FAQ: Comparing hosting on hardware and price

Your proposal appears more expensive than similar hardware elsewhere

I can appreciate that on the surface, if you were to merely look at the high level specifications of the hardware in the stack, that it might appear comparable to another provider – but that’s where the comparison ends.

At a hardware level, we use latest generation enterprise server components, high clock speed Intel Xeon CPUs, server-grade memory and enterprise grade Intel DC SSDs. Combined with infrastructure that provides fully redundant network and redundant power down to your server, featuring two power supplies and two network cards for diversity.

At a software level, this is where we excel – because we wrote an entire operating system for Magento, this is called MageStack. MageStack isn’t just a control panel like Plesk/Interworx/cPanel – it is an entire operating system, built by Sonassi, wholly and specifically for Magento. Its also fully documented - and best of all, based on Debian Linux - so you'll still have root access, to what appears as a normal Linux server, to do as you please with. You can install any utilities you want, or make it fit your deployment pipeline - because MageStack isn't a limited SaaS platform - its an extremely powerful Linux operating system built specifically to make your life easier running a Magento store. You have total control.

We built it to meet 4 criteria,

  • Maximum performance
  • Bullet proof security
  • Massive scalability
  • Rock solid reliability

At a support level, we flat out beat every standard hosting provider. Because for 6 years, we built large-scale Magento stores – we gathered experience building and scaling stores, understanding their bottlenecks and feeding that into how we developed MageStack. We understand every facet of Magento at a code level and can provide true end-to-end support, from the infrastructure we built, to the operating system we designed and wrote, to the store itself. Everything Sonassi offers is built, not bought.

Sure, we’re more expensive than standard hosting providers; because we’re not a standard hosting provider. We’re the “Ferrari” of Magento hosting – and sure, you can buy a “Volkswagen” from other providers for a fraction of the price – but you’ll be getting a fraction of the quality, of the support and of the platform.

Most customers moving from standard hosting providers to Sonassi only need to evaluate what the additional investment in a quality, specialised hosting provider would actually cost; perhaps just 1 additional sale per day, maybe even just 1 additional sale per month? Perhaps it isn’t even increased sales volume, but decreased expense elsewhere, because your developers can now clone a Magento store in an instant instead of charging you an hour’s labour, or deploy Varnish on Magento instantly, or use SOLR with Magento, or use Sphinx with Magento. Perhaps even just you contacting our expert team for guidance to avoid unnecessary expense when trying to solve a problem.

There’s much more to have when investing in your store with a specialised hosting provider – and the cost in all reality, shouldn’t be a factor when making this decision, its what the return on the investment will give you. Invest in Sonassi, and we'll give you plenty in return.