a hosting with high uptime percentages should be chosen.
- Network latency: Network latency means how much time it takes for a packet of data to travel from one point to another. It’s clearly better to have hosting with low latency so that your website will be loaded more quickly.
- Price / Value: Some hosting are overpriced, in long-term we better choose a hosting plan that has an affordable price for their value.
How we test the performance of each Magento 2 hosting
To have accurate results on hosting performance test, we create a default installation of Magento 2 on each hosting and install the default Magento 2 theme Luma. Next, we add 10 products to each site with product image and description. After that, we conduct the following test to measure the performance of each Magento 2 hosting
- Server Load and Stress test: We measure how many concurrent requests a hosting can handle in parallel until it reaches the threshold limit.
- Latency test: We use Bitcatcha to test response time of each hosting from various countries, including :
- United States WEST and EAST,
- United Kingdom (London),
- Singapore, Brazil (Sao Paolo), India (Bangalore), Sydney (Australia), Japan
- Speed test: We use Pingdom and Gtmetrix, and Google Pagespeed insight to measure how fast a user can load the Magento 2 website.
- Uptime test: we use uptime.com to check uptime of Magento 2 website on each hosting over a period of 12 months
Now we will go in detail with the performance test of each hosting
SiteGround
Price: Startup $3.95/month – GrowBig $5.95/month – GoGeek $11.95/month
Server load and stress test: average 600ms
Ping (min and max): Min: 18ms – Max: 245ms
Uptime: 98%
Optimized for Magento 2: Yes
Best for: Magento 2 website with less than 200 active online users and 2000 products (GoGeek)
- Hosting Overview
SiteGround was established in 2004 and they are very reputed among Magento community. SiteGround offers 3 plan for their customer:
– Startup ($3.95/month): 1 website, 10GB space, suitable for ~10.000 visitors/month
– GrowBig ($5.95/month): unlimited websites, 20GB space, suitable for ~25.000 visitors/month
– GoGeek ($11.95/month): unlimited websites, 30GB space, suitable for ~100.000 visitors/month
All hosting plans are running on SSD (Solid state driver), unlimited data transfer, free daily website backup.
SiteGround currently has over 1.700.000 domains running on their servers. SiteGround is favorite for their reasonable price. At Magenhosting.com, we always choose SiteGround for small-sized websites with less than 500 products and 200 concurrent online users.
SiteGround has 4 server locations: Chicago, USA – London, UK – Amsterdam, Netherlands and Singapore
- Magento 2 installation
SiteGround offers free Magento 2 installation using Softaculous, an application that automates the installation of various open source web application in their Cpanel. You can finish Magento 2 install within a few clicks.
- Magento 2 optimizations
SiteGround has developed their own caching solution called: Supercacher. This caching system helps accelerate website speed multiple times and it’s very good for Magento 2. It helps reduce Magento 2 load time by half.
SiteGround also provides special features for Magento 2 are:
– Free install: SiteGround support staff will help you if you have any problem during Magento 2 installation
– Advanced security: SiteGround will monitor and stop and vulnerable threats to your Magento 2 website while waiting for offical development fixs
– Support on Magento problems: Unlike other hosting providers who just help customers with hosting related issue, SiteGround will also help you resolve common Magento 2 issues when running website on their server.
- Server Load and Stress testing
Let’s see SiteGround hosting’s capacity with the result from Loadimpact – the most well-known service for stress and load testing (we useGoGeek plan in the test):
Server location: US
Testing machine location: Dallas, US
Lowest load time: 572 ms
Highest load time: 640 ms
SiteGround return an outstanding outstanding result on load and stress test. On average, it takes 600ms to load a default Magento 2 website with 500 products on SiteGround and it remains stable until the number of online users reacher 100. This means you can run a small to medium website seamlessly on SiteGround.
- Latency test
We test response time from different locations worldwide to SiteGround’s server. Below is the result:
Server location: US
Min Ping: 23.098 ms
Max Ping: 244.130 ms
The server we used in the test is located in the US. Ping time is quite low, even from the US to Asian countries like Tokyo or Singapore.
- Speed test
We use a default Magento 2 installation without any code optimization, and here is the result from PingDom:
The website loads quite fast with 162 requests, it achieves 83 performance grade even without any optimization.
Pros
- Very good support on hosting & Magento 2 issues, we can ask for support via many ways: chat, ticket, phone call.
