Finding the best Magento hosting is a task that can be very daunting, especially for new store owners who don’t have a clue about hosting and what makes a hosting environment good for hosting a Magento store. We qualify a good Magento host as a host that runs your store very fast, is affordable for small Magento stores and that has the ability to upgrade seamlessly. Your hosting should grow with your store visitors meaning that if your visits jump, your hosting should also get upgraded.
With our experience in Magento development, we know exactly which web hosting is the best for Magento, and which one isn’t. We have run across multiple different web hosts that all claim to be Magento optimized hosting providers or that claimed to have the best Magento hosting. Through testing we’ve finally been able to compile a list with the top 5 Magento hosting providers that will improve your store’s loading speed and while still remaining cheap and affordable.
Best Magento Hosting
| Hosting | Installer | Theme | Support | Features | Rating | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Siteground |  1-Click Instal FREE Professional Installation(*) | Free & Magento Optimized | 24/7 Live chat Hosting & Application Issues | FREE SuperCaching FREE CDN for More Speed | 10 | $3.95/mo MORE INFO |
Arvixe | 1-Click Installation FREE Professional Installation | Magento Optimized | 24/7 Live chat Hosting & Application Issues | FREE CDN + Life-time free domain | 9.9 | $4/mo MORE INFO |
Nexcess | 1-Click Install | Free & Magento Optimized | Hosting & Some Application Issues | FREE SuperCaching FREE CDN for More Speed | 9.8 | $7.95/mo MORE INFO |
Site5 | 1-Click Install | No | Hosting Issues Only | FREE CDN | 9.7 | $8.95/mo MORE INFO |
Hostgator | 1-Click Install | No | 24/7 Live chat Hosting & Application Issues | FREE SuperCaching FREE CDN for More Speed | 9.6 | $3.96/mo MORE INFO |
The table above is a quick overview with the most important features of each host laid out and rated according to price/performance of each Magento hosting. We will go in detail on each host with a performance test.
1. Siteground Magento Hosting
– UNLIMITED Disk space, Bandwidth, Domains.
– US, EU, ASIA Server location available.
– Price: $3.95/MONTH (60% OFF NOW the regular $9.95/mo).
– 30 DAY Money Back Guarantee.
– One Click to install Magento.
– Check it out here.
In our experience, Siteground comes out of this test as an all-time winner in terms of Magento hosting. Coding Basics is hosted on them, and we can honestly say that they have a superb customer support, great loading times and are really cheap for what they offer. Their StartUp plan is only $3.95 a month and it offers a great performance for that kind of money. According to Loadimpact the average response time was ~70ms with up to 50 concurrent visitors on the website, without slowing down or any other downtime for that matter. See the image below for an in-depth view of the performance test.
Testing Server Location: Dallas, TX
SiteGround Server Location: Chicago, IL
Max Response Time: 125 milliseconds
Minimum Response Time: 64.98 milliseconds
2. Arvixe
– UNLIMITED Disk space, Bandwidth, Domains.
– Price: $4/MONTH. Use coupon MAGENTO25OFF to get 25% OFF for first order.
– 60 DAY Money Back Guarantee.
– Magento installer.
– Free domain name.
– Check it out here.
Arvixe is the second host on our list and they are a great Magento hosting provider with their Personal package starting at $4 a month. The hosting features unlimited domains, so you’ll be done with one account for your Magento store and multiple domains if you decide to expand it into a multi-store (several domains under one installation). The average response time with 50 concurring visitors was about ~115ms as you can see in the chart below.
Testing Server Location: Ashburn, US (Amazon)
Arvixe Server Location: Dallas, TX
Max Response Time: 125 milliseconds
Minimum Response Time: 105 milliseconds
3. Nexcess
– UNLIMITED Disk space, Bandwidth, Domains.
– Price: $6/month
– Server location: US, UK, Australia
– 30 DAY Money Back Guarantee.
– Free Domain name.
– Check it out here.
Nexcess is one of the oldest Magento optimized hosting providers that is even recommended by the folks at Magento HQ themselves as the go-to Magento hosting for starters. They even are a Silver partner which you can see on their website. However, as our tests have proven there are plenty of other cheap Magento hosting alternatives that may suit your needs much better. Nexcess is a bit more expensive than the other hosting providers mentioned in this list, which for some might be a reason not to choose them. They offer servers in every continent in the world to deliver your site at an even faster speed. Their performance test showed us that the average response time of their server tested about ~70ms, which is good.
