VPS vs. Amazon S3?

[ppcnewbie]

Hi.

Newbie question here.

Assuming I opted for Voluum as tracking, so no need to host the tracker, I will need hosting just for landers.

My question is, what are the advantages and disadvantages of using VPS vs. Amazon S3+cloudfront?

Probably uploading the files to S3 would be a little annoying, rather than using FileZilla, but in therms of campaign performance, what are the advantages/disadvantages?

LE: Forgot to mention that probably at first, won't need to run PHP scripts, I'll stick to basic HTML landers when needed.

Or, if you think PHP would be better than HTML, why? I think it will just slow the lander and most things can be done through JS, right?

Thanks

 

[internalsoul]

ppcnewbie since you have already got voluum, so you coud probaly get amazon s3 + cloudfront. With VPS, you wont get the CDN feature and amazon cloud is really fast. You can feel the difference plus I guess its free for 1st year for amazon(s3 and other features would cost you). Its cheaper than VPS andd much faster.

Well, I still stick to html landing pages coupled with JS. As far as my knowledge, html are just tag pages which is used to describe the public part of the site. Browsers till this day can only show HTML part of the site. But when you need to show a dynamic page based on your user's query you will need a PHP page or any other script page of a higher level, which allow to create scripts that address user requests to the data base (DB). For example, during site search, user makes an entry into the field, clicks "enter" (which starts the work of the script), then receives a list of links that was made by the script. You wont be able to do it using html unless you are doing iframing which is calling another page. So when it comes to real-time data query, php pages are what you need, else html pages just work fine.

 

[ppcnewbie]

Thanks for your answer, Souvik.

IMO, for most landers I won't need PHP, that's why I was considering S3 for hosting.

Considering I already have an S3 account, I can host the landers there, run some speed tests and see how fast or slow they load and maybe consider purchasing a VPS for a month at first, to see the speed there also.

Anyway, even if they were hosted on a VPS, a CDN would still be useful, I guess.

 

[internalsoul]

I use amazon S3 and host all my landers dere without any issues. And i agree with you, you should test both and then come to final conclusions. Just change your IP, while checking the speed. Delivery of content via CDN is dependent on IP and its closest dataserver. So test with as many IP as you can.

 

[ppcnewbie]

Sure, I'll be using services like GTmetrix or pingdom

 

[marcustkw]

@ppcnewbie: you might want to get Route 53 service too. With S3 + CloudFront + Route 53, your LP will load a lot faster.

 

[ppcnewbie]

@ppcnewbie: you might want to get Route 53 service too. With S3 + CloudFront + Route 53, your LP will load a lot faster.

@marcustkw Thanks. Can you explain me in simple words how can Route 53 help me? From what I understand it's a DNS manager but I don't understand how this would improve the speed.

So I have a domain registered with NameCheap and use their DNS set by default. I changed C NAME to point to CloudFront which caches from my bucket and everything seems to work ok, a simple lander loads in 150-300 ms.

Now, how exactly is Route 53 helping me? I guess you mean this could reduce the DNS lookup time? In pingdom it shows 32 ms for DNS lookup. I think this DNS lookup time depends on the GEO, just like everything else. So since Route 53 is distributed, would this mean that when someone visits my domain, the DNS lookup will take a shorter amount of time because Route 53 will serve it from the closest server, like with CDN caching?

PS:

i started reading about DNSs and Route 53 and ended up opening 10-15 tabs in firefox so I realized I should spend my time on better tasks. So if my current DNS lookup is 32 ms, how fast can it be if I change the DNS from namecheap to Rout 53?

LE:

Ok, found something on Route 53's service page:

"Amazon Route 53 is designed to be fast, easy to use, and cost-effective. It answers DNS queries with low latency by using a global network of DNS servers. Queries for your domain are automatically routed to the nearest DNS server, and thus answered with the best possible performance"

So, I assumed correctly. Now the question remains how noticeable will be the improvements by moving to Route 53. Looks like there are some costs involved, haven't checked them yet, but at least with namecheap I don't need to pay extra.

LE2:

I found some benchmark stats on a blog: A few DNS benchmarks – Dec 2014 | mattgadient.com

This compares CloudFlare, DNSMadeEasy, Route 53 and NameCheap.

From this guy's tests, DME was the fastest, with avg DNS lookup of 90 ms. Then follows CloudFlare with 137 ms, then Route 53 with 180 and the slowest, NC with 204.

Now, I don't know how relevant is this benchmark, he explains something about other possible factors involved, but I didn't understand much from there.

But what I understand from the figures is that there's no much difference between NC and Route 53 and if I decide to use such service, I'd rather go for DME which seems to be the fastest and has the lowest price plan at $30/y

DNS Made Easy - Best Value DNS Prices

Not a deal breaker, 10 domains, 400 records and 5 million queries/mo would be enough for a beginner, so the $30/y plan would do the job for me.

Anyway, I think I'm focusing on the wrong part of the campaign setup now. Rather than sticking to the basics and get my 1st campaign live finally, I keep spreading my attention to all these little details

 

[Dr. Evil]

I think this thread should be moved to other section. This is not the suitable place to discuss this types of topic.

 

[ppcnewbie]

I think this thread should be moved to other section. This is not the suitable place to discuss this types of topic.

Why isn't it suitable? Move it to other section, which would be that?

I posted it in the Mobile Marketing subforum, I think it fits here pretty well. If you have any better idea, feel free to share, if not, don't just go offtopic with no further explanations, ok?

 

[newlxx]

Or, if you think PHP would be better than HTML, why? I think it will just slow the lander and most things can be done through JS, right?

Overall, PHP doesn't have much advantages unless your need to multivariate split test heavily.
Also, PHP works better in hiding landers.