Magento Cloud Hosting Vs. Managed Hosting – The Pros & Cons 

Are you launching a new Adobe Commerce (Magento) store? Are you thinking of upgrading from Open Source to Commerce? When considering your options, it’s not an easy choice, and there are several options to consider before deciding which is best.

When considering your options, you have to step back and consider the most-important concerns for your business. For example, if managing your hosting is important, and you want complete control over the hosting environment, Managed Hosting is the answer you’re looking for. In this blog post, we’ll talk about the details of Magento Open Source, Magento Commerce, and which one we feel is the best way to go.    

Let’s get started!

The Pros of Managed Hosting

Having your eCommerce site tied to managed hosting certainly has its benefits and drawbacks. In short, a website that is in a managed hosting environment means that you can choose your own hosting provider and data center; you can control your entire hosting experience. When it comes to a managed hosting environment with your Magento site, there are a few advantages you’ll enjoy: 

• Magento Open Source Support – While you can only use Magento Cloud Hosting if you have Magento Commerce, dedicated Magento managed hosting providers support Magento Open Source. If you’re not ready to make the switch, this may make managed hosting a better option.

• Choose your preferred cloud hosting infrastructure – You can choose between a wide variety of backend cloud hosting providers, including AWS, as well as other third-party cloud partners. This provides you with more choice when selecting your preferred hosting provider.

• Compare prices between providers – You can compare the prices offered by a variety of different cloud hosting companies to get a better deal, and save money while getting the cloud infrastructure you need for your store.

The Cons of Managed Hosting

While managed hosting does have some benefits, there are quite a few drawbacks as well:

• Scalability may be lacking – Magento Commerce can power stores of any size, and Magento Cloud Hosting has unlimited scalability, with a model that ensures you only pay for the resources and bandwidth you use. If you choose a third-party managed hosting service, you may find that you run into limitations on store scalability, particularly if you run a very large and complex Magento store. And given the complexity and difficulty of migrating to a new hosting service, this can put you between a rock and a hard place.
• Every provider offers different services – When comparing different managed hosting providers, you’ll find that each one offers different services. Some offer CDNs for free. Others charge for a CDN. Some may provide firewalls as part of their package, while others require you to handle network security on your own. Some managed hosting providers offer 24/7 support, while others may have more limited support options.
  
  It may be difficult to find a managed hosting provider that offers the same features as Magento Cloud Hosting, and even if you do, you may find that you don’t get the same level of performance and reliability.
• Optimization issues – Magento Cloud Hosting infrastructure has been built specifically with Magento in mind, and is operated and maintained by Magento specialists. In contrast, many managed hosting providers don’t just offer Magento hosting, but also servers for websites built on other platforms like WordPress, Drupal, and so on.
  
  This means that, in many cases, your managed hosting provider is not offering the best possible performance for your Magento store. But with Magento Cloud Hosting, you’ll know that you’re getting the best possible loading speed and uptime. 

[gray-box]Click here for our comprehensive guide on Magento Open Source vs Commerce[/gray-box]

The Pros of Magento Cloud Hosting

If you choose Magento Commerce Cloud Hosting, you’ll enjoy enhanced security, great support, blazing-fast performance, and a totally scalable solution that can grow with your business. Here are some more details on the advantages of choosing Magento Cloud Hosting:  

• Fast CDN for enhanced speed, DDoS protection – Out-of-the-box, Magento commerce comes with the Fastly CDN (Content Delivery Network). This CDN helps speed up overall page loading time, and also provides powerful DDoS protection. If a DDoS attack is detected, a CDN like Fastly can automatically redistribute traffic to prevent your main server from going down.

• New Relic performance monitoring – New Relic provides tools for monitoring the performance of your webpages, ensuring you can always offer a speedy and responsive shopping experience to your customers.

• 24/7 support – Magento Cloud Hosting offers 24/7 monitoring and email support, and Magento Commerce Cloud Pro includes a dedicated Customer Technical Advisor (CTA) who will work with your team from your initial subscription until the initial launch of your site.

• Enhanced security – Microsoft Azure and AWS are highly-secure environments, and Magento Commerce Cloud uses the latest security best practices to protect your data and information. Each customer has a separate, isolated server environment, and the core Magento Commerce application is regularly tested to check for security issues & vulnerabilities.

The Cons of Magento Cloud Hosting

Magento Cloud Hosting isn’t perfect. There are a few hurdles and issues you may want to think about before making your decision.

• Only available with Magento Commerce – If you’re not interested in upgrading to Magento Commerce, you can’t get Magento Cloud Hosting. If you want to stick with Magento Open Source, you’ll need to find your own managed hosting provider. Not sure if Magento Commerce is worth it? Check out this blog for some feature comparisons. 

• You have to give up some control – With Magento Cloud Hosting, you don’t have a lot of control over the servers that are used, and you can’t control as many aspects of backend configuration. This isn’t a big deal for most stores, but store owners who are very into the technical “nuts and bolts” of server architecture may not like this loss of control.

• Initial setup can be a bit complex – Since Magento Commerce Cloud uses multiple integration, staging, and production environments, the initial setup of your store can be a bit difficult and involve setting up and configuring multiple servers. Working with a Customer Technical Advisor (CTA) from Magento can be beneficial as you and your team navigate through the initial setup process. You may even need to bring in a third-party solution provider to complete the setup process for you, adding cost to your build.

Need the Best Performance? Magento Cloud Hosting is the Right Choice

If you’re ready to make the jump from Magento Open Source to Magento Commerce, Magento Cloud Hosting offers superior performance, 24/7 support, and unlimited scalability – as well as top security and data protection features.

Compared to third-party managed hosting, Magento Cloud Hosting offers a wide variety of benefits. So if you’ve outgrown your current Magento hosting provider and are considering a switch, we recommend exploring the benefits of Magento Commerce – and Magento Cloud Hosting. For more details, just contact us. As experts in Magento Commerce deployments, we’re here to provide you with all of the information you need to make the right choice.