Overview

A U.S. government news agency—delivering 1 to 2 billion monthly pageviews across dozens of Drupal sites—was facing ballooning hosting costs, operational roadblocks, and limited technical flexibility on its Acquia. With a mandate to modernize, reduce costs, and gain greater control, the agency turned to DevPanel to evaluate a migration to AWS.

The result?

• 75% reduction in hosting costs
• Improved site performance
• Full infrastructure access
• A modern dev platform with 24/7 support

Challenge

The agency’s main English-language news site alone drew over 11 million hits per day, with 46 additional language sites serving millions more.

At the time, only four sites were hosted on Acquia, costing the agency approximately $1 million annually. Hosting all 47 sites with Acquia would be financially unsustainable.

Key pain points included:

• High recurring costs
• Limited control over infrastructure
• Slow, ticket-based support
• Platform bugs and dev friction

The team recognized that self-hosting on AWS could solve many of these issues, but needed a platform to simplify the process—without losing the ease-of-use that Acquia offered.

The Solution: Enterprise-Grade Automation with DevPanel on AWS

To resolve these challenges, the agency ultimately selected DevPanel to serve as the unified control plane and automation engine for their new AWS infrastructure. This choice was not merely about finding a new hosting provider; it was about adopting a modern DevOps posture that bridged the gap between the simplicity of managed hosting and the raw power of the public cloud.

DevPanel provided a comprehensive solution that delivered the following critical capabilities:

1. A Familiar, Low-Code Control Plane Moving away from a managed PaaS can often feel daunting, but DevPanel mitigated this by providing an intuitive, point-and-click dashboard. This interface mirrored the ease of use found in platforms like Acquia, allowing non-specialists to manage complex cloud resources without needing to become AWS certified engineers. It democratized infrastructure management, enabling the team to handle deployments, backups, and scaling with a few clicks.

2. Modern, Browser-Based Developer Experience DevPanel significantly modernized the agency’s development workflow by integrating browser-based IDEs, such as VS Code, and database management tools like phpMyAdmin directly into the platform. This allowed developers to code, test, and troubleshoot from anywhere without complex local environment setups, streamlining the contribution process and accelerating development velocity.

3. Unrestricted Root Access and Transparency Unlike the previous “black box” hosting environment where the underlying machinery was hidden, DevPanel granted the agency full root access to both their code and the underlying infrastructure. This transparency meant the internal IT team could finally audit configurations, install custom packages, and optimize the stack specifically for their unique high-traffic requirements without hitting vendor-imposed walls.

4. Native AWS Integration and Extensibility By sitting directly on top of AWS, DevPanel unlocked the full potential of the cloud ecosystem. The agency was no longer limited to a proprietary set of add-ons; instead, they gained integration-ready support for native AWS services. This facilitated seamless connections to Amazon S3 for storage, CloudFront for global content delivery, and RDS for scalable database management.

5. Enterprise-Grade Security and Compliance Given the strict requirements of a government news entity, security was non-negotiable. DevPanel provided a secure architecture that included VPN access, ensuring that sensitive administrative entry points were shielded from the public internet. This setup allowed the agency to maintain rigorous high-security compliance standards essential for federal operations.

6. 24/7 Hands-On DevOps Support Recognizing that the agency wanted to own their infrastructure without being overwhelmed by it, DevPanel provided 24/7 hands-on support. acting as an extension of the agency’s internal team. This ensured that expert help was always available for complex architecture questions, performance tuning, and emergency incident response.

7. Total Infrastructure Sovereignty Perhaps the most crucial factor in the decision was the deployment model: DevPanel was deployed directly inside the agency’s own AWS account. This approach ensured complete data sovereignty. Unlike traditional hosting where the vendor owns the account, here the agency retained full legal and technical ownership of their infrastructure. If they ever chose to stop using DevPanel, their servers, data, and AWS configurations would remain 100% theirs—eliminating the risk of vendor lock-in..

Project Execution

In partnership with the agency’s prime contractor, DevPanel undertook a phased evaluation project with four main objectives:

1. Time & Effort Estimation
   1. Manual and automated migrations were tested.
   2. On average, each site took < 2 days to migrate (including automated testing and go/no-go reviews).
2. Cost Comparison
   1. Estimated AWS hosting: ~$127K/year.
   2. Adjusted for buffer and ops costs: $200K/year.
   3. Compared to ~$1M/year with Acquia, that’s over 75% savings.
3. Performance Testing
   1. Sites on AWS loaded significantly faster than Acquia (even before cache optimization).
   2. Benchmarked with WebPageTest.org.
4. Scalability Testing
   1. Load tested with over 1 million hits/minute.
   2. AWS infrastructure scaled automatically and gracefully under peak load.

Exhibit 1 – High Traffic Site (> 11 Million Hits / Day)

Results

Metric	Acquia	DevPanel + AWS
Annual Hosting Cost	~ $1,000,000	< $200,000 (est.)
Dev Tools	Limited	VS Code, PhpMyAdmin
Root Access	No	Yes
Support	Slow, ticket-based	24/7 hands-on
Performance (TTV/Load)	Moderate	Significantly better
Infrastructure Scaling	Static	Auto-scaling w/ AWS

Exhibit 2 – Estimated Annual Costs on AWS (> 75% savings with DevPanel)

Exhibit 3 – Site Performance (~1 sec faster on AWS with DevPanel)

Exhibit 4 – Load Testing (able to handle sudden spikes of ~2 million hits/min)

Exhibit 5 – DevPanel cluster on AWS (able to scale instantly in response to spike in load)

Strategic Benefits

• Financial: Achieved long-term cost savings by moving away from vendor lock-in.
• Operational: Enabled developers to manage sites independently without delays.
• Security: Supported VPN access and agency-controlled deployments.
• Compliance: Aligned with federal cloud adoption policies and security standards.

Questions to Consider

• Are you paying high recurring hosting fees?
• Would 50–75% savings justify migration efforts?
• Could your teams benefit from faster support and full control?

About DevPanel

DevPanel is a secure, AWS-native development and hosting platform that enables agencies and organizations to build, deploy, and manage applications inside their own cloud accounts. From custom apps to high-security Drupal and WordPress sites, DevPanel puts power and flexibility in your hands—without needing to manage AWS manually.

To see DevPanel’s capabilities firsthand, schedule a 15-minute demo.Contact us through the website (https://www.devpanel.com) or email: contact@devpanel.com.