EveryHost: Magento Dedicated Hosting UK
    Magento load testing service

    Magento Surge Shield: load testing and peak cover for Black Friday

    Get your Magento store ready for Black Friday, big sales and launches, wherever it is hosted.

    Book a free Peak CheckHow it works

    Black Friday is Friday 27 November 2026

    Served from full page cache (catalogue and CMS pages)Basket, checkout and account (runs on your server), watchedExample only, not real data.

    Why Magento stores struggle at peak

    Most catalogue and CMS pages can be served from full page cache, so a surge of browsing costs the server very little. Basket, checkout, customer account and payment pages cannot: they run on your server on every request. That is where a Black Friday website crash usually starts, and it is the path Magento load testing has to cover.

    The other common causes are ordinary: a last-minute change deployed after the freeze, an indexer running during the sale, cron jobs and message queues competing with shoppers for the same CPU, and an extension that was fine at normal traffic. None of these show up on a homepage speed test.

    Who Surge Shield is for

    Magento stores with a peak coming

    Magento 2 Open Source and self-managed Adobe Commerce stores, on any host, facing Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, the January sales, a TV slot, a launch or a big email. Magento only.

    Agencies

    Agencies who want a second pair of Magento hands for a client's peak. We work alongside your agency: you keep the client relationship and the code, we bring the load test plan and the engineers on call.

    How our Magento load testing service works

    1. 1. Free Peak Check

      We review your store, your stack and your caching: full page cache and Varnish setup, hit rate where we can see it, indexers, cron, queues and extensions. Then we write a load test plan for the browse, basket and checkout journey, with findings in plain English.

    2. 2. Readiness fixes

      A prioritised list of what to fix before the peak. We work alongside your developer or agency. For stores hosted with us, we prepare the stack and staging.

    3. 3. Load test

      Run to the agreed plan in an agreed window, on staging or production, sometimes called a website stress test. If you are hosted elsewhere, we run it with your host's agreement.

    4. 4. Peak cover

      Hosted with us: UK engineers watch your servers through the agreed window. Hosted elsewhere: a named contact and on-call advice during the window, working with your developer, agency or host.

    5. 5. Post-peak report

      What happened, what the load test showed, and what to fix before the next peak. Written by our engineers as part of Surge Shield.

    What you get

    • A free Peak Check of your store, stack and caching, with a written load test plan
    • A prioritised list of readiness fixes, worked through with your developer or agency
    • A load test of the browse, basket and checkout journey, run to the agreed plan
    • UK Magento engineers on watch (hosted with us) or on call (hosted elsewhere) through your peak window
    • A post-peak report written by our engineers

    Surge Shield or a virtual waiting room like Queue-it?

    A virtual waiting room such as Queue-it holds shoppers in a queue when a site is at capacity and lets them in as space frees up. Surge Shield is not a waiting room and does not replace one.

    Surge Shield tests how much your store can take, helps fix what we find before the peak, and puts engineers on watch or on call during it. Some stores use both. If the load test shows you need a waiting room, we can help plan one with your developer.

    What Surge Shield cannot do

    • Basket, checkout, customer account and payment pages cannot be served from full page cache. They run on your store's server on every request, which is why we load test that path.
    • We do not guarantee that a store stays up. There is no SLA and there are no service credits.
    • We cannot control payment gateways, third-party extensions, stock or ERP integrations, or another host's network and hardware.
    • For stores hosted elsewhere we do not run your servers and we do not sit in front of your store. Surge Shield is not a CDN, a proxy or a WAF.
    • A load test is simulated traffic: a strong guide, not a promise.

    Prices

    Peak Check

    Free

    Store, stack and caching review with a written load test plan

    Season cover

    from £1,495

    ex VAT

    1 November 2026 to 5 January 2027: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas and the January sales

    Event pass

    from £495

    ex VAT

    Covers one event, about 72 hours: a sale, a TV slot or a launch

    Final quote after your free Peak Check.

    Hosting with us is separate: Managed VPS from £119, Dedicated from £249 and High Availability from £799 a month ex VAT, on plans and prices. If you move to EveryHost, migration is free.

    Book your Peak Check by Friday 16 October 2026 for Black Friday 2026

    That leaves time to fix what we find before most merchants freeze changes at the end of October. If your peak is a different date, tell us and we will work back from it.

    Book a free Peak Check

    Book a free Peak Check

    Our free Peak Readiness Check (Peak Check for short) starts with an outside-in look at your store, then, if you go ahead, a look at the stack with the access you choose to give. Nothing to install, and you do not need to be a customer.

    A Magento engineer replies within 24–48 hours, usually much faster. Prefer to talk? Call 0333 577 6191. We use your details only to reply to this enquiry, as set out in our privacy policy.

    Magento Surge Shield questions

    No. You do not have to move host to use Surge Shield. For stores hosted elsewhere, we advise, load test with your host's agreement and stay on call through your peak, and your developer, agency or host makes the changes. If you do want to move, migration to EveryHost is free.

    Basket, checkout, customer account and payment pages cannot be served from full page cache. They run on your store's server on every request, which is why we load test that path. Surge Shield does not touch card data or your payment gateway.

    Yes. Surge Shield covers Magento 2 Open Source and self-managed Adobe Commerce, with Hyvä or Luma themes. If your store is on Adobe Commerce Cloud, ask us: Adobe runs that infrastructure, so what we can do is different.

    No. If your store already uses a CDN such as Cloudflare, we review how it is set up as part of the Peak Check.

    No. Season cover runs from 1 November 2026 to 5 January 2027 and takes in Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas and the January sales. An event pass covers one event, about 72 hours: a sale, a TV slot, a launch or a big email.

    If you are hosted with us, UK engineers are watching your servers through the agreed window and act on what they see. If you are hosted elsewhere, you have a named contact and on-call advice during the window, and we work with your developer, agency or host. We cannot control another host's network or hardware, a payment gateway or a third-party extension.

    No. A virtual waiting room such as Queue-it holds shoppers in a queue when a site is at capacity. Surge Shield tests how much your store can take, helps fix what we find before the peak, and puts engineers on watch or on call during it. Some stores use both, and if the load test shows you need a waiting room, we can help plan one with your developer.

    What happened during your peak window, what the load test showed, and what to fix before the next peak. It is written by our engineers as part of Surge Shield.

    Usually because the pages that cannot be cached, basket, checkout, account and payment, all run on the server at once while indexers, cron jobs, queues and a last-minute change compete for the same capacity. That is the path we load test, and the reason we ask you to book before your code freeze.

    EveryHost is a UK Magento hosting company. Our roots in UK Magento hosting go back to 2008. We run Managed VPS, Dedicated and High Availability Magento hosting on dedicated hardware in a UK data centre in London, with UK Magento engineers.