Testing Server Location: Dallas, TX
Nexcess Server Location: Southfield, US
Max Response Time: 100 milliseconds
Minimum Response Time: 70 milliseconds
4. Site5
– 99.9% Uptime guarantee.
– Easily scalable.
– 24/7 support.
– One click Magento install.
– 45 DAY money back guarantee.
– Check it out here.
Site5 is a relatively unknown Magento hosting provider that offers a fairly good value whilst still remaining cheap. A very strong point of Site5 is their 99.9% uptime guarantee which is paired with their scaling feature. This means that your hosting will automatically scale with you even if you suddenly get a steep increase of visitors. On Site5 your Magento store will stay in the air while on other hosts the server may get overloaded and slow the site down for some visitors. Their average response time is around ~200ms which is not that good, but we only saw those levels with about 40 concurring visitors, as you can see in the chart below.
Testing Server Location: Ashburn, US (Amazon)
Site5 Server Location: Provo, UT
Max Response Time: 220 milliseconds
Minimum Response Time: 120 milliseconds
5. Hostgator
– UNLIMITED Disk space, Bandwidth, Domains.
– Price: $3.96/MONTH. (Enter coupon code: CODINGBASICS to get 25% more discount).
– 45 DAY Money Back Guarantee.
– $100 GOOGLE ADWORDS Credit (US only).
– One click Magento installer.
– Check it out here.
Hostgator is one of if not the oldest hosting companies out there. They offer very cheap hosting that can run your Magento with a good site speed. Their servers can handle concurring visitors extremely well, and site speed remained stable at around ~160ms. They are a good option for those who need a reliable Shared Magento hosting provider.
Testing Server Location: Portland, OR
Server Location: Charlotte, NC
Max Response Time: 212 milliseconds
Minimum Response Time: 148.67 milliseconds
Which Magento hosting is best for me?
To determine which one of the listed cheap Magento hosting providers is the best choice for you, you should take these points into consideration.
- Server uptime: This is a key factor that should weigh highly into your consideration. Server uptime is the actual time the server has been up without going down. Ideally you would want your server uptime to be 100%, but that is impossible. Having a 99.9% uptime guarantee is a nice feature to have though. This ensures that your site is accessible at any time, and you won’t miss any orders.
- Loading speed: Nobody likes a slow website. Research has shown that a loading speed of over 2 seconds is deemed unacceptable in today’s standards. Therefore, it’s important that you get a server with a fast response time. This will increase your conversion rate and the browsed pages on your site. You can also read our tips to improve your Magento site speed.
- Price: Depending on your budget you might look for a more affordable hosting provider. The best cheap Magento hosting provider that we’d recommend would be Siteground as you can read in our review. We know that when you start a new Magento store you’ll need money for a lot of other things like development, marketing, advertising and maybe even to hire some employees. This will quickly add up so it’s nice to have a relatively cheap hosting bill.
- Server Location: A lot of store owners don’t know that the server location of your Magento store plays a big part in SEO and loading speed for your targeted country. Say your store is aimed at customers in the UK. You should get a server located in the UK as the data center is closely located to your customers which loads your store faster for them. It’s also great for SEO purposes as search engine knows exactly who you want to target.
- Server Specs: It’s also good to check if the server of your choice has some decent hard and software specs. Hardware specs are generally good amongst the better Magento hosting providers, but software might be a point of attention. You want to make sure they are running a recent version of PHP, MySQL, Apache and HTML. Some Magento extensions are not compatible with old versions of PHP, so it’s recommended to avoid those.
- Support: There’s nothing more frustrating than getting a server error on a Friday night and having to wait a whole weekend before you finally get in touch with the support team of your host. Not only will you miss a whole weekend of sales, you also risk losing search engine positions which is the last thing you want. Always check if the support is available 24/7 or at least a few hours a day on the weekend/holidays.
- Scalability: When selecting a Magento host it’s always a good thing to look ahead in the future. What are you going to do when your store becomes a big success and needs more server power? Are you able to easily upscale your hosting environment? It’s good to keep that in mind when making your choice.
As a conclusion we would like to point you in the right direction by saying that you should look for a cheap Magento hosting provider when you are starting out, and when you start getting more and more visitors upgrade accordingly. It makes no sense at all to get a very expensive host when you are just starting out, when you could just as well run the store on a smaller hosting package. Never pay more than you really need.
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