How to Decide which Hosting Services is Best for your Magento Website ?

1. Considerations Before Selecting Magento® Hosting Service Provider Prepared by: M-Connect Media

2. Introduction As Magento® is a complex software in nature, it requires a set of system requirements to keep it running and perform faster. The reliability, performance as well as the reputation of your store depends on the type of hosting services you are utilizing. Sometimes the hosting services can make or break your projects or business. Most of the Magento® hosting companies try to meet its system requirements but still there are certain things which you should know about before you go for choosing any hosting provider for your Magento® based eCommerce store. So, let us start with the basic things and then we will see the factors which affects the selection of hosting services. www.mconnectmedia.com

3. Hosting Types Hosting can be divided into two types: • Managed Hosting: With managed hosting, you can take the advantages of server configuration, issues/error fixing and updates. Here, you have be dependent on the hosting company for any software installation or updates. • Self-Service Hosting: When you select the self-service hosting, you have to manage everything by yourself or you have to take the help of any third party specialists. You can add any of the features without any limitations here. www.mconnectmedia.com

4. Types of Servers There are 3 Types of Servers: • Shared Servers: • Dedicated Servers: • VPS/VDS Servers: www.mconnectmedia.com

5. Shared Servers • In a shared server, you can rent a part of the server as you share that server with other websites too. With a shared server, you get a limited disk space on the server, with limited number of email accounts, number of websites and databases. • There is only one advantage of the shared servers i.e. its price. It is the cheapest option among the other servers. • The other disadvantage of this server is that you can suffer from the hacker or spam attacks if any of the shared websites is suffering from the same. If any of the website has been penalized for any misconducts, all the other websites sharing that server will be blocked. www.mconnectmedia.com

6. Dedicated Servers • It is the most costly server among the three server types. But the advantage of this server is that you get the maximum performance of your website as you are the only one using that particular server. • The business people who want the best speed and ability for their websites, go for this type of server. Here, you have the full control over the server. You can update your server and site as well as install the software you need. www.mconnectmedia.com

7. VPS/VDS Servers • In this server type, you get the full access over the admin. • The advantage of this server that you can install the any number of software, low price and you can set the speed of the server. • The negative point of this server is that performance of the virtual machines can depend upon the neighbour websites load. www.mconnectmedia.com

8. Factors for Selecting Hosting Services Factors to keep in mind while selecting the hosting provider for your Magento® store: • Magento® 2 Compatibility • Hosting performance • Support • Website Security • Scalability • Traffic Peaks • Hardware • Company Culture www.mconnectmedia.com

9. Magento® 2 Compatibility You should go for the Magento Hosting providers which supports all the Magento 2 system requirements: • Apache web server: 2.2 or 2.4 • PHP 5.5.x or PHP 5.6.x • Required PHP extensions: PDO/MySQL, mbstring, mcrypt, mhash, SimpleXML, curl, xsl, gd, ImageMagick 6.3.7 (or later) or both, SOAP, intl www.mconnectmedia.com

10. Magento® 2 Compatibility • MySQL 5.6.x • The SSH provides the ability to use the Magento®2.0 CLI and Composer. • Varnish is must. • Check whether your server meets the requirements of Magento® 2.0 with a little PHP or not. • You should have 1GB of RAM for each 2500 daily visitors. And 512MB available for OS processes and MySQL queries. www.mconnectmedia.com

11. Hosting Performance • The main factor which influences the selection of hosting provider is the performance of the hosting server. • And the loading speed of the website depends upon the type of hosting selected. • However, you should go for the hosting provider company which knows how to isolate the hosting environment for your website. www.mconnectmedia.com

12. Support • It is important to choose that Magento®hosting provider which has best technical assistance on hosting problems and common Magento®problems. The hosting providers should have well experienced technicians who are specialised in Magento®platform. • Because, it may happen that your website faces some issue which is unknown and it needs to be checked and fixed as soon as possible. This also means that you may lose some of your customers and a lot of money. www.mconnectmedia.com

