Terraform Magento Cloud vs Adobe Commerce Cloud (SaaS/PaaS Platform.sh) white-label hosting. A DevOps-Centric Breakdown
As businesses grow and their eCommerce operations become more complex, so do the infrastructure requirements for platforms like Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce. The choice of deployment strategy can have significant long-term implications on cost, performance, scalability, and team productivity.
While Platform.sh, Adobe’s official Magento Cloud white lebel hosting provider, is widely used as an Adobe absell with Adobe Commerce license, it comes with limitations that can become bottlenecks for teams that demand agility and control. On the other hand, Terraform Magento Cloud brings the power of infrastructure as code (IaC), configuration management, and modular design to Magento deployments on any cloud.
https://github.com/Genaker/TerraformMagentoCloud ->
Deeper Look at Terraform Magento Cloud Architecture
Terraform Magento Cloud combines:
- Terraform: Declarative infrastructure provisioning (compute, network, storage).
- Ansible: Procedural system configuration (PHP-FPM, NGINX, MySQL/PostgreSQL, Redis, etc).
- Predefined roles for Magento deployment, with support for:
- Multiple web(admin/api can be separate nodes) nodes (with autoscaling)
- Cache and Redis clustering
- ELB and HTTPS via Let’s Encrypt
- Centralized logging and monitoring (Prometheus, Grafana, Loki)
- Multi-environment staging (dev, staging, prod) with automated provisioning.
In short, this gives teams a production-ready reference architecture that’s modular, reproducible, and version-controlled — a critical step forward from the opaque and constrained setup offered by Platform.sh.
Video of the AWS Cloud provisioning using Terraform Magento Cloud scripts:
Use Case Scenarios of the Terraform Magento Adobe Commerce Cloud
1. High-Traffic B2C Store
Need to autoscale based on traffic spikes? With Terraform Magento Cloud, you can provision more EC2 instances (or Hetzner servers), configure a load balancer, and scale the cache tier. Platform.sh requires a support request and potential pricing tier change — not real-time.
2. Enterprise Compliance (e.g., PCI-DSS, HIPAA)
Want to harden your stack with OS-level security, audit logging, or deploy in a VPC with tight IAM policies? Terraform Magento Cloud enables full compliance configurations. Platform.sh offers limited controls, with compliance abstracted or undocumented.
3. Magento Extension Development at Scale
Need isolated environments for QA, staging, and multiple parallel features? Spin up new environments programmatically with Terraform. On Platform.sh, you’re limited by plan quotas and higher per-environment cost.
4. DevOps and GitOps Culture
Want to keep your infrastructure version-controlled in Git, and deploy via pull requests? TerraformvMagento Cloud embraces GitOps — all infra is codified. Platform.sh has YAML-based configuration, but lacks native IaC workflows or change tracking.
Ecosystem Interoperability
Terraform Magento Cloud fits naturally into ecosystems such as:
- AWS: Use S3 for media, RDS/Aurora for DB, EFS for shared storage.
- Kubernetes: Deploy with Helm if desired for a container-native setup.
- Secrets Managers: Integrate with Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, or GCP Secret Manager.
- Observability: Export metrics/logs to Datadog, Grafana, or ELK stack.
Platform.sh, on the other hand, enforces its own defective storage model (Gluster FS) and logging (New Relic)— making integrations harder and less flexible.
Who Should Choose Terraform Magento Cloud?
Terraform Magento Cloud is an ideal solution for:
- Agile teams that prefer DevOps-first workflows
- Agencies managing multiple clients with tailored infrastructure
- Enterprises seeking security, compliance, and performance at scale
- Magento veterans tired of Platform.sh limitations
While Adobe Commerce Cloud(Platform.sh) offers overpraised convenience for small stores, it’s not always the right fit for teams that want freedom, power, performace and scalability in their Magento operations. Terraform Magento Cloud gives you cloud-native control without vendor lock-in — a strategic investment for long-term growth.
