Overview

Product video
Varnish Enterprise is a powerful, feature-rich reverse proxy and HTTP accelerator that speeds up websites and reduces streaming latency to deliver a great web experience to all users, at all times. Varnish caching technology is trusted by millions of websites worldwide to reduce backend server load by up to 99% while delivering all types of content much faster.
From the team behind the popular open-source Varnish Cache, Varnish Enterprise adds more features, more power and more flexibility for scaling up web services while protecting critical infrastructure. With enterprise-grade features and security at pay-as-you-go prices, it is the easy way to expand your reach and resilience while reducing the complexity of your web operations. You can even use it to build your own CDN.
Full support is also available through an additional subscription, with the Varnish team helping you deliver web services with high performance, reliability, security and scale. Visit us at https://www.varnish-software.com/support/ to purchase support as an add-on.
For a complete feature list, go to https://www.varnish-software.com/softwareandvmods/ .
Highlights
- Reliably excellent web performance - Deliver websites, APIs and video 300% faster with caching and an origin shield that helps your web service thrive under pressure: no more downtime.
- Reduced costs and complexity - A lightweight but feature-rich solution that lowers costs while bringing new simplicity to web operations, with integrated content cache, reverse proxy, load balancer, API gateway, web server, and SSL terminator.
- Quick to deploy and scale - Be up and running in minutes to scale up content delivery, protect against traffic spikes and extend your web services reach.
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Dimension | Cost/hour |
|---|---|
m5.large Recommended | $0.80 |
t3.micro | $0.80 |
t2.micro | $0.80 |
m5.xlarge | $0.80 |
m5zn.large | $0.80 |
c5n.large | $0.80 |
m5d.large | $0.80 |
i2.xlarge | $0.80 |
r5a.large | $0.80 |
m5n.xlarge | $0.80 |
Vendor refund policy
Varnish Enterprise (VE) can be cancelled at any time. You will only be billed for time and transfer that is actually used while an AWS instance running VE is active.
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Delivery details
64-bit (x86) Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
An AMI is a virtual image that provides the information required to launch an instance. Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) instances are virtual servers on which you can run your applications and workloads, offering varying combinations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking resources. You can launch as many instances from as many different AMIs as you need.
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Additional details
Usage instructions
In your image, you will see two "varnishd" processes running one is the master process and the other is a child process. Varnish Enterprise listens by default on TCP port 80 where it expects to receive HTTP requests.
The easiest way to administer the varnish node is to use the Varnish Controller which provides a single point of control for all Varnish server administration. To add a varnish node to the Varnish Controller "varnish-controller-agent" needs to be configured. The "varnish-agent" is used by the Varnish Custom Statistics (VCS) which enables real-time statistics allowing you to aggregate, display and analyze user traffic.
Connect to your ec2 instance with ssh using username "ubuntu", more detailed usage instructions please view: [ https://docs.varnish-software.com/varnish-cloud/get-started/aws/ ]
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Support
Vendor support
Varnish Software offers a free getting started online-session that includes an introduction to the software, best practices and tips. cloudteam@varnish-software.com
AWS infrastructure support
AWS Support is a one-on-one, fast-response support channel that is staffed 24x7x365 with experienced and technical support engineers. The service helps customers of all sizes and technical abilities to successfully utilize the products and features provided by Amazon Web Services.

Standard contract
Customer reviews
Caching has boosted search suggestions and now drives faster, higher-converting user queries
What is our primary use case?
Varnish Enterprise is primarily used by my organization to cache responses for quick suggestions for users. For example, when users visit IndiaMART and start typing in the search box, we show them a list of suggestions to choose from, which is the module I work on—the suggest module. The request goes through Varnish, and if the request is already present in Varnish, we provide the response back immediately. If it is not there, we proceed to hit the back end servers.
Varnish Enterprise is also used by my organization as a load balancer.
What is most valuable?
The best features Varnish Enterprise offers are the caching and the load balancing, which are the two main use cases for my organization.
Varnish Enterprise stands out because it can be used to trim down the URL noise, which is really helpful in maintaining a very discreet cache. If users have different parameters but type one letter, they can all be shown the same suggestions regardless of their name or location. This has helped tremendously in cutting down the URL noise and has improved search traceability, aiding in investigating issues.
Varnish Enterprise has positively impacted my organization by significantly reducing the API latency for my personal use case, and the same applies to other teams who use it.
What needs improvement?
I am not sure how Varnish Enterprise can be improved. I will have to delve deeper into the technicalities that I am not yet familiar with, so this is a question I am not equipped enough to answer.
For how long have I used the solution?
