Securing a Magento installation comes with various expenses that depend on factors such as the installation's size, complexity, required security measures, and the professionals' expertise.
The costs can range from a few hundred dollars for basic security measures like SSL certificates and strong passwords to thousands or more for advanced measures like security audits, firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and ongoing maintenance. This blog post aims to discuss the cost of securing a self-hosted Magento installation using two different hosting strategies: commodity hosting and managed hosting.
Commodity Hosting
Commodity hosting, where you provision and manage your own web hosting, exposes your Magento store to the highest risk. While many Magento stores initially start with commodity hosting, as you'll discover later, this approach tends to be the most expensive way to host your store. Commodity hosting may be suitable in the following scenarios:
- When your store needs to scale to a running footprint only possible with a hyperscaler cloud.
- When you have a dedicated technical team that oversees the day-to-day maintenance of the Magento installation.
- When you contract services from a security operations center (SOC) to monitor and remedy security issues. If you're currently considering managing the security of your Magento installation yourself, here's an overview of the expected expenses for different security areas.
Cyber Insurance
It is crucial to have coverage in the event of a breach. The average cost of Cyber Insurance in the US for a small to medium e-commerce operation ranges between $1,500 and $3,000 annually.
Extended Detection And Response (XDR) PCI-DSS requires merchants to run anti-malware on their servers, perform regular log file analysis, and have incident response capabilities. Companies like Rapid7, Crowdstrike, and Cynet offer endpoint, network, server protection, and incident response services. Additionally, cyber insurance policies often require this level of security. The annual cost for XDR protection can range from $5,000 to $10,000, with an assumed average of $8,500.
Technical Support
You'll need someone to manage your servers or infrastructure, ensuring proper patching and adherence to expected norms. Hiring a Network/Server admin with project management experience to liaise with your XDR vendor, Cyber Insurance, and hosting company is an effective approach. However, expect to pay between $85,000 and $112,000 per year for this role.
Hosting Costs
If you're hosting in your own data center, consider energy costs, bandwidth, and software licensing. Assuming you're running your store on 2 VMWare hosts connected to a storage appliance with a Fortigate 601F NGFW at the network edge, the first 12 months' costs (including renewals and hardware) range from $8,000 to $10,000 monthly.
On-prem hosting is becoming less popular due to its high cost and slow scalability. Alternatively, using a hyperscaler cloud like Amazon Web Services or Digital Ocean, properly configured and optimized for performance and security, can cost $500 to $1,000 monthly for hosting alone. Commodity hosting quickly becomes expensive, so self-hosting comes with risks.
Managed Magento Hosting
Managed hosting is a great solution for small to medium-sized e-commerce operations that require additional resources or prefer not to self-host with a commodity hosting provider. The cost difference between self-hosting Magento and using a managed hosting provider depends on your needs and resources.
Managed hosting providers offer a comprehensive, hassle-free solution, handling infrastructure, setup, maintenance, and security. In contrast, self-hosting requires more technical knowledge and ongoing management.
The average cost of managed Magento hosting ranges from $100 to $500 per month, depending on the amount of traffic and support required. Even at the higher end, a year of managed Magento hosting and Cyber Insurance remains more cost-effective than self-hosting, with additional expenses for XDR, insurance, and human resources.
Conclusion
Proper security measures are crucial to protect your website and business from potential security breaches and cyber threats. The cost of a security breach can far exceed the expense of implementing adequate security measures.
Therefore, choosing the right hosting strategy is vital, as it significantly impacts your system's security. Are you ready to decide on the security and cost-effectiveness of hosting your Magento 2 store? Reach out to our experts, and let's find the optimal hosting solution for your needs.
