6 Essential Reasons to choose a VPS for Magento

Magento is the number one choice for most online e-commerce platforms. It’s robust, versatile and powerful. However, your e-commerce site’s performance is very much dependant on your choice of hosting. If you decide to work on a shared hosted server, you risk slower uploading periods, more downtimes, and reduced security for your clients.  

In this article, we’ll look at the benefits of e-commerce stores, whether you’re big or small, and how they benefit when Magento has a dedicated Virtual Private Server (VPS). Virtual Private Servers are also known as cloud servers; well recognised for their scalability, low cost and high performance.  

Knowing when it’s time to move from shared hosting to a VPS 

Since Magento is very resource intensive AND based on a large application platform, it needs all the necessary server resources to work at an optimum level. This is particularly important during periods of high traffic.  

It is certainly true that Magento can work in traditional shared hosting, BUT the data resources available in this environment simply cannot supply all the grunt needed when facing a significant demand in high traffic times. Knowing this information, one needs to consider this when other web clients are using the shared server at the same time. Non-optimized data resource management can result in an overload on your site, slowing it down, and even putting it at risk of collapsing.  

It’s not just the amount of available resources at your disposal, but it can be the way the server is configured that lowers Magento’s performance. It’s preferable your e-commerce site is on a server that is specially configured for the Magento platform.
 
Naturally, a common reason that online stores use shared hosting is due to the lower operating costs. However, Inspire (in partnership with UKFast our Hosting providers) offer a dedicated hosting service using VPS’s.  

As this cost is certainly higher than shared hosting plans, Inspire want to ensure that their clients get the best server solution they can afford, hence we took the decision that the client has their own contract with UKFast direct. Inspire take responsibility for managing the relationship, for our clients with UKFast, but importantly the client gets best of both worlds and Inspire has confidence in what is a best of breed hosting partner, ensuring stability and scalability. Ultimately a Magneto VPS provides a much faster speed, better performance and reliability, which demonstrates as an increase in conversion rates.  

Basically, a few pounds saved using shared hosting will never recover the cost of lost sales.  

So what is a “VPS”, the simplest description is a ring-fenced part of a dedicated server. This “virtual section” of a physical server, is equipped with an operating system, and its own individual settings. The great advantage of working with a virtual server is it’s a physical server that is fragmented into multiple virtual servers with each having their own settings and functions. One downside of a VPS though is that you still share a common firewall with other website owners, this is different to your own server firewall, however, this can be optimised by server systems administrators. Here are the following six benefits when having a Magento virtual private server (VPS).  
 

6 Key Benefits in Choosing a Magento VPS 

1.    Exceptional Performance 

A VPS is basically a mini dedicated server giving users an independent hosting environment. Since you do not have to share it with others, the overall net of resources increases and your site performance is at a peak. Magento VPS is designed for small to modest e-commerce stores, offering users an excellent performance to cost ratio, well above the shared hosting.  Small and modest websites greatly benefit from the individual CPU usage and RAM that VPS’s come with. You have all the processing power, RAM, bandwidth, and storage needed. 

2.    Optimized Magento VPS 

Having dedicated hosting with Magento has a significant advantage, for there is no other platform being used in the server. This means the server can be solely configured to Magento to assure your e-commerce site will work in an ideal manner.  For optimal performance, this requires a specific Magento configuration for the hardware, operating system, web server, and database. After Magneto is configured to your VPS, your Magento store will have all the enhanced capabilities. Your e-commerce site will upload at high speeds, have an enhanced performance at high volume times, and quickly execute multiple applications. These kinds of performance levels can only be reached with a dedicated Magneto VPS.  

3.     Security 

Security is paramount for your e-commerce site, as it is your lifeblood to receive and accept payments. A dedicated Magento hosting package includes a series of robust security measures. The security on your Magento VPS is entirely in your control. You can manage the firewalls and add any other additional security tools that you wish without concerning yourself at all about the other virtual servers.  

4.    Dedicated Tools 

Your resources are dedicated; this means you have complete, total and direct access to OS, RAM, and CPU. As well, any other tools 24/7, giving you a fully-fledged administration panel.  One of the vital critical attributes of a VPS is being virtual, means it is not attached to any specific part of the hardware. If there is a hardware problem, the complete VPS can be installed into other hardware without having to disconnect it. This is the best situation for e-commerce sites needing operations 24/7. Another advantage is the additional resources contained in a VPS package means that your e-commerce site will never be blocked or disconnected in heavy traffic times.  

5.    Regulatory Compliance 

When accepting payments, you must be compatible with PCI DSS. As well, it’s essential to choose a server hosting plans consistent with SAQ and A-EP.  Any security copy service given by your Magento host must comply with strict PCI Standards. Be sure the package you have stores your data remotely with ‘end-to-end’ encryption. As well, make sure to test the integrity of the security copy, registry and reports to assure you security copies are safe and available when you need them.  This is normally handled by your Payment Gateway but there are still guidelines to follow for your web server. 

6.    Technical Support 

If you are planning to change to a different hosting system and especially if you are expanding the number of applications, this can lead to some technical challenges. This is why it is so important to choose a service provider with your VPS that offers good technical support.  

In conclusion, Magento’s VPS dedicated hosting offers a wide range of benefits for small and modest e-commerce stores based in Magento. Magento VPS offers much more computer resources than shared hosting. Magento VPS hosting has centred optimisation, which provides superior performance compared to a standard VPS. As well, excellent technical support is provided, along with the enhanced security and making sure you are regulatory complaint.  

If you have questions about how Magento 2 could work for your retail business, contact us or give us a call as we are experts with Magento 2.x.