Running a Magento ecommerce store is hectic. You have to handle marketing, branding, social media, website hosting, fast speed, scalability, content, etc.
I will be exploring why managed Magento hosting is the answer to delegate the hosting stress.
A Magento store demands a powerful and reliable server infrastructure. You can either go with shared, VPS, dedicated or managed. But all the options boil down to whether you want a DIY or managed solution.
Let’s see how managed Magento hosting solutions give you a competitive edge in the ecommerce market.
What is managed Magento hosting?
Managed Magento hosting is a hosting setup where you let the 3rd party (the experts) handle the server and Magento management. Typically, hosting providers also provide the managed solution, where they manage the security, optimization and other server tasks in addition to the server.
You do not have to worry about server issues in Managed Magento hosting, including performance, uptime, caching, technology, and tech updates. The hosting team will do it for you, so you can focus on promoting your ecommerce store, products, and increasing the traffic.
Several features of Managed Magento hosting are:
- Security
- Caching
- Backups
- Firewalls
- Scalability
- Free migration
- Reliable performance
- Database management
And much more.
Imagine doing none of it. Imagine the experts are doing it for you.
That is a managed Magento hosting solution.
Managed Magento Hosting Alternative?
Managed Magento hosting is not the only type of ecommerce hosting solution. Indeed, you should research which one works best for your business stage.
If you are only starting and do not expect traffic, shared hosting could be a good option. But first, let’s see your options.
Shared Magento Hosting
Shared hosting is a hosting where several Magento stores are hosted on one server. Each Magento store will have a limit on the total amount of server resources it can use. The limit is defined by the hosting plans.
Shared Magento hosting is easily the cheapest and most economical option. However, the low price has its limitations—poor quality of support, slow website traffic, spammy websites, downtime and much more.
Moreover, Magento stores do not perform well on shared hosting. The $3 hosting does not cover SSL, migration, support, and website monitoring. There are lots of hidden upselling, and it will end up costing you more than you expected, and you will not get satisfactory support.
DIY VPS Magento Hosting
VPS hosting gives you total control over the server. The performance, security, maintenance and updates are all up to you. If you are not tech-savvy, you will not be able to properly manage the VPS and will need a developer to help you out.
Doing it all in-house looks great, but the drawback is getting locked in with the developers. If you are not careful, the shadow IT will make the infrastructure dependent on a person.
You have to keep the documentation so the new developers can understand the server – means more work to manage.
But why Manage Magento Hosting?
In all types of hosting, we recommend Managed Magento hosting.
The reason why managed Magento hosting is useful is:
#01 Support
The primary reason why managed Magento hosting exists is SUPPORT.
Managed Magento hosting only deals with the Magento store owners – so they become experts in this area. A team completely submerges in a Magento environment; they know even the rarest of issues and their solution.
Ever feel like you know more than the support person, and the chat session is not going as expected. You have to explain the issues painfully in detail, and the response is – let me you with our senior developers.
No one likes that.
The premium support means you get your problem resolved as soon as possible. But how will it be resolved if the team does not understand it?
At Breeze, we have a team of smart Magento cloud experts contributing to the open-source, participating in the events, and having their time in the Magento ecosystem.
Equipped with the tools, we will be the first to know if your website ever goes down – and our team will be on it to fix it – even before you know.
#02 Speed
The second reason to choose managed Magento hosting is a fast loading Magento store. In ecommerce, achieving a 3-second loading speed can make or break the business. It has been proved again and again that speed directly impacts the sales and conversion rate. Still, 40.94 % of Magento stores are taking more than 3 seconds to open, according to a Magento stores study I did.
At Breeze, we guarantee 3-second loading time.
Magento is an excellent ecommerce platform – but it’s heavy. The Magento performance depends on the infrastructure it is hosted on. We tune the Magento app to deliver the best performance.
Both app and server optimization complement each other to serve the best possible performance.
Caching is critical to a fast website. Many managed Magento hosts, including Breeze, implement server-level caching. It means the host handles the caching. There is no need to research the best Magento extensions, as server-level caching is better than application caching. Moreover, you don’t have to worry about varnish and Redis cache. The host will manage all.
Managed Magento hosting provider also used the updated tech stack. Nginx, the latest version of PHP, HTTP/3, MariaDB, and daily updates in various technologies involved in Magento.
Your hosting provider tests these updates and pushes them to your store safely. Managed hosting providers do everything to keep your website the fastest.
#03 Secure
Security. A critical part of managed Magento hosting.
Ecommerce stores are always attractive to cyberattacks due to all the credit card information, customer data and financial information.
An attack could dent the store’s reputation and ruin the brand image. PCI compliance ensures the security of credit card users. If you put the customer’s credit card information at risk, you may pay a hefty penalty.
Shared hosting does not provide any support to hacked stores. With VPS, you are on your own. Cleaning a hacked store takes time, energy and resources.
Magento security threats to look out for:
- Phishing
- SEO Spam
- E-skimming
- SQL injection
- Chinese SERP
- Cross-site scripting (XSS)
- Malware and ransomware
Managed Magento hosting takes care of security through their state of the art firewalls and anti-hacking tools. The server is secure through various scripts that made in-house and keeps each store completely safe.
IP blacklisting and dynamic bot blocking allow the prevention of DDoS attacks. If the store on managed hosting is hacked, it looks bad for the company’s reputation. That’s why managed Magento hosting takes security seriously.
#04 Backups
What would you do if you suddenly lost your entire Magento store?
