Amazon CloudFront vs Pantheon

Amazon CloudFront

If you've already got plenty of AWS services, CloudFront is an obvious choice. It integrates seamlessly with other AWS infrastructure, and can be managed via CloudFormation as part of your wider Infrastructure as Code. Whilst it is slightly more complex than some of the competition to set up, it does have a large number of options and is very configurable.If you want to do just the very basic CDN at the minimum of cost on a small website (e.g. personal blog), its perhaps not the best choice. However, I personally made the decision to use CloudFront anyway, even though it was a little more than the competition, purely for the convenience factor as I was using Route 53 anyway and it gives me plenty of future options should I wish to make it more complex later on.

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Andrew Raines

Backend Software Engineer

10 Digital Media LimitedSports, 1-10 employees

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Pantheon

This is a good solution for a small development team who is supporting a site with many users. Many times, a shared hosting service is appropriate for a small business brochure site that gets a few hundred visitors per month, but if your site services user accounts that return or rely on information, this is a good option to rollout new changes and preserve existing data

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Nicholas De Salvo

Founder, Creative Director

Edge One MediaDesign, 1-10 employees

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Pros

Solid CDN services, does what it says on the tin
Lots of configuration options, which allow for different setups and pricing strategies
Lambda@Edge integration allows for really quite complex behaviours to be executed in the cloud at the edge node itself. This means there are a huge amount of possibilities for shaping and altering traffic close to the viewer.
Simple integration to other AWS services (e.g. S3)

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Andrew Raines

Backend Software Engineer

10 Digital Media LimitedSports, 1-10 employees

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Free development and testing environments
Secure hosting
Fast page and site performance
Free NewRelic APM tools
Seamless continuous integration

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Rob Watson

CEO

Webidextrous.comInternet, 1-10 employees

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Cons

It isn't the cheapest option out there, nor is it the most simple to set up. The likes of Cloudflare may be a better choice for small / simple sites, especially if there isn't any need for other AWS services.

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Andrew Raines

Backend Software Engineer

10 Digital Media LimitedSports, 1-10 employees

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Sometimes the use of WP-CLI and Terminus (command line tool, not the marketing software by the same name) is necessary to complete a task when there ought to be a way to do that task via the UI
Sometimes Dev and Test URLs can leak into Production sites (and vice versa), requiring database UPDATE queries to correct. I'm told this is being worked on.

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Rob Watson

CEO

Webidextrous.comInternet, 1-10 employees

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Alternatives Considered

Amazon CloudFront free Tier allows up to 50 GB of data transfer per month which is not there in any of the above. Amazon CloudFront provides detailed reporting around the most frequently used objects, monitoring and usage charts. Amazon CloudFront is suitable to help you deliver both static and dynamic content, including streaming. CloudFlare is not an actual CDN, but more of a reverse proxy that takes over all of your traffic and then serves cached versions of your content whenever possible and from a nearby location.Amazon CloudFront provides advanced security features and geo restriction. CloudFront is using Super PoP approach, which means much fewer (edge) locations, compared to the thousands that Akamai has around the world. This is why CloudFront costs less than Akamai.

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Ashish Agarwal

Software Engineer

GenpactInformation Technology and Services, 1001-5000 employees

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When you compare the cost of the product to the value it provides and time to launch - Pantheon wins the race. While Acquia is nice, it is generally a much more expensive hosting environment with not as many built-in features. OpenShift and Amazon Web Services are great if you need very custom builds, but you will need to set them up and maintain them yourself.

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Kyle Taylor

Senior Drupal Developer

LevelTen InteractiveInternet, 11-50 employees

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Return on Investment

Amazon CloudFront improves sales of business by providing high speed data transfer from nearest edge locations
Amazon CloudFront Supports dynamic content, not just static media.
Amazon CloudFront provides cache statistics reports, popular objects report, monitoring and alarming, usage charts, and more.

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Ashish Agarwal

Software Engineer

GenpactInformation Technology and Services, 1001-5000 employees

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Rapid deployment of feature and security updates from upstreams takes less time than installing by hand.
Automation and integration through Terminus CLI is extremely useful.

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Thomas Humburg

Senior Frontend Engineer

HealthgradesInformation Technology and Services, 501-1000 employees

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Pricing Details

Amazon CloudFront

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Amazon CloudFront Editions & Modules

Amazon CloudFront

—

Additional Pricing Details

—

Pantheon

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

Yes

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

Optional

1. Elite

Pantheon Editions & Modules

Pantheon

Edition

Basic

35.001

Performance - Small

125.001

Elite

Custom2

Performance - Medium

225.003

Performance - Large

750.003

Performance - Extra Large

450.003

1. per month

2. Contract Only

3. per month

Additional Pricing Details

With Pantheon you will get superior hosting and workflow tools to drive business success on the web. For more information on Pantheon's Pricing and Hosting Plans, please visit: https://pantheon.io/plans/pricing

Rating Summary

Amazon CloudFront vs Pantheon