Magento

I’m using Sphere Host - so far so good. 

TONS of features/goodies - and the Customer Service (thus far) has been very responsive.

If you’re in the UK United Hosting is pretty good. Support is A1.

I also got a test shop running on Nativespace. Not bad, but not quite as quick as UnitedHosting.

I’ve tested it on (mt) Media Temple and Dreamhost, and both ofthem worked somewhat fast for me. The DB hits are a bit intense, but overall, I’d give (mt) a shot.

I’m currently in the process of moving everything over to a dedicated virtual (dv) with media temple, which is $50 a month. I’ve heard that performance on the (dv) is actually quite good. I have been using their grid service (gs) for about two years now and overall am very, very happy with Mediatemple. I’ve only had the (dv) for two days now, but I can already tell that I’ve made a huge jump in quality of server for only $30 more a month. Once I get the store over to the (dv), I’ll try to find this forum again and post back about performance on the (dv). I’m willing to upgrade to the next tier ($100 a month), because I appreciate mediatemple so much. I also have confidence, if they are adding Magento as a 1-click app. on the (gs), that both Magento and Mediatemple will step it up and solve the performance issue. I’m partial now to both Magento and Mediatemple. If anyone has any personal experience with the (dv) and magento, send me a message. I’d like to have someone to converse with about Magento and Mediatemple, in the even that issues occur.

God Bless,
Zach

Edit: In case anyone is looking, here is a link to media temple: Media Temple

After not finding any recent news regarding Media Temple’s progress on improving Magento’s performance on their (gs) Grid-Service accounts, I contacted (mt) customer service directly, and this is the reply I received, directly from them:

Magento itself is very resource heavy. This issue isn’t specific to the grid. If you truly want the best performance for Magento on our server, use it on a (dv).  I installed it on a (dv) and got the load time down to 3 seconds without any products in the store, which is acceptable.  Future versions may increase this load time, but Magento will likely need to make major changes to the software in order to decrease the load time.

The above reply was sent to me on 10/14/08. I hope this helps anyone looking into hosting choices for Magento.