13. Website Security • You should select the servers which gives the high level of guaranteed safety. This is the initial step towards protecting your site from hackers and customers' access information. • You should establish a firewall and filter IPs for the high-risk countries to whom you don't intend to sell the products. • Also, you should make automated backups regularly, in case you somewhere need a roll-back. www.mconnectmedia.com

14. Scalability • It may happen that you think about expanding your business as well store in future. You will increase the number of products you sell. • And to get handsome amount of traffic on your site, you will run number of marketing events and promotions. • For all this to happen, you must choose a hosting provider which fits into your requirements in the near future. www.mconnectmedia.com

15. Traffic Peaks • When you plan to organize different marketing offers and events, you should be sure that it will increase the traffic on your site. And you should have something with which you can handle that amount of traffic without any hurdle. • This can be managed with cloud or hosting providers. • The capacities of the servers or hosting providers can be acquired by increasing the space in the servers and combining number of servers into a pool. www.mconnectmedia.com

16. Hardware • When you are selecting any hosting provider services, you need to check whether the hardware used is the new one or repaired one. • This is because many Magento®hosting providers use some pre-owned hardware to the some extent, and therefore you should proactively ask them whether the hardware which is going into your environment is new or refurbished. www.mconnectmedia.com

17. Company Culture • To know the hosting providers company culture, it won’t be possible for you to visit their premises. But you can ask them about their monthly/annual turnover and the work experience of their engineers.Thiscan be helpful because, if a company is having a new engineer or new employee every next month then that means they are not providing a good culture to them and good services to their clients. • You can see that the retailers are happy whose hosting companies and development partners who work in complete coordination. www.mconnectmedia.com

18. Common Mistakes in Choosing the Magento®Hosting Mistakes are done unintentionally but it can result into serious drawbacks/issues. And the loss can be big, monetary or something else. There are certain mistakes which are committed by the shop owners while selecting a hosting provider for their Magento®store. So, why not prevent these issues by avoiding the common mistakes. Let us learn from others mistakes and perform better. www.mconnectmedia.com

19. Mistakes to Avoid While Selecting Magento®Hosting Let us know about those mistakes and try to avoid them when you select a Magento®hosting provider: • As Magento®system does not support for Windows system, don’t go for windows hosting. • For making the Magento®backend function in the right way, set the memory_limit=512M and max_execution_time=600 (ten minutes) • Take and check backup copies of the Magento®on regular basis www.mconnectmedia.com

20. Mistakes to Avoid While Selecting Magento®Hosting • If your store is gradually expanding, then you may need to check the logs for any errors and fix them for the relevant system settings. • Don’t go for the hosting providers who are offering the hosting services for free or at the lowest possible cost. This may seem save a lot of money but in reality they will take up your reputation, give poor server performance and unqualified engineers. www.mconnectmedia.com

21. Take Away • Select the hosting provider as per the system requirements of the Magento®version, your store size and the margin for the future growth. • No hosting is the best Magento®hosting for your store, but the hosting can be the suitable one for your business. • Never use a Windows hosting for Magento®platform. • Do not select the cheapest hosting. You may face issues which will eventually cost you money as well as reputation. • If you are unsure about which hosting to choose then go for a managed shared hosting service. www.mconnectmedia.com

22. Are you facing issue while selecting a Magento®hosting provider? • Take your time to select a Magento® hosting for your Store. Consider the points we have shared in the previous slides and then go for any Hosting provider. • If you are still unsure, then contact our Magento® experts and they will assist you in the selection of the best suitable Magento®hosting for your eCommerce store. Visit : https://www.mconnectmedia.com/magento-dedicated-team/ www.mconnectmedia.com

23. Contact Us M-Connect Media E-mail : info@mconnectmedia.com Phone : +1 (319) 804-8627  Facebook : @mconnectmedia Twitter : @mconnectmedia Google+ : +Mconnectmedia www.mconnectmedia.com

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