It is not a rare problem and can happen to anyone. Data corruption due to a hacking attempt, wrong update, issue with any extension, theme files – anything can happen that could harm the Magento store.
A quality managed Magento hosting provider always includes automatic backups as a core service. In shared hosting, automatic backups come at additional charges, and in VPS, you have to set it up yourself.
In Breeze platform, every store gets five different types of backups.
- Daily
- Hourly
- Manual
- System-generated
- Downloadable
You can include media in the backups or keep the media backups at different locations. You can also restore backups to staging or production.
#05 Staging
Testing is an important part of ecommerce stores. In marketing, development and updating, testing is everywhere.
All these tests cannot be done on the live website. You cannot afford to let the store down due to incompatible technology. Or ruin your website design running the test.
So you create a stage—a replica of your store but hidden from the public to run the tests.
Creating a stage involves copying your site locally, testing, and then migrating the changes to the live website. Many managed hosting providers, fails to offer a one-click solution to create a Magento website, that’s where Breeze comes into action and provides both the live and stage server with a one-click solution.
One-click staging lets you copy your Magento store on a separate server with a click. Your stage store is accessible via a stage URL. To access the store, you can use all the dev tools such as FTP, SSH, and phpMyAdmin.
Best Part: You can quickly push your changes to production from within the dashboard.
#06 Scalable
Another reason why managed Magento hosting is critical is how it handles scalability.
As your store grows, you need more resources – RAM, bandwidth and space. With shared hosting, you have to upgrade to a higher plan. However, if you run out the resources, they may suspend your account due to overuse.
VPS hosting is much easier to scale, but it demands extra server knowledge. How to add the disk space, increase the RAM and keep the server optimized.
Managed Magento hosting providers do this for you. You never have to worry about outgrowing the limits, as the limits are extendable. The company notifies you of using more than your plan entails and offers you to upgrade in a click.
#07 Monitoring
You cannot keep an eye on your store. But managed Magento hosting does. We proactively monitor the website’s health and ensure everything is rolling smoothly.
The surge in traffic could be a bot attack. Website down, analyze what is wrong. Page loading slow; find out the cause.
Monitoring tools and team work together to track any inconsistencies in the store and resolve them asap.
Then there are reports. The reports contain metrics such as CPU usage, memory, disk and bandwidth on a single dashboard.
One step further, Breeze also offers an excellent log management solution to analyze real-time changes.
#08 Developer-Friendly
You might have developers working on the Magento store. Developers must go along with the hosting company.
The managed Magento hosting offers a range of developer tools not typically available with shared hosting. You can set up all the tools with VPS, but it is an extra hour of work.
Tools including SSH access, Composer, SWL, Git, logs, keyword monitoring, and web terminal enable developers to work faster and efficiently interact with the server.
#09 Global Data Centers
Latency is one reason that affects website speed. The data is located physically, and when the user requests to open the page, the data is transferred to the browser.
It takes latency to travel from the data center to the browser.
Managed hosting providers tackle this problem by having data centers across the globe. If your customer is in the USA, you can set up a server at that location. It will reduce the gap between user and data center, and eventually latency.
Breeze offers data centers at multiple locations to have a server near your customers.
FAQs
What is Managed Magento Hosting?
Managed Magento hosting is simplified servers, especially for stores on the Magento platform. The “managed” section entails the role of the host in managing the server’s administrative tasks for you, like installing updates, monitoring uptime and setting up automatic backups.
What is Shared Magento Hosting?
Shared Magento hosting is a hosting service where multiple Magento stores share the space on one server. It is opposite to dedicated Magento hosting, where each store has its separate server.
What Is VPS Magento Hosting?
VPS Magento hosting provides virtual servers to each Magento store – an independent compartmentalized space on the server.
VPS hosting hands you complete access to the backend server tools. You have to manage server maintenance, updates, installations, and application performance.
What are the benefits of Managed Magento Hosting?
The benefits of Managed Magento hosting are:
- Reliability
- High speed
- High performance
- Automated server management (backups, installations, updates, etc.)
- Updated hosting stack
- Powerful security protocols
- Scalability
- Staging environments
- Support from Magento experts
What is the difference between Magento Hosting and Managed Magento Hosting?
Managed Magento hosting is hosting for Magento sites where you let the host manage many administrative server tasks for you.
On the other hand, Magento hosting can mean any type of host that can serve up a Magento-based website, including/excluding those that don’t handle your server-related tasks.
Is Managed Hosting worth It?
Yes. If you mean business with your website, managed hosting is worth it. A managed solution takes so much of your time and energy that you can direct into growing the store.
How do I choose the best Magento hosting?
To choose the best Magento hosting, it’s smart to conduct your research.
Check online reviews, take feedback, run tests, and take trials to get a feel about their services. Make a list of all the eligible Magento hosting services and test out each.
Breeze is the best Magento hosting service trusted by many brands, including Tag Motorsports and All4Kids. Your store will grow and prosper with an intuitive dashboard and high-performance server.
Summary
As you can see, there are lots of advantages of taking managed Magento hosting by Breeze.
Managed hosting is a little bit expensive but think about all the backend workload, optimizations and new technology you have to deal with on your own. You can delegate all these tasks to the experts and use your time growing the store.
What’s a few dollars in exchange for peace, security, speed and most important – all-time Magento expert support.
How much are your time, peace of mind, and security worth?
Book your Demo and test the Breeze performance.
If you have any questions regarding hosting for your business or store, we are only one click away here at Breeze.
