What Magento needs from your hosting

Magento Open Source is a powerful platform for online stores, and it asks a lot of the server it runs on. Many store owners start on ordinary shared hosting and run into problems within weeks. These are the requirements to check before you choose.

The software stack

• PHP 8 with the extensions Magento lists for your version
• MySQL or MariaDB for the store database
• OpenSearch for catalog search. Current Magento 2.4 releases need a search engine running alongside the store.
• Composer to install Magento, extensions and updates
• Cron jobs that run every minute for indexing, emails and scheduled tasks
• Redis and Varnish are optional but make a large difference to speed

Memory matters most

Magento, the database and OpenSearch all need RAM at the same time. A store that is slow in the admin area or times out during indexing is usually short of memory. Plan for a few gigabytes as a minimum, and more as your catalog grows.

Why a VPS fits Magento better than shared hosting

On shared hosting you cannot install OpenSearch, tune PHP or keep long-running processes going. A VPS gives you root access, so you can install the full stack and size the server to your store. Our Magento hosting runs on NVMe KVM VPS servers with full root access, free snapshots and DDoS protection, in India and seven other locations.

Before you launch

• Set up the cron jobs and check the indexers are running.
• Turn on full-page caching.
• Take a snapshot before every Magento or extension upgrade.