- Strong caching solution which helps boost Magento 2 website speed a lot.
- They offer server locations in 3 continents around the world: US, Europe and Asia so you can choose server location that is nearest to your target customers.
- Affordable price, best for small to medium-sized business.
- Easy to use control panel
- Solid state driver on all plans, which is extremely helpful for improving Magento 2 performance
Cons
- Startup plan allow only 1 website.
- Renewal fee is more expensive than 1st time buying price
- SG-Git and PCI-Compliant server features only available on GoGeek plan
A2hosting
Price: Lite $3.92/month – Swiff $4.90/month – Turbo $9.31/month
Server load and stress test: average 825ms
Ping (min and max): Min: 14.827ms – Max: 238.343ms
Uptime: 99%
Optimized for Magento 2: Yes
Best for: Magento 2 website with less than 170 active online users and 3000 products (Turbo plan)
- Hosting Overview
A2Hosting start their business in 2001 and they focus on providing flexibility for developers as well as store owners. A2hosting gives you 3 options:
– Lite ($3.92/month): 1 website, unlimited storage, suitable for ~8.000 visitors/month
– Swiff ($4.90/month): unlimited websites, 20GB space, suitable for ~30.000 visitors/month
– Turbo ($9.31/month): unlimited websites, 30GB space, suitable for ~120.000 visitors/month
For all 3 packages, you will have free Cpanel, SSD, free SSL certificate and unlimited bandwidth.
A2hosting is a reputed provider among Magento community. They are a developer-friendly provider that gives you all the latest version of development software you need to build a website.
A2hosting has datacenters in USA (Michigan), USA (Arizona), Europe (Amsterdam), Asia (Singapore)
- Magento 2 installation
Softculous autoinstaller is also integrated in A2hosting’s cpanel. Like SiteGround, you can install Magento 2 easily within a few steps.
- Magento 2 optimizations
A2hosting boosts Magento 2 website’s performance with Magento LiteSpeed Cache (Turbo Plan), Memcached, OPcache and Turbo Cache. APC (Alternative PHP Cache) is enabled on every of their hosting plan.
A2 Optimized Magento features give your site auto-configuration by developers to speed up Magento 2
- Server Load and Stress testing
Below is load and stress test from a Magento 2 website running on A2hosting
Server location: US
Testing machine location: Ashburn, US
Lowest load time: 803 ms
Highest load time: 950 ms
As can be seen from the chart, load time sticks in a range between 750ms & 900ms and it remains steady even when the number of users is 100.
- Latency test
A2hosting return a remakable result in our latency test as below:
Server location: US
Min Ping: 14.827 ms
Max Ping: 238.343 ms
We also use A2hosting’s US datacenter in this latency test, ping from different locations to A2hosting is quite low, this means your website can serve global customers without worried about load speed.
- Speed test
We use a default Magento 2 installation without any code optimization, and here is the result from PingDom:
A2hosting has 80 performance grade on Pingdom for a default Magento 2 website.
Pros
- Professional support on hosting & Magento 2. You can request support on Livechat, Ticket system or by Phone, email
- Developer-friendly hosting with many tools to optimize Magento 2 website.
- Unlimited bandwidth on all plans.
- Litemage cache and Turbo give huge boost on website performance
Cons
- Some Magento 2 optimized features only available on Turbo plan.
- Renewal fee is expensive than first-time purchase
- No PCI Compliant, must use from 3rd party provider
Nexcess
Price: SIP 100 $19.95/month – Swiff $74.95/month – Turbo $189.95/month
Server load and stress test: average 634ms
Ping (min and max): Min: 17.729ms – Max: 243.709ms
Uptime: 99%
Optimized for Magento 2: Yes
Best for: Magento 2 website with less than 300 active online users and 5000 products (Turbo plan)
- Hosting Overview
Nexcess begins their journey in hosting industry in 2000, their teams consist of hundreds of people that are always ready to support with hosting issues as well as Magento 2 issues.
Unlike other hosting providers, Nexcess strongly focus on optimizing for open-source applications, especially Magento & Magento 2. Nexcess is also an official Magento Technology partner.
– SIP 100 ($19.95/month): 9 stores, 7.5 GB storage, suitable for ~3.000 visitors/month, 75GB/mo bandwidth
– SIP 200 ($4.90/month): 24 stores, 25GB space, suitable for ~15.000 visitors/month, 125GB/mo bandwidth ,1 year free SSL.