Since I moved to back end, I have been in regular touch with Varnish Enterprise for around one and a half years. Before that, I had a slight idea about what Varnish was. For hands-on implementation, it has been around one and a half years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Varnish Enterprise is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Varnish Enterprise's scalability is good, convenient, and reliable.
How are customer service and support?
I have not had the opportunity to connect with customer support for Varnish Enterprise yet.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have always been using Varnish Enterprise for caching. I did not use a different solution before.
What was our ROI?
I have not seen a return on investment with Varnish Enterprise.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I do not think I evaluated other options before choosing Varnish Enterprise.
What other advice do I have?
The reduction in latency with Varnish Enterprise has affected business outcomes positively because the conversion rate of search for the suggestions shown to users has been significantly higher than for the search pages they land on by manually typing out the whole query. This is a clear conversion rate and is the KPI we always aim to improve.
My advice for others looking into using Varnish Enterprise is to make sure that it justifies their use case and that it is not an overkill or an underkill for their particular requirement. I would rate this review an eight out of ten.
Caching layer has boosted website load times and improves user experience for hosted clients
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Varnish Enterprise was to provide speed improvements for websites that we were creating for our clients through a SaaS service, which was a no-code website builder. We wanted to have Varnish Enterprise as a caching layer in between.
This specific example was part of the website builder itself. When people created their own websites, they were hosted in our system and served through the Varnish Enterprise layer, functioning as a private CDN . We had servers closer to user locations from which we served these websites. Before and after implementation, there was a marked difference in the speed of the systems, and the users noticed it as well. There was significant improvement in the user experience.
What is most valuable?
The best features of Varnish Enterprise include caching performance, which I believe is best in its class and was the main reason we selected it. Varnish Enterprise offers more granular control on the cache and cache control, allowing us to fine-tune the caching behavior and route traffic in a custom way. The cache control and invalidation logic enabled us to purge requests instantly, which was valuable.
Varnish Enterprise has impacted my organization positively by showing marked improvement in the speed at which websites were being served. The clients were happy with that, and the people who owned or created those websites were satisfied. This had a positive impact, as we likely had more revenue as a result.
What needs improvement?
Varnish Enterprise can be improved, particularly on the security features, as it does not differentiate itself compared to Cloudflare because it only provides the usual TLS termination and load balancing capabilities. If there is an area where it can improve itself, it would be on the security side.
Mutual TLS termination is something I wish was included. I have not used Varnish Enterprise for the last three years, so I cannot confirm whether this feature is now included, but at the time we were using it, we did not see that feature.
For how long have I used the solution?
I am not using Varnish Enterprise currently, but in my previous organization, I used it for around eighteen months.
What was our ROI?
I do not recall the exact revenue figures, but the speed improvement was significant. It was at least a forty percent improvement in the speed at which websites loaded, which was great.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We implemented Varnish Enterprise by using the Helm charts that Varnish provides in the backend. It has been around three years since we did this implementation, so the exact details are a bit unclear, but I do remember the impact of it. We evaluated it against other solutions, including Fastly and Cloudflare , and Varnish Enterprise served us well.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Varnish Enterprise at least eight out of ten.
I chose eight out of ten because the product needs to work on the security part of things. Additionally, while it does give a lot of granular control, it requires a lot of effort to achieve those controls. There was considerable effort from our side to achieve those granular controls on the caching logic, invalidation, and other aspects. If those could be easier to accomplish, I would give it a ten.
Regarding Varnish Enterprise's AI capabilities, I used it three years ago, and there were not many AI capabilities at that point in time, so I cannot comment on this. I did not have any experience with Varnish Enterprise's AI capabilities regarding the accuracy and reliability of output.
Varnish Enterprise is a great product because the core part works very well, achieving speed and cache validation, invalidation, and control logic. If those looking for these particular features, it is a great product. I have not seen the updated product and have not used it in the last couple of years, so I do not have any other thoughts.
My overall rating for Varnish Enterprise is eight out of ten.
Caching has transformed our e-commerce traffic handling and improves page load performance
What is our primary use case?
I use Varnish Enterprise as a performance system to handle caching and reduce the first time to load the page.
For example, when we experience a situation where we have just hit an event and are expecting huge traffic to come on our website, Varnish Enterprise helps us handle that traffic because our pages are cached into Varnish, the time to hit the server will be very minimal. Everything will be passed via Varnish pages, and then they will come to server hit pages such as shopping cart, checkout, and everything. That is where Varnish Enterprise helps with performance and load handling.
We mainly use Varnish Enterprise for marketing pages such as home page and PLP, or wherever we are trying to have marketing event-related pages, but there are some drawbacks. For instance, if we want to have a section loaded from the server, there is a loophole where we are not able to do it properly with hole-punching.
