Amazon CloudFront vs Bluehost Comparison

A

Why choose Amazon CloudFront

• Has a free plan (Bluehost does not)
• Lower estimated cost for 10 users: Free vs $4/mo
• Higher Scalability score (10/10 vs 5/10)
• Higher Analytics score (7/10 vs 3/10)
• Better fit for developers (9/10 vs 4/10)

Why choose Bluehost

• Higher Ease of Use score (8/10 vs 5/10)
• Higher Cost score (7/10 vs 6/10)
• Better fit for small business (8/10 vs 5/10)
• Includes Dedicated Servers, which Amazon CloudFront lacks
• Includes Managed WordPress, which Amazon CloudFront lacks

A

Amazon CloudFront

Pros

• The network is very large, with more than 750 PoPs plus over 1,140 PoPs embedded inside ISP networks.
• Data transfer from AWS origins such as S3 and EC2 to CloudFront costs nothing, which lowers costs for workloads hosted on AWS.
• Flat-rate plans start at $15 a month with no overage charges, which makes bills predictable.
• It has strong compliance coverage, including PCI-DSS Level 1, HIPAA, SOC, ISO and FedRAMP Moderate.
• Two tiers of edge compute are available: CloudFront Functions at $0.10 per million invocations and Lambda@Edge for heavier code.

Cons

• G2 and Capterra reviewers report complex configuration and a steep learning curve for people new to AWS.
• Capterra-network reviewers rate customer support poorly, around 3.4 out of 5.
• Flat-rate plans lack some features, such as real-time logs, dedicated IP SSL and continuous deployment, and going over the allowance reduces performance.
• Dedicated IP SSL at $600 a month and Anycast Static IPs at $3,000 a month are expensive extras.
• Users on AWS re:Post and GitHub report cache invalidations that occasionally hang for hours or time out during deploys.

Bluehost

Pros

• Every shared plan includes a free CDN, Let's Encrypt SSL, weekly backups, staging and a first-year domain.
• Low entry price: $3.99 a month on a 36-month term for up to 10 sites.
• Clear upgrade path from shared hosting to NVMe VPS and dedicated servers, with data centers in the US, Canada, the UK and the Netherlands.
• The 99.99% uptime SLA carries a service credit.
• Very large review base, with a 4.6 rating on Trustpilot.

Cons

• Renewal prices are roughly 2 to 3 times the intro rate, for example Starter rises from $3.99 to $9.99.
• The best prices require 24 to 36 month prepaid terms, and renewals cannot be refunded.
• Reviewers report paid add-ons at checkout and difficult cancellations.
• The SLA credit is a single 5% monthly credit, which is small.
• VPS plans are self-managed, with no cPanel or priority support included.
• Ratings on G2 and Capterra are mediocre (about 3.4 to 3.6), with complaints about support and performance.