A bewildering array of services and hosting providers are available to host your Drupal site. Which should you choose?
In this post I will discuss the pros and cons of hosting your Drupal site on Pantheon, Rackspace Cloud, and a traditional hosting provider such as Hostgator with cPanel front end, which are three options we support at Sage Tree Solutions. Of course there are even more options available, but that's outside the scope of this article.
Pantheon is a cloud-based hosting solution developed specifically for Drupal. It combines simplicity in administration with best practices for very high Drupal performance and scalability and includes development and test servers alongside the production servers. A true one stop solution for most Drupal projects.
Price
At the time of this writing a standard Pantheon Drop - their terminology for a process space, which equates to a server elsewhere - costs $100 per month.
Pantheon Pros
- Completely managed solution - server upgrades and server security are taken care of behind the scene.
- PCI DSS (payment card industry data security standard) compliant for OS and Drupal core. If you have an eCommerce site this removes a lot of headache and cost.
- Very simple server administration through one project dashboard, including:
- git history
- assigned domain name(s)
- site cache clearing
- control whether site is public or private (access control via user name and password, useful for development and test site versions).
- access to error log.
- one click creation of backups.
- migration of content from production site back to development and test sites.
- download of database and site files folder (uploaded images and non-HTML documents).
- simple control over team which can administer the server
- Drupal core updates available through one click on dashboard.
- Tuned at most layers for best performance by a team which is highly regarded in this space.
- Easily scale to very high traffic volumes by adding "drops" on request.
- 99.9% uptime guarantee via SLA (Service Level Agreement).
- Full support included.
Pantheon Cons
- Complex sites with lots of file assets may not perform well.
- One Drop hosts one Drupal instance only.
- Not compatible with Drupal multisite setups.
- No integration with outside git repositories.
In contrast to Pantheon, the Rackspace Cloud represents a completely unmanaged solution. You get a virtualized server in the Rackspace Cloud and are responsible for setting it up and maintaining it, a service we provide at Sagetree Solutions.
Price
At the time of this writing a Rackspace Cloud server with 1 GB RAM and 40 GB of disk, which is a good size for most small to medium size Drupal sites, costs $43.80 per month, and additional costs for bandwidth apply.
Rackspace Cloud Pros
- Reliability and redundancy of the underlying cloud infrastructure, i.e. if some underlying hardware servers or disks go down, the cloud itself stays up, albeit with lower overall performance.
- Nimble servers with good I/O (input/output) performance, which in Drupal matters for database and file asset access.
- Full access to all configuration aspects of the server, can fine-tune everything for the task at hand.
- Relatively low cost for a dedicated server instance.
- Clean user interface to manage server.
- Rackspace support has a very good reputation.
- !00% data center and network uptime guarantee via SLA (Service Level Agreement). Note that there is no guarantee for the server itself.
- Interoperability and vendor independance due to use of open source OpenStack code base.
Rackspace Cloud Cons
- Completely unmanaged, users are on their own regarding server configuration, maintenance and monitoring.
- Also completely unmanaged regarding Drupal core and contrib modules.
- No built in security reassurance.
- No graphical tools to manage server OS, users must be comfortable with the Linux command line.
- No service level guarantee regarding the actual server.
Hostgator and many hosting providers like it represents the previous generation of hosting solutions. I.e. a tried and true setup, trusted provider and long track record. In addition, Hostgator VPS (virtual private server) instances have (optional) WHM and cPanel web interfaces to manage the server.
Price
At the time of this writing a Level 4 Hostgator VPS (virtual private server) with 1 GB RAM and 59 GB of memory, which is a good fit for medium size Drupal sites, costs $79.95 per month.
Hostgator Pros
- Tried and true solution with years of track record.
- Decent performance.
- Full access to all configuration aspects of the server, can fine-tune everything for the task at hand.
- Graphical user interface to manage most aspects of server, including many internal configuration details.
- Hostgator support has a good reputation.
- VPS can be scaled up to deal with increased traffic.
Hostgator Cons
- Mostly unmanaged, users are on their own regarding server configuration, maintenance and monitoring.
- Also completely unmanaged regarding Drupal core and contrib modules.
- No built in security reassurance.
- Very little redundancy built in, only disks and network. Most hardware parts, as well as server OS remain single points of failure.
- No service level guarantee regarding the actual server.
- Scaling VPS instance requires lead time and downtime.
If you need a hands-off Drupal hosting solution with built in security and scaling potential, Pantheon is your best bet and probably also the lowest cost solution.
If you like to tinker with your site and server, you are in good hands in the Rackspace Cloud.
Likewise, if you work with a trusted service partner to monitor and manage your server (such as having a server and site management agreement with Sage Tree Solutions) the Rackspace Cloud represents a good solution with potential to grow with your business and ideas.
If your Drupal site has a large amount of images, video files, PDFs and other file assets, the Rackspace Cloud is also a very good solution, provided you can take care of the server or hire someone to do it for you.
Finally, if you need the reassurance of a tried and true solution you cannot go wrong with a hosting provider such as Hostgator. You trade in some flexibility regarding scaling potential (i.e. if a page on your site unexpectedly goes viral you probably won't be able to resize the server before or while the deluge hits), but you gain a trusted environment with lots of experienced service providers to help you apply a tweak, and most of the time you can do this yourself.
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