Does Magento Shared Hosting Suit You?

“Magento is resource hungry so it is better on a VDS/dedicated server”, “you cannot be PCI compliant on a shared host plan”

What no Ecommerce site owner really wants to admit, is that their sites do not get thousands of visitors a day and dozens of orders a day. The vast majority of Ecommerce sites have less traffic than this. It takes time and hard work to build up traffic on a site, and many have not reached these heights yet.

When offering their plans, hosting companies tend to recommend Virtual Dedicated or Virtual Private Servers to most of their customers, including those with Magento web stores. This is understandable since VDS and VPS plans always guarantee high performance. Besides, they are costlier and bring hosting vendors more income.
However, some Magento-based businesses don’t need the resources of VDS and VPS plans and can use a more cost-effective alternative of shared hosting instead. Drawing on our experience in Magento support, we tell you more about when Magento shared hosting is a fitting option and give you tips on choosing a good hosting vendor.

When shared hosting works great for Magento stores

Shared hosting means that your Magento store will share web server resources with other Magento stores. Although this may sound like a highly negative premise that will affect the performance of your store, your ecommerce solution may simply not need the powerful resources offered by the VDS and VPS plans.

How to choose a good hosting vendor

With the shared hosting option, your major goal is to cut the hosting costs while preserving the high performance of your web store. As you search for your future vendor, concentrate on their servers’ speed, general business-focus, and the type of support they offer.

• Speed

When choosing a suitable hosting vendor, you should go for the ones with the highest speed offering. The data displayed on the vendors’ site can be used for reference, but it isn’t as reliable as their servers’ work in action. So, to validate the performance of your future vendor, browse through 10-15 other Magento web stores that use this same hosting.

• Hosting-centric

When searching for a Magento hosting vendor, make sure their business focus is hosting and server management rather than Magento itself. It is more reliable to work with a professional hosting and a third-party Magento support vendor than to try and build the business with a jack-of-all-trades, who may turn out to be a master of none.

• Ticketing-based support

Common email-based customer communication can be ineffective due to a high risk of lost emails. When the issue is critical and you need a prompt answer, doubting whether an email reached the hosting support at all is the extra trouble you don’t need. On the other hand, ticketing-based support – which can result in a slightly higher subscription fee – ensures the stability of your communication with them.