CrowdHandler via Amazon CloudFront: the best waiting room for applications on AWS

If you're looking for a waiting room solution, and your website or application is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), then we are very happy to announce that you can now provision CrowdHandler on AWS CloudFront.

If you've been waiting for this integration for a while, you probably don't need to know any more. Skip straight to our support pages to read about Getting Started with CloudFront integration

If you'd like to know more about using a waiting room solution with AWS, and why Amazon CloudFront is the best way to do this... read on.

Why choose a CDN integration over JavaScript?

Amazon CloudFront is a CDN (Content Delivery Network). It's an Amazon Web Service that speeds up the distribution of web content to your users by using a network of data centres (“edge locations”) to route requests in the most efficient way. If you’re using AWS, CloudFront is available to you.

We offer a range of different integrations to get CrowdHandler onto your website, but we would always recommend provisioning the waiting room on the CDN if possible. Edge integrations like this offer the best way to incorporate CrowdHandler because they allow the waiting room to intercept the user at the earliest opportunity. 

If you're using JavaScript, the first page hit for each user will still need to be handled by your servers before our JavaScript can load. However, by integrating the waiting room with a CDN – in this case, integrating the waiting room with AWS CloudFront – you can ensure that users will be offloaded from your website before you incur any server cost or load. Instead, whatever AWS cluster server is closest to the user will incur the load until you're ready for them. 

It's also the safer option, especially if you have any inclination that your website will be attracting a more technically savvy user. By running the waiting room check on the edge, using the CDN rather than the user’s browser, you are also removing the opportunity for a savvy user to bypass the check.

So, if your website is already using AWS, but you aren't yet using the CDN, we would always recommend installing Amazon CloudFront in order to use CrowdHandler.

Why choose CloudFront over a custom integration?

If you’re the type of client to host their application on AWS, you’re likely capable of writing a custom API integration into the heart of your application. Your instincts may be to do that rather than setting up the CloudFront integration, especially if you’re not already taking advantage of CloudFront’s CDN features. Even in this case we’d recommend looking at CloudFront -- by installing our CloudFront integration you are offloading users from your application entirely if they have not been promoted by the waiting room.

I don’t host on AWS. Could I still use CloudFront as a CDN in order to get the best out of CrowdHandler?

You absolutely could. However, if you’re not already using a CDN, and you’re not currently using AWS you may find it easier to get going with CloudFlare.

Great – I am an AWS user. How do I get started?

If you haven't yet looked at using Amazon CloudFront, head to the Amazon help pages to see How to get started with Amazon CloudFront.

Once you have CloudFront installed, it's easy to integrate the CrowdHandler waiting room product with AWS CloudFront. 

First, you'll need an active CrowdHandler account (so, if you haven't already, you can sign up to CrowdHandler here). Then you’ll need to set up your first waiting room. 

Next, work through our simple guide: AWS CloudFront Integration - Getting Started, which will take you through the steps required to integrate CrowdHandler with your CloudFront distribution.

What are the other ways to integrate CrowdHandler?

Javascript and API integration

CrowdHandler's JavaScript integration support pages 

CrowdHandler's API integration support pages

Cloudflare 

Blog post: Introducing Cloudflare integration for CrowdHandler 

CrowdHandler's Cloudflare integration support pages 

Wordpress

Blog post: Introducing WordPress integration 

CrowdHandler's WordPress integration support pages 

Future integrations

We are currently working on Akamai integration, but if you’ve got other ideas for platforms we should be supporting, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us on Twitter or LinkedIn to tell us what else you would like to see.