“This is not just a how-to guide. It’s a real-world case study of how I, as a Solutions Architect, handled the seemingly simple task of building a website — and transformed it into a strategic decision-making exercise that touched cost, performance, scalability, and long-term business goals.”
This is a professional case study on how I, as a Solutions Architect approach building a modern website from scratch for a small-to-mid scale business.
Introduction
A business approaches with a requirement to build a professional website. As a Solutions Architect, my role is not just to develop it, but to understand the problem from a business and technical perspective. The goal is to design a cost-efficient, scalable, and maintainable solution aligned with user expectations and operational constraints. This document represents my approach in handling such a requirement from discovery to architecture decisions and cost estimation.
It started with a casual request: “We need a basic business website.”
Simple? Not quite. The client was a bootstrapped creative agency planning a brand relaunch. Their site had to support:
Showcasing services
Client lead capture
Content updates via blog
SEO campaigns
They had less than $100 for setup and wanted to keep infra under $10/month. And no technical team.
This wasn’t just about choosing a hosting provider. This was about making every dollar count while making room for growth.
Discovery Phase
What we need to know
-
What is the website for?
- Brand visibility?
- Showcase of services?
- Generating leads or inquiries?
- Content publishing?
-
Who is the target audience and expected traffic?
- What is the projected average daily traffic?
- Are there seasonal spikes or marketing campaigns expected?
-
What is the client’s budget?
- Initial budget for design and development?
- Ongoing yearly maintenance and hosting?
-
What content will be available?
- Will the client provide structured web copy?
- Do they expect help with content strategy?
-
Design expectations?
- Do they want to use a pre-built template?
- Are custom design elements or animations required?
📎 View Full Discovery Questionnaire →
Use Case: Static Business Website
Let’s assume the following requirement:
- Multi-page website (Home, About, Services, Contact)
- Basic contact form
- < 100 users/day
- Limited budget
This type of project seems simple but my job is to ensure it’s resilient, fast, and future-ready.
Evaluating Shared Hosting
The most common go-to for small business websites is shared hosting through providers like Hostinger, GoDaddy, or Bluehost.
These platforms offer plans starting as low as $2–10/month and come with bundled features like:
- Domain + SSL
- One-click WordPress installation
- cPanel-based deployment
While this might seem ideal, these plans have a major limitation: bandwidth.
Example: A basic shared plan might allow 10GB/month. If the homepage is 1MB and 1,000 people visit in one day, that’s 1GB already used.
Additionally:
- You’re co-hosted with hundreds of other websites (performance varies)
- Server scaling is not possible
- DDoS protection and auto-healing are limited
As a Solutions Architect, my responsibility is to look beyond cost and consider future traffic surges, SEO performance, and uptime.
This is where we consider AWS.
☁️ Re-Architecting the Website with AWS
Instead of just “hosting” the site, the aim is to design for scalability, availability, and cost-efficiency backed by AWS cloud services. The choice of services depends on technical complexity, required uptime, expected traffic, and budget.
Option 1: S3 + CloudFront — Scalable Static Hosting
Architecture:
- HTML, CSS, JS, and assets are hosted on an S3 bucket.
- CloudFront is configured as the CDN with edge locations globally.
- Route 53 manages the DNS with low-latency routing.
- SSL is handled by ACM with TLS 1.2 enforcement.
Why this setup?
- Designed for durability (S3: 99.999999999%)
- Low-latency delivery globally using edge caching
- Pay-as-you-go — ideal for unpredictable traffic
- Serverless; no need for patching or scaling
Security Controls:
- S3 public access is blocked
- OAI (Origin Access Identity) used for secure CloudFront access
- All endpoints HTTPS-only
Cost Example:
- 3GB egress via CloudFront: ~$0.25
- 2GB S3 storage: ~$0.05
- Route 53 hosted zone: $0.50
- ACM: Free
Estimated Total: <$1/month
Option 2: Lightsail + WordPress — Simplified CMS Hosting
Architecture:
- Lightsail instance pre-configured with WordPress
- Static IP with TLS enabled
- Optional S3 media storage with WP-S3 plugin
Why Lightsail?
- Predictable pricing and UI simplicity
- Supports small teams and content editors
- Built-in monitoring and snapshots
Security:
- Regular patching required via SSH
- Enable UFW, fail2ban, and only expose HTTPS and SSH
Cost:
- 1 static IP (if not attached)
- Optional: CloudFront for faster asset delivery
Option 3: Elastic Beanstalk (EC2 + RDS) — Managed WordPress Stack
Architecture:
- EC2-based WordPress with auto-scaling
- RDS MySQL backend
- Load Balancer for HA
- Deployed via Beanstalk environment with health checks
Why Beanstalk?
- Infra managed behind the scenes
- Health dashboards and deployment rollbacks
- Horizontal scaling and blue-green deployments possible
Cost:
- EC2 t3.micro: ~$9
- RDS t3.micro: ~$15
- Load Balancer: ~$18
Total: ~$42/month
Option 4: Custom EC2 + RDS — Fully Manual Infra
Architecture:
- Nginx + PHP-FPM setup on EC2
- MySQL database via RDS
- S3 for media + CloudFront as CDN
- Managed via SSH + SystemD + Cron
Why this?
- Complete flexibility and optimization
- Ideal for infrastructure-heavy teams
Challenges:
- Requires patching, scaling, and recovery scripts
- Higher learning curve and risks
Estimated Cost:
- ~$60/month fully loaded
Image & Asset Strategy
- Store all static media in S3 with lifecycle rules
- CDN delivered via CloudFront with caching headers
- Signed URLs and versioning for access control
Advantages:
- Reduced TTFB and origin server load
- Parallel domain strategy for high LCP pages
- Easy purging and asset invalidation via CLI/CDN APIs
Summary Table
| Architecture Stack | Use Case | Monthly Cost | Scalability | Maintenance | Extensibility |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shared Hosting | Basic entry site | $2–10 | Low | Low | Low |
| S3 + CloudFront | Static brochureware | <$1 | Very High | Very Low | Medium |
| Lightsail | Small CMS website | $6–10 | Medium | Low | Low |
| Elastic Beanstalk | Scalable CMS | ~$40–50 | High | Medium | High |
| EC2 + RDS (Manual) | Custom workloads | $60+ | High | High | High |
Final Thoughts
This wasn’t just about publishing a few static pages. This was a rigorous evaluation and execution exercise where I combined cost analysis, scalability planning, and system resilience principles to propose a future-proof solution. Each decision here reflects tradeoff reasoning, not just technology selection.
Check out the GitHub Repo → Github
View Architecture Diagrams → Diagrams
Have a similar requirement? Reach out via rishwanth.perumandla@hotmail.com