Finding reliable, robust, and secure Magento hosting is no piece of cake. And if you’re tired of inefficient hosting and are now trying to switch, get ready for another daunting challenge: migration!
I’ve witnessed a bunch of bad experiences where merchants even gave up on their potential online startups after going through poor hosting. Maybe they didn’t bother to migrate to a reliable hosting solution, or they couldn’t find out the root cause of their problem.
So I thought I’d write this blog post for those of you looking to launch your ecommerce store or finding a migration solution without breaking anything.
If you’re facing any of these issues, this blog is for you!
Sneak Peek: Why Does the Right Magento Hosting Matter?
If you are already working with Magento, you must be familiar with its complex architecture. Magento isn’t a platform that can be hosted by just any provider. The hosting provider has to meet minimum server requirements for smooth store performance.
For a quick idea, here are some criteria:
- Latest server technologies (NGINX or Apache)
- Backed by caches (Varnish, Memcached, PHP OP-cache, Redis)
- Elasticsearch is a must for Magento 2.4
- PHP latest versions (7.3, 7.4)
- RAM requirement minimum of 4GB
- PHP extensions
- Database (MariaDB or MySQL)
Read more about the Magento server requirements.
Why Choose Cloudways for Magento Store?
Cloudways easily meets all of Magento’s server requirements without configuring any resources on the server. So Magento’s server related operations will be managed by Cloudways. Hence, your major hosting related issues will be resolved right there.
Cloudways provides managed services, and lets you choose between top-notch cloud providers, including DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode (HF), AWS, and Google Cloud. These cloud providers all but guarantee speed and performance.
If you ever get stuck, the team of cloud engineers is always present to help you out.
Cloudways Features & Benefits
Now let’s talk about the Cloudways Platform and how you can launch and operate your Magento application. Cloudways offers Platform as a Service, which means you will be using an online platform using the browser.
Ease of Use
You can host your Magento powered application within 5 easy steps on Cloudways.
- First, create your Cloudways account (General)
- Choose your application (Magento 2.4)
- Choose your IAAS provider
- Definer Server Resources and location
- Hit launch!
You can also host unlimited Magento applications using the same server by allocating resources appropriately.
Speed & Performance
As mentioned earlier, Cloudways offers managed cloud service. To avoid Magento hosting hassles, Cloudways has its own technological stack that comprises Apache, NGINX, Varnish, Elasticsearch, Memcached, Redis, MariaDB (Database), PHP, PHP-FPM, and much more. For Magento 1 you can also use FPC (full page cache).
Here’s a quick performance test of Magento 2.4 using sample data. I wanted to check the page load time, and it’s been impressive so far!
Enhanced Security
The Cloudways team regularly looks after the security patches on each server, and there is a dedicated firewall to minimize the malicious attack.
Do I get some extra security for my Cloudways Platform or Account? Yes, you do!
- Two Factor Authentication: It’s the second layer of protection to your account. When activated, provide your account credentials and TFA code to log in to your account.
- Master Credentials: This contains the server dedicated IP and SSH access details of the Magento application. Most importantly, you can also make SSH login more secure through the IP Whitelist.
Under the Security section, you can whitelist IPs for SSH and database access.
- 1-click Free SSL Installation: SSL certificate is a must for every website. With Cloudways you can get a FREE Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate to add an extra layer of security to your Magento application, which will use the HTTPS protocol instead of the classic HTTP. Ultimately, it helps build the trust of the visitors and enables a good shopping experience.
Server & Application Monitoring
With Cloudways, you can track the real-time performance of your Magento application. You can also check the logs and different error files from the Cloudways console.
You will be updated via an email service called CloudwaysBot. It’s a smart AI assistant that tracks the performance of your website and suggests the necessary changes to improve your application performance.
Server Scalability
All you need to do to scale the server resources is drag the bar to the required server resources, and that’s it. This feature is really helpful when you feel your application’s resources are getting exhausted, or when you’re preparing your store for the holiday season.
When you don’t want the extended resources anymore, scale it down through the server cloning feature.
Server & Application Backups
With Cloudways, you can easily make two kinds of backups. One is a server back up where you can run scheduled or on-demand backup with a single click.
The second is the application backup where you can back up and restore application data (files and database). You can create multiple on-demand backups as well like server backup.
First Free Migration with Cloudways
If you remember, at the beginning of this blog, I discussed how hosting migration can be yet another daunting task. But with Cloudways you don’t worry about it! Just send a request to the Cloudways Support Team. They’ll take care of migration without breaking anything.
Please note: The first migration is free at Cloudways.
24/7 Expert Support Team
If you ever face any issues or queries related to your Magento hosting, the team of cloud engineers is always there for support. Cloudways also offers extended support via SLA..
Cloudways Pricing Plan
Cloudways works on a Pay-As-You-Go pricing plan, which gives the customer leverage to pay for the resources that have been utilized. Cloudways’ entry price is $10 per month for the initial hosting plan.
Cloudways allows you to host your application on top cloud providers with managed services, so the prices vary between these providers.
In a Nutshell
Here I want to make a suggestion – don’t rush! Keep on searching until you find your dream hosting. Cloudways offers a 3-days free trial on DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode where you can easily experience the entire platform before you make a decision.
Test the platform, face some issues, hit the chat and decide wisely!