What Should You Look for When Choosing Magento Hosting?

Magento is one of the most used platforms for eCommerce stores. It offers flexibility, thanks to a wide range of themes and plugins. It’s the equivalent of WordPress, but designed specifically for eCommerce websites.

To make the most of the eCommerce platform, you need to select the right hosting plan.

So, what’s the best hosting for eCommerce sites? Here’s a closer look at the main features to consider.

What Is Magento Hosting?

Magento hosting is a web hosting plan optimized for hosting the Magento platform. Magento is an open-source eCommerce platform available for installation on any type of hosting plan. However, some hosting solutions provide features that enhance the performance of Magento.

For those unfamiliar with the software, Magento is a free program for setting up and managing eCommerce stores. It comes with flexible solutions to handle eCommerce sites of all sizes.

No matter if you have just a few products or thousands of items to sell, the Magento platform makes it easy to manage and sell your inventory. It also provides access to various plugins and tools for marketing and search engine optimization, helping to bring more visitors to your store.

As with WordPress, Magento is written in PHP and relies heavily on MySQL databases. Some hosting plans include technologies that work better with PHP and MySQL.

For example, choosing a plan that uses the LiteSpeed web server instead of Apache may lead to faster loading times. LiteSpeed is a drop-in replacement for Apache with a custom PHP LSAPI to increase PHP performance.

A standard shared hosting plan may not meet your needs, especially if you’re expecting to build a large eCommerce platform.

WooCommerce Versus Magento – What’s the Difference?

Magento is a full-featured platform that includes customizable eCommerce solutions, including shopping carts and inventory management. WooCommerce offers many of the same features, but it is not a complete platform.

WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress. It was originally developed by WooThemes and later purchased by Automattic – the company that operates WordPress.com.

WooCommerce has become the most-used eCommerce plugin for WordPress. About 30% of eCommerce sites use this WordPress plugin.

Magento and WooCommerce are the top two choices for eCommerce stores.

While both options are great, each has separate advantages. WooCommerce is more geared toward beginners. It’s a WordPress plugin, so those that already use WordPress should have no problem setting up WooCommerce.

Magento has more of a learning curve, but it also provides more in-depth features. Some of the benefits of choosing Magento over WooCommerce include:

• Magento is a scalable solution that can handle an unlimited number of products.
• The platform provides a streamlined checkout process.
• You can easily integrate PayPal and other third-party payment processors.

If you want a platform that you can count on as you grow your business, consider going with Magento. It can support the largest eCommerce stores when paired with the right hosting plan.

Types of eCommerce Hosting Solutions

One of the challenges of setting up an eCommerce store is choosing the right eCommerce hosting provider. Many hosting providers, including YottaHost and other affordable providers, offer a wide range of hosting services, including:

• Cloud web hosting
• NVMe SSD hosting
• WordPress hosting

Some hosting solutions are better suited for eCommerce platforms. For example, when using the WooCommerce plugin with WordPress, a WordPress optimized hosting plan may deliver better results.

WordPress hosting includes database optimization and may come with the Jetpack plugin pre-installed. Jetpack provides convenient access to dozens of useful features, from search engine optimization tools to various utilities.

NVMe SSD hosting and cloud web hosting may cost less compared to WordPress hosting. These options also tend to include a few extra features that may improve the performance of your eCommerce store, such as faster speeds.

Top Factors for Reliable eCommerce Website Hosting

No matter if you choose Magento or the WooCommerce plugin for WordPress, you need a dependable eCommerce hosting solution.

Pay attention to the following features when comparing providers for eCommerce website hosting:

• Type of server technology
• Disk storage solutions
• Magento or WordPress optimization
• Available bandwidth

These are the issues that are most likely to impact the performance of your eCommerce site. You should also compare prices, read reviews, and check out any other features that matter to you.

Server Technology – Look for LiteSpeed Servers

When it comes to the servers that deliver your webpages to visitors, most sites still use Apache. LiteSpeed is currently the fourth-most used web server. While it’s not as popular, it provides several advantages for eCommerce stores.

