which hosting option is faster? SSD w/ less RAM versus HDD w/ more RAM

Choosing the fastest hosting setup for Magento shop

[abilitydesigns]

All other things being equal ( traffic/CPU/images/content,etc ) , which one of the two vendors would be the faster solution for Magento Shop of 350 SKUs?

Hosting Company A:
6GBRAM , 70GB SSD , Cloud

Hosting Company B:
16 GB RAM, 70 GB HDD , Sharedserver with 12 other sites ( this vendor is magento certified partner )

Page load time is the most critical factor for us & I read SSD are upto 30% faster than HDD? Note:Budget is NOT a constraint.

Any insights would be highly appreciated. Thank you very much.

[oliondor]

RAM RAM RAM

[Frank_Rizzo]

They are both shared so you are sharing with other sites and that could be a problem at peak times.

If budget is not a constraint then go full dedicated.

Yes SSD is way faster than HDD but RAM is faster than both and using that for caching and indexes will be a big boost.

Hardware is not the only thing to consider. The O/S and database need to be tuned. That is something, which is less likely to be an option with shared hosting so again: go dedicated / managed server.

[robzilla]

I don't think the extra 10GB above the 6GB will do much for you, since it's a fairly small shop. SSD storage is probably going to make a bigger difference, especially on disk writes, but it depends on the platform (an array of good HDDs can still outperform SSDs). Perhaps you can ask for a trial account and benchmark the two?

Don't underestimate the importance of CPU either; especially on shared platforms this can be a problem -- another reason to go with a dedicated server or VPS.

[lammert]

Option 1 is a cloud server, which means that its resources are shared with an unknown number of other users. Option 2 is as you mentioned also a shared server. Your site speed is in both options more influenced by the other sites which are running on that server than by the physical resources. One site with badly coded scripts can severely damage performance of your site.

If budget is not a constraint, go dedicated. However if these two options are the only options you can chose from, go for the second one. In that option the server owner is a Magento certified partner and likely better knows how to tune the server for a site running Magento than a generic cloud host.

[abilitydesigns]

Thank you everyone. Great insights! We're close to finalizing the magento platinum hosting partner with HDD but more RAM

[oliondor]

Please explain why you won't choose a dedicated if money is not a problem ?

Anything else suxx, even VPS, I tried them all, and finally only dedicated are fine ! You are wasting your time with anything else.

[bwnbwn]

I agree with oliondor dedicated is the way to go. You can get managed dedicated and there will be help available about the same as a VPS.