Used by some of the biggest brands on the planet, not to mention a plethora of small and medium sized businesses, Magento is one of the top ecommerce platforms on the market. The open-source system empowers digital retailers with flexible cloud solutions designed to drive growth and support innovation.
To keep Magento ecommerce sites performing at their best, choosing the right Magento hosting provider is essential. Want to know more? Here's an insider's guide to cherry picking the best Magento cloud hosting provider for your business, with a focus on essentials like speed, security and uptime.
Incredible uptime
Influencing a customer's ability to browse and buy, uptime has a direct impact on bottom lines. As a result, it should be front of mind for enterprises of all sizes. The best Magento hosting providers offer continuous uptime monitoring and a team of experts on hand to keep your website live. Ideally, you shouldn't be settling for anything less than 99.9% uptime rates.
Naturally, uptime is also key during peak times such as Boxing Day and Black Friday, when ecommerce platforms experience a major surge. The capacity to handle increased traffic is a feature offered by best in class Magento hosting providers.
24/7/365 support
The internet doesn't indulge in shuteye, and neither should your website. Premium Magento hosting providers offer round-the-clock support to ensure your website is always performing at its best. Grade A hosts should also offer Disaster Recovery Management services designed to get your website back online as quickly as possible in a worst-case scenario. Hosts with Magento Certified support teams are a bonus and mean you can leverage expert advice and tailored solutions.
Watertight security
As an online business, you have a responsibility to protect visitors’ and customers’ sensitive information. The best Magento hosting providers take this to heart with robust security measures such as Anti-DDOS Protection, which utilise advanced algorithms and software to monitor all incoming website traffic. Any traffic that's suspicious or illegitimate is automatically denied access.
You should also look for Magento hosting providers offering daily antivirus and security scanning on a minute-by-minute basis, as well as regular firewall and patch updates. With a proactive approach to security, your host can detect and remove malware early, before search engines blacklist your site. Extras such as TrueShield™ Web Application Firewall protection ramp up your defence against hackers and attacks.
Freedom to grow and get creative
Magento is a sophisticated program that empowers enterprises with the freedom to design custom websites that fit the unique needs of their business. The open-source platform currently boasts a community of more than 300,000 developers and is always on the search for new talent. A good Magento hosting provider should offer the flexibility to support customisation and adapt to growth.
Lightning-fast speed
From loading product videos to processing transactions, the best Magento hosting providers offer lightning-fast response times. Look for extras like Speed Accelerator Technology engineered to switch your website into top gear. Some Magento hosting providers take the concept to the next level with bespoke speed optimisation designed to support your site's theme.
Go global with a content delivery network
If you're going global, look for a Magento hosting provider that offers a content delivery network. This allows you to speed up your website and boost page load speeds by delivering content from the closest geographic location to the end user.
Take it to the cloud
Magento cloud hosting providers take zero risks, sending all your data directly to the cloud where it's stored on secure servers. When it comes to data centres, geographical location can make all the difference. If your ecommerce business is based in the UK, look for hosting providers with British or European data centres, ideally with ultra-fast 1 Gbp up/down connections and 99.0% SLA guarantees.
Tiered pricing to fit the unique needs of your business
Not all businesses operate at the same capacity, which is why tiered pricing is essential when it comes to choosing the best Magento hosting provider for your needs. Smaller businesses should harness savings with basic hosting packages that support around 1K visits per day. If you need more capacity, consider upgrading to a more powerful Magento hosting package.
Experience and expertise
The best Magento hosting providers combine industry experience with an open-minded approach to the latest trends and innovations. Start-ups can be a great way to save on hosting expenses, though if you're serious about elevating your ecommerce business to greater heights it's worth investing in a host with serious knowhow.
An integrated approach
One of the most common issues encountered by business owners is a lack of communication between Magento developers and hosting companies. A good Magento hosting provider should take a collaborative approach to ecommerce. The framework should be underpinned by infrastructure that champions best practices from the perspective of developers and marketers.
Optional extras
Premium Magento hosting providers ramp up their service with optional extras designed to enhance the experience of both business owners and their customers. As well as Magento optimised hosting, some of the best services to look out for include email hosting, SSL Certificates and website security.
Get it all with Bing Hosting
Looking for a Magento hosting provider with the works? Bing Hosting offers the best of both worlds with features that are not only paramount to business owners, but also to their customers. With support for versions 1 & 2, we provide fully managed Magento hosting for your mission-critical ecommerce store. Choose from three pricing tiers geared towards small, medium and largescale enterprises.