LiteSpeed was developed with custom configurations to speed up PHP scripts, which are the main files used for WordPress and Magento. By using LiteSpeed, your pages should load quicker when a visitor opens one of your URLs in their browser.

With built-in DDoS protection, LiteSpeed increases the security of your eCommerce website. Security is an essential consideration if you accept payments on your site. As a drop-in replacement, LiteSpeed is also compatible with all Apache security features.

Along with the server technology, check the server uptime guarantee. Some of the most reliable hosting solutions offer 100% server uptime guarantees thanks to the use of CloudLinux OS and other technologies.

CloudLinux OS was designed for shared hosting services to improve stability and security. It separates all users on the server into individual lightweight virtualized environments (LVEs).

Each LVE has dedicated resources, preventing one user from throttling the performance of other websites on the same server. This gives you some of the same benefits provided by dedicated hosting, but without having to pay hundreds of dollars per month.

Disk Storage Solutions – NVMe Storage

The type of disk storage directly impacts the speed and reliability of your eCommerce website. NVMe storage is the latest disk storage solution, providing a wide range of advantages over standard solid-state drives (SSDs).

NVMe drives have much faster disk read/write speeds, which determines how quickly your site loads. Online stores often use a lot of resources. The site makes hundreds of requests to databases and runs dozens of PHP scripts to load a single page.

With NVMe technology, you get the fastest disk speeds available. This ensures that your pages load as fast as possible.

Magento or WordPress Optimization

As mentioned, some eCommerce web hosting plans come optimized for Magento or WordPress installations. You may even find an option that offers a one-click installation for these platforms.

What does optimization mean for eCommerce platforms? An optimized eCommerce hosting plan should include features that serve PHP files and handle MySQL requests faster, such as NVMe drives and LiteSpeed.

The hosting plan should also use a simple control panel. cPanel is one of the most used options. It has an easy to browse layout, allowing you to quickly view MySQL databases or install a new copy of WordPress or Magento.

Another useful feature for eCommerce stores is CloudFlare CDN. CloudFlare is the leading content delivery network (CDN).

CloudFlare CDN caches static files, such as images and JavaScript files that don’t change frequently. It then serves content to visitors based on their location, boosting the speed of your website.

How Much Bandwidth Do You Need for eCommerce?

If you receive a few thousand visitors per month, bandwidth isn’t a major issue. When you start receiving hundreds of thousands of visitors, limited bandwidth slows the speed of your site.

Affordable web hosting plans typically offer a minimum of 300GB of bandwidth. For an eCommerce store, you’ll want at least 500GB of bandwidth to prevent bottlenecks that keep visitors from viewing your pages quickly.

If a page doesn’t load within several seconds, you lose visitors.

As your online business grows, you may need more bandwidth. Some of the top eCommerce web hosting plans provide unlimited bandwidth or at least 1000GB of bandwidth, along with unlimited domains and free SSL certificates.

Comparing the Average Price of eCommerce Web Hosting

Entrepreneurs that are just getting into the eCommerce game may want the cheapest hosting plan. Typically, shared hosting is the least expensive option.

Traditional shared hosting also comes with several major disadvantages. Shared hosting plans require you to share bandwidth with other users. If one site gets a boost of visitors, your site may slow.

A DDoS attack on another site on the same server could jeopardize the security of your site and files.

Cloud web hosting and NVMe SSD hosting reduce these risks. You don’t need to worry about bandwidth issues or other sites hogging the resources. The CloudLinux OS keeps everything running smoothly while LiteSpeed and additional DDoS protection increase the security.

Conclusion – What’s the Best Hosting for eCommerce?

A successful eCommerce site should receive tens of thousands of monthly visitors. To ensure that your website continues to load swiftly and process transactions without errors, make sure that you select the best hosting for eCommerce sites.

If you want to build an eCommerce empire, you need the right foundation. Start by comparing hosting plans and look for the technologies that work best with Magento or WooCommerce. Features such as LiteSpeed servers, NVMe disks, and PHP and MySQL optimization help boost the performance of your website.