I’ve worked with many hosting providers during my career as a Magento 2 developer. They are all pretty much alike in what services they offer in regards to hosting an eCommerce website. What’s different is how they do those services.
I’m going to share my expertise and tell you how to choose a hosting company. There will be one endorsement at the end of the post, those guys I know personally and can recommend without any hesitation.
What to look for in a Magento 2 web host
Firstly, a web host should have basic knowledge of an eCommerce platform and know how to fix basic issues. They need to know how to search the official github repository for bug reports, evaluate and apply suggested solutions. This will help you save time and money on developer fees as your hosting support team will be able to fix 90% of site problems.
I'd ask a potential company if they specialize in Magento Hosting, ensuring their support team is trained to figure out simple bugs and code issues.
Secondly, they need to be quick in replying to your support requests and answering site maintenance questions if you have any. Your checkout shouldn’t be down and you shouldn’t be waiting too long for a hosting engineer to look at the site.
Ask them:
What their communication preferences are
How long to wait for an answer
Where their support team is based and whether or not it’s on the same time zone with you
Thirdly, how fast can they make a Magento 2 to run? The platform is very dependent on hardware and a faster server means a faster site and more sales.
Find out if:
They offer Varnish cache server and if it’s for an extra fee
They offer Redis cache for faster session handling
They do full page cache warming with bash scripts
My personal experience with hosting providers
I’ve dealt with various companies during my 10+ years as a Magento developer. I have seen excellent performance and damages made by server hosts.
I’m going to list just 3 examples of what could go wrong and what to look for:
Hosts not being able to restore a backup when there is a need. Imagine your site gets hacked and you cannot rollback to a working copy. I’d suggest asking a provider to do a test rollback once in a while just to make sure.
Hosts upgrade server software without notice and it leads to a site malfunction or being completely offline.
Web host doesn’t run a simple malware scan and doesn’t alert you when there is a security patch available. Ask them about their security policy, do they scan files etc.
My suggestion
Check out this company - Lexiconn. They offer various Magento 2 hosting plans as well as other web and eCommerce platforms. They manage servers and they are pretty good at it.
I’ve worked with them on various projects and I can confirm - they are good at what they do. They can fix 90% of Magento issues in house saving you tons of money on developer fees.
This post isn’t an endorsement and I don’t receive any referral fees from Lexiconn. That’s purely my personal opinion and my personal experience, don’t hold me liable:)
Summary
Spend some time and evaluate each hosting provider that’s on your list. Don’t rely on ‘N best hosts’ articles, in many cases it’s a referral scheme. Do your due diligence and pick a company that will take good care of your eCommerce store.
Once again, top 3 things to look for:
Security policy
Backup policy
In house developer knowledge, can they fix simple bugs?
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