– SIP 300 ($9.31/month): 49 stores, 55GB space, suitable for ~30.000 visitors/month, 500GB/mo CDN Data traffic bandwidth,1 year free SSL.
With all hosting options, you will be provided with free 1 Dedicated IP + Email Hosting + 100% PCI compliance
Nexcess has 5 datacenters in United States, United Kingdom, and Australia
- Magento 2 installation
Nexcess doesn’t use Cpanel or Directadmin, instead they use Interworx Control Panel. You can easily install Magento 2 within a few steps using Softaculous integrated inside the hosting control panel.
- Magento 2 optimizations
Nexcess hosting comes with a lot of optimization dedicated for Magento 2.
– Redis Cache and Memcached are used on Nexcess hosting.
– Percona Server with XtraDB, with my.cnf variables ready-configured for Magento 2
– Dedicated SAS disk to store database
– APF (Advanced Policy Firewall) is configured for high-level security
– PCI-compliance for all hosting plans
– APC (alternative PHP cache is enabled and optimized for Magento 2.
- Server Load and Stress testing
With many optimizations for Magento, we can see an impress result as below:
Server location: US
Testing machine location: Ashburn, US
Lowest load time: 585 ms
Highest load time: 786 ms
There is a spike at first when the browser first loads website and build up cache. After that, loadtime stay at ~590ms and remains stable till the end of the test. This test shows that Nexcess hosting can serve a lot of requests at the sames time without any worry about website outage.
- Latency test
We test min and max ping from different locations worldwide to Nexcess’s US server and you can see result below:
Server location: US
Min Ping: 17.729 ms
Max Ping: 243.709 ms
Nexcess’s ping time is stable in a specific location, there’s not much difference between Min ping and Max ping from their server to the same location.
- Speed test
We install a default Magento 2 store with Luma theme to test on Pingdom:
Nexcess has 82 performance grade on Pingdom, as their load time is a little bit higher than other providers.
Pros
- A lot of optimization dedicated to Magento 2
- Pro-level support on Magento 2 with many certified Magento developers working in the company.
- PCI compliance for every plan
- Dedicated IP address
- Free email hosting
- Strong hardware
- Free SSL(paid) for SIP 200 and SIP 300 plan
Cons
- Very high price compared to other hosting providers
- Very limited bandwidth, costly to buy additional bandwidth
Cloudways
Price: Wide range of price, from $10 to $1000+
Server load and stress test: average 588ms
Ping (min and max): Min: 7.735ms – Max: 256.696ms
Uptime: 99%
Optimized for Magento 2: Yes
Best for: Magento 2 website with less than 300 active online users and 5000 products (Turbo plan)
- Hosting Overview
Cloudways runs their business in a completely different way. They literally do not own any datacenter, in stead, they partner up with 5 unmanaged hosting providers like: Digital Ocean, Vultr, Linode, AWS and Google to provide managed hosting service. As they offer customers many hosting plans, so I will just list out some of the most popular plans
– Starter plan (~$10/month): Unlimited websites, 25 GB storage, suitable for ~8.000 visitors/month, 1000GB/mo bandwidth
– Intermediate plan (~$22/month):Unlimited websites, 50GB space, suitable for ~25.000 visitors/month, 2000GB/mo bandwidth.
– Pro plan ($9.31/month): Unlimited websites, 80GB space, suitable for ~30.000 visitors/month, 4T/mo CDN Data traffic bandwidth.
With all hosting options, you will be provided with free SSL, SSD storage, Free CDN, Dedicated Firewall
- Magento 2 installation
Cloudways has their own hosting control panel, you can install Magento 2 in just 3 steps.
- Magento 2 optimizations
Cloudways is a managed hosting provider, so they offer customer with many read-to-use optimizations for Magento 2.
– ThunderStack formula with Varnish and Memcached as caching technology.
– Full Page Cache plugin by Amasty to boost Magento performance
– Cloudways CDN for faster network delivering
– Optimized LAMP Stack with Nginx, MariaDB, PHP 7
– Auto-scalable container-based Kyup cloud infrastructure
- Server Load and Stress testing
With a strong CDN (content delivery network), Magento 2 website hosted on Cloudways give out an amazing load and stress result:
Server location: US
Testing machine location: Ashburn, US
Lowest load time: 450ms
Highest load time: 920 ms
At first, loadtime was around 900ms. It took around 30 seconds for the system to build up cache and CDN to decide the nearest network to deliver content to website visitor. After that period, loadtime went to 400ms and remain stable until the end of the test.
