Can't beat the price to get started with a low traffic website, and still be ready for a burst of traffic.
March 04, 2016

Can't beat the price to get started with a low traffic website, and still be ready for a burst of traffic.

Peter Ivie | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

FreeShift

Overall Satisfaction with OpenShift

Right now, it is being used for a single website that has previously been hosted either personally, in EC2, or on Bluehost over the years. I picked Openshift because it had the capability to scale up, but I don't get charged when use is low, which is the case a majority of the time.
  • No work seems to be required in order to scale up.
  • Free service when use is low.
  • I love the ability to login with SSH!
  • Data storage seems a bit costly in comparison with the other services, but maybe I am just cheap.
  • I have been able to cut my hosting costs almost to zero without sacrificing the ability to handle higher loads down the road.
  • I haven't received messages about the site being down since I started using OpenShift. I don't have to worry about fixing things myself when/if the network or some hardware fails.
  • Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Bluehost
EC2 seems really cheap until you realize how many hours there are in a year, so it is expensive for something that runs 24/7. And scaling is a challenge (and even more expensive) to set up for.
Bluehost has very reasonable prices, but it feels so cluttered whenever I login to cPanel. Thank goodness they have an SSH option also, but I remember having to send a picture ID or something and pay extra for the privilege.
I think if you have a lot of data requirements, you could still use Openshift, but you might need to store your data elsewhere. It seems particularly suited for low content websites with bursty traffic patterns. The online interface is very simple, which is good for those (like me) who prefer to configure things from an SSH shell.

Red Hat OpenShift Feature Ratings

Ease of building user interfaces
Not Rated
Scalability
9
Platform management overhead
Not Rated
Workflow engine capability
Not Rated
Platform access control
8
Services-enabled integration
Not Rated
Development environment creation
8
Development environment replication
Not Rated
Issue monitoring and notification
5
Issue recovery
Not Rated
Upgrades and platform fixes
6