Hosting Drupal on AWS offers incredible power, scale, and flexibility — but only if you’re ready for the operational burden that comes with it. In this episode, we unpack the entire landscape of Drupal hosting options on Amazon Web Services, from the simplest one-click Lightsail deployments all the way up to expert-level container orchestration with ECS and EKS.
Using the “AWS Ladder” metaphor, we break down each path step-by-step so you can clearly see the trade-offs:
• Lightsail & Marketplace AMIs — great for prototypes, not for enterprise
• EC2 & manual deployments — maximum control, maximum workload
• AWS Reference Architecture — powerful but complex and expensive
• Containers (ECS/EKS) — the ultimate scale, the ultimate DevOps burden
And then… we compare the entire ladder to a completely different option: the automated escalator.
That escalator is DevPanel, which automates 80–90% of the operational work required to run Drupal on AWS — including dev/stage/prod environments, CI/CD pipelines, preview branches, backups, monitoring, security hardening, and cloud dev environments.
Most importantly, DevPanel runs inside your own AWS account, giving you full ownership and zero vendor lock-in.
Whether you’re a freelancer, an agency running dozens of sites, or an enterprise managing mission-critical Drupal applications, this episode will give you the clarity you need to pick the right hosting strategy — and save your team from unnecessary DevOps pain.
In This Episode You’ll Learn:
- Why AWS hosting feels like a maze for most teams
- The pros & cons of every major Drupal hosting path
- Where teams waste the most time on DevOps
- Why the AWS ladder gets exponentially harder as you climb
- How DevPanel automates the entire Drupal SDLC
- Which approach is best for freelancers, agencies, and enterprises
- The one question every team must answer before choosing a path
Watch Video: https://youtu.be/olJnm43qUf8
Credits
Infrastructure, tooling, and AI provider by https://devpanel.com/
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This episode of DrupalBrief is sponsored by DrupalForge.org
DrupalBrief.com
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