From the test result, we can see the benefit of using CDN, especially for websites that target worldwide customers.
- Latency test
With a strong CDN, Cloudways continues to give amazing result on Ping test:
Server location: US
Min Ping: 7.735 ms
Max Ping: 256.696 ms
CDN also helps reduce ping time a lot. Lowest ping to Cloudways is from Newyork, only 7.235ms.
- Speed test
We install a default Magento 2 store with Luma theme to test on Pingdom:
Nexcess has 82 performance grade on Pingdom, as their load time is a little bit higher than other providers.
Pros
- Many plans and providers to choose from.
- Excellent support service on Magento 2 by certified Magento developers.
- Easy-to-use control panel
- Dedicated IP address
- Free Cloudways CDN reduces load time for worldwide visitors
- Free Magento full-page cache extension
- Free website migration
- SSH access for all plan
Cons
- No affordable plan for starter business, lowest price starts from $10
- Support sometimes slow reply to tickets.
- Some bugs on control-panel with unclear messages.
Aspiration hosting
Price: Basic $9/mo – Plus $22.50/mo – Pro $58.55/mo
Server load and stress test: average 750ms
Ping (min and max): Min: 8.356ms – Max: 239.222ms
Uptime: 99%
Optimized for Magento 2: Yes
Best for: 400 active online users and 8000 products (Plus plan)
- Hosting Overview
Founded in 2008 in USA, Aspiration Hosting is tailored to run Magento and Magento 2 with a lot of optimization from caching system to CDN system. There are 3 hosting plans to choose:
– Basic plan (~$9/month): Unlimited websites, 5 GB storage, suitable for ~8.000 visitors/month, 1000GB/mo bandwidth
– Plus plan (~$22.50/month):Unlimited websites, 50GB space, suitable for ~25.000 visitors/month, 2000GB/mo bandwidth.
– SIP 300 ($58.55/month): 49 stores, 55GB space, suitable for ~30.000 visitors/month, 500GB/mo CDN Data traffic bandwidth.
With all hosting options, you will be provided with free SSL, SSD storage, Free CDN, Dedicated Firewall
- Magento 2 installation
You can install Magento 2 using Softaculous within few steps
- Magento 2 optimizations
Aspiration Hosting is made for Magento, so they offer a lot of optimization for Magento
– Free LiteMage cache system, one of the fastest Magento Full Page Cache
– KernelCare rebootless kernel on all plans
– Aspiration has their own CDN network on over 50 cities worldwide for all plans
- Server Load and Stress testing
With a strong CDN (content delivery network), Magento 2 website hosted on Cloudways give out an amazing load and stress result:
Server location: US
Testing machine location: Ashburn, US
Min load time: 750ms
Max load time: 760 ms
The number of concurrent connections had little impact on the test results. During the test, loadtime is stable at 750ms, this chart proves that Aspiration is very good at handling multiple connection at the same time.
- Latency test
With a strong CDN, Cloudways continues to give amazing result on Ping test:
Server location: US
Min Ping: 8.356 ms
Max Ping: 239.222ms
Aspiration’s CDN help improve ping to geographical locations.
- Speed test
Aspiration Hosting score 86 grade on Pingdom:
Aspiration is the winner for performance grade on Pingdom
Pros
- Strong and free Aspiration CDN to boost load time of websites
- Professional support on Magento 2 issue by in-house developer
- Free litemage cache extension for Magento
- SSH access on all plans
- HardenedPHP secure old and unsupported version of PHP
Cons
- High price compared to other provider
- No Phone support and CDN for Basic Plan
- No support for Magento issue for Basic Plan
Conclusion
Magento 2 is strong but it’s also a nightmare for weak or not optimized hosting. My advice is don’t try to run Magento 2 on cheap and unreliable hosting like Bluehost or Godaddy, we already tested and disappointed.
Each hosting providers listed in the review has their own strength and weakness and all providers offer money-back guarantee, so don’t hesitate to give a try.
We hope you can use this guide as a reference point to find the best Magento 2 hosting service.