Very often our clients ask us for recommendations on which hosting company to choose for their Magento stores.

If you plan to use full power of Magento, e.g. multi-stores feature, build-in performance optimization modules, it is highly recommended to choose right hosting from the very beginning.

We will not advertise any hosting providers in this blog post, instead we gather here the most important and serious questions that you should discuss with any hosting provider.
 

1 - Check server environment.

There is a special Magento check script that automatically check the server environment and report if something is wrong.
You can download this script from Magento knowledge base here.

In fact, this script just compare server environment parameters with Magento system requirements.

Make sure that your hosting will support all system requirements.
 

2 - Multi-store Magento configuration.

Make sure that your hоsting is ready for multi-store Magento configuration.
Even if your hosting meet all general system requirements, it doesn't mean that multi-store feature is supported well.

Magento requires special configuration for Magento multi-store feature, where it is possible to call Magento core from a separate domain folder or direct all multi-store domains to a single server folder (both variants are Ok for Magento multi-stores).

The easiest solution to check it, is to ask your hosting provider to show you Magento multi-store demo.

The other important question is multi-domain SSL certificate, make sure that your hosting have experience with it and they will be able to install and configure multi-domain SSL for your stores.
 

3 - Server performance modules.

Magento is fast and stable solution if hosting is modern and supports the latest performance technologies.

Ask your hosting about performance modules for PHP and caching systems they can offer, e.g.:

  • Memcahce support
  • xCache support
  • APC support

It is not necessary to install all these PHP modules, in most cases APC will be more than enough.
 

4 - Level of Magento support.

One of the important things for hosting is support.

Make sure that they host other Magento stores and they Magento experienced. At least they should know terminology and basic Magento requirements. Otherwise it will be very hard communicate with them.

 

5 - SSH access.

Your hosting should offer SSH access. SSH is useful for Magento maintenance and upgrades.
You will not be able to properly upgrade Magento without it.

 

6 - Magento partners.

Make sure that your hosting provider is official Magento partner.
Or at least have good reputation among Magento users.