What is most valuable?
With Varnish Enterprise, you can do a couple of things. The integration with Magento or Adobe Commerce works seamlessly, and you can use Varnish Enterprise with Redis or CDN so that it can gather all the load specification properly. Moreover, we can cache VCL based on location, which makes the e-commerce world a bit easier by allowing region-based caching pages for our customers.
Varnish Enterprise has a unique capability where a cost-effective solution can be designed, so we should not increase server specs merely out of fear of high traffic on our website. If you have Varnish Enterprise set up properly, you can handle a large part of the traffic using the Varnish Enterprise layer itself, leading to more advantages than disadvantages.
My expertise lies in e-commerce solutions, and when we explain our use cases to our customers, we clarify the advantages of Varnish Enterprise in performance. They appreciate understanding how Varnish Enterprise can help reduce costs without getting too technical.
When we were not using Varnish Enterprise, we had clients who believed they did not need it because the server load would be lower. However, as an enterprise solution for e-commerce, technicalities necessitate effective handling of page loads. Varnish Enterprise is not just a caching layer; it is a performance layer that enables showing real-time data with proper project architecture without issues.
What needs improvement?
My suggestion for improvement is that if you could provide guidance on how to do a portion of the page to be server-sided, it would help us greatly. A certain shopping cart cache or more pages could enhance our e-commerce layer. Currently, shopping cart is not entirely dynamic, and even in CMS-related pages, we should have flexibility. We tried hole-punching or having one section free from cache, but it was challenging to configure. Documentation on this would definitely improve our experience.
The configuration can be somewhat rigid as it is quite technical. A newcomer might need to invest a lot of time learning how to set up a Varnish Enterprise layer on any project.
The rating of eight out of ten stems from the complexity of setup, and an easier process along with uncached portions of a page would elevate it to a ten.
For how long have I used the solution?
I work in e-commerce and have been using Varnish Enterprise for the last 10 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Varnish Enterprise is indeed stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I rate the scalability of Varnish Enterprise around eight.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support has been good, although I have not used it extensively. We mostly take care of things ourselves, but we receive prompt replies when we do reach out.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
When we were not using Varnish Enterprise, we had clients who believed they did not need it because the server load would be lower. However, as an enterprise solution for e-commerce, technicalities necessitate effective handling of page loads. Varnish Enterprise is not just a caching layer; it is a performance layer that enables showing real-time data with proper project architecture without issues.
How was the initial setup?
I have not felt that the pricing, setup cost, or licensing is too high.
What about the implementation team?
We do not have any other business relationship with this vendor, as we are a startup that just started three years ago while trying to expand our client base.
What was our ROI?
We have seen a return on investment with Varnish Enterprise in terms of reduced server costs because Varnish Enterprise allows us to lower server specs and resources. Additionally, customer experience improves, as they notice that the first byte load time is significantly faster.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I have not felt that the pricing, setup cost, or licensing is too high.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I do not really evaluate other options before choosing Varnish Enterprise; I just assess whether the Varnish Enterprise layer would suffice or if the enterprise level is necessary.
What other advice do I have?
I advise others looking into using Varnish Enterprise not to worry about its complexities but to focus on the advantages it brings to their projects. Understanding and appreciating these benefits will convince them that they should utilize Varnish Enterprise.
If you can improve the documentation for setup or enhance AI capabilities to facilitate faster setups, that would be something worth marketing.
You could be more expressive about how Varnish Enterprise works within projects and include specific scenarios related to e-commerce, rather than keeping the questions too generic. My overall review rating for Varnish Enterprise is eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Caching flexibility has improved response time and optimizes HTTP request handling
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Varnish Enterprise is mostly cache. When I say mostly cache, I mean we get directly into Varnish and we edit the rules with VCL files.
What is most valuable?
In my opinion, the best features Varnish Enterprise offers are excellent. What makes those features stand out for me is the flexibility and configuration options because we can edit mostly everything about the request and a specific response for a specific request.
Varnish Enterprise has positively impacted my organization because the response time is an upgrade. The improved response time has benefited my organization as the response time for HTTP requests is more efficient and quick.
What needs improvement?
I think Varnish Enterprise can be improved as the prices can be cheaper. Besides the price, I do not think there is anything else that could be better.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Varnish Enterprise for about three years.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is difficult as some clients do not want to pay so much.
What other advice do I have?
I do not want to add anything else about the features. The price and the feasibility of implementation keep Varnish Enterprise from being a perfect ten for me. I rate Varnish Enterprise overall as an eight out of ten.