Here’s a comparison of the most common cloud services for backend hosting, as well as their prices, usage difficulty levels and implications on the development workflow as a whole [no particular order was used].<\/p>\n
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1. Heroku<\/a><\/h1>\n![\"Heroku](\"https:\/\/ckl-website-static.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/heroku-og-750ddc8a1b1f6974d7146975b4c53d9f.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nDifficulty level:<\/b> Easy.<\/p>\n
Cost: <\/b>$$$<\/p>\n
Languages\/Frameworks supported: <\/b>Ruby, Node.js, Python, Java, Go and PHP.<\/p>\n
Overview:<\/b> Heroku is one of the big names of the new generation of PaaS (Platform as a Service). It takes care of scaling your application and load-balancing it — meaning it automatically<\/strong> creates\/removes new virtual machines to your website cluster depending on the number of clients accessing it. They also have almost plug-and-play integration with a wide variety of services<\/a>, ranging from pay-as-you-use databases to monitoring, logging, searching and a whole set of other useful tools.<\/p>\nDevelopment Workflow Implications: <\/b>Heroku provides a CLI (command-line interface) that integrates with Git, so, after an initial and fairly simple setup, developers just need to run a single command to send updates to the backend. It also has its own protection against various attack types, so that the backend developers can focus on the application development itself.<\/p>\n
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2. Red Hat OpenShift Online<\/a><\/h1>\n![\"Openshift](\"https:\/\/ckl-website-static.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/maxresdefault.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nDifficulty level:<\/b> Easy.<\/p>\n
Cost: <\/b>$$<\/p>\n
Languages\/Frameworks supported: <\/b>Java, Ruby, PHP, Node.js, Python and Perl.<\/p>\n
Overview: <\/b>Red Hat OpenShift Online is a very powerful alternative to Heroku. Having the same capabilities of easy deployment, autoscaling and load balancing, OpenShift only lacks the user-friendliness and awesome CLI that its main competitor offers. On the other hand, the developers have more control over how things run in the host machine — even though it’s not necessary (nor recommended<\/strong>) to deal with any low-level configuration.<\/p>\nDevelopment Workflow Implications: <\/b>OpenShift offers a Git hook that is triggered whenever new code is pushed to the repository, and it handles distribution over all machines in the cluster. Similarly to Heroku, this enables really straightforward continuous integration, letting the development team focus on the business logic rather than on setup overhead.<\/p>\n
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3. AWS Elastic Beanstalk<\/a><\/h1>\n![\"AWS](\"https:\/\/ckl-website-static.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/CHqOaLlUAAM2cQD.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nDifficulty level:<\/b> Intermediate.<\/p>\n
Cost: <\/b>$$<\/p>\n
Languages\/Frameworks supported: <\/b>Go, Java, .NET, Node.js, PHP, Python, Ruby and Docker.<\/p>\n
Overview: <\/b>Elastic Beanstalk is the complicated cousin of Heroku. Amazon has put together a lot of their individual solutions together to make something that would, at least in theory, make the lives of backend developers easier. However, as robust and reliable as Amazon Web Services are, user- (or developer-) friendliness is definitely not<\/strong> one of their sweet spots, and EB is considerably less configurable than its competitors.<\/p>\nDevelopment Workflow Implications: <\/b>Once you manage to make EB work for the first time, the benefits of using it are the same as Heroku and OpenShift — letting your team focus on the application, not on deployment and manual scaling overhead.<\/p>\n
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4. AWS EC2<\/a><\/h1>\n![\"AWS](\"https:\/\/ckl-website-static.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/gpu_amazon_ec2_logo.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nDifficulty level:<\/b> Advanced.<\/p>\n
Cost: <\/b>$$<\/p>\n
Languages\/Frameworks supported: <\/b>Any.<\/p>\n
Overview: <\/b>AWS EC2 is basically a virtual machine running an OS of your choice. It’s up to your team to install\/build anything on top of it. Although this gives a lot <\/b>more flexibility than any of the tools above, it also requires a considerably more experienced team to ensure your web server is stable and reliable.<\/p>\n
Development Workflow Implications: <\/b>There are no automated deploy tools connected beforehand, although Amazon provides some solutions that you can plug in for that, like AWS CodeDeploy. This cloud service is ideal when the engineering team already has a consolidated development workflow, associated with tools like Ansible, Chef or Puppet, and can also handle the configuration of services like Elastic Load Balancer and the setup of Auto-Scaling Groups.<\/p>\n
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5. Digital Ocean<\/a><\/h1>\n![\"DIgital](\"https:\/\/ckl-website-static.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/digital-ocean.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nDifficulty level:<\/b> Advanced.<\/p>\n
Cost: <\/b>$<\/p>\n
Languages\/Frameworks supported: <\/b>Any.<\/p>\n
Overview: <\/b>DigitalOcean Droplets are the equivalents of AWS EC2 instances. They are also virtual machines with SSH access, providing a lot of flexibility to the engineering team. Although DigitalOcean is considerably cheaper than AWS EC2, it also does not offer the huge variety of plug-and-play services that its competitor does.<\/p>\n
Development Workflow Implications: <\/b>Developing with DigitalOcean is as hardcore as it gets when dealing with cloud services. They offer virtual machines with good bandwidth that are able to communicate between each other. Period. The development team will be the responsible for building (or using open-source solutions) for load balancing, scaling and deployment