The Problem
Enterprise Magento hosting — is priced for enterprise budgets. Small Magento merchants, mom-and-pop shops, simply do not have the profit margins to afford Magento hosting. Even if the platform is the right choice for them.
The gap between “what SMB merchants can afford” and “what production Magento actually needs” was a real constraint. The goal was to close it.
The Architecture
The goal was to design and build a cost sensitive flexible Magento hosting platform, that can be tailored at the needs of smaller merchants, but with the same reliability and performance as enterprise hosting.
Standarisation
By conforming to a standardised setup, it allows us to standup environments quickly, and with confidence that they are configured correctly. As well as be able to expand architecture to add autoscaling / additional nodes and services as needed.
It also means, every deployment benefits from the same optimisations and future improvements. For example, if we identify a performance improvement in the Varnish configuration, we can roll that out to all environments immediately.
Automation
By using Terraform and Ansible for infrastructure as code, we can automate the deployment and management of the hosting platform. This allows us to deploy to any cloud provider, and to manage the infrastructure in a consistent way across all environments. It also allows us to automate scaling, monitoring, and incident response, which is essential for maintaining high availability and performance.
Cost Model
By building our own hosting platform, we can significantly reduce the cost compared to enterprise hosting providers. With the choice of cloud providers, we can tailor the infrastructure cost based on risk tolerance and performance needs. The cost savings can be reinvested into further business growth or passed on to merchants.
Impact
By providing a flexible, high-performance Magento hosting platform at a fraction of the cost of enterprise hosting, we can enable smaller merchants to access Magento and compete in the e-commerce space. This not only benefits the merchants, but also helps to grow the Magento ecosystem and drive adoption of the platform.
Build strong partnerships with the smaller merchants, allowing us to support their growth and success. Which in turn, helps drive further re-investment into their online store and hosting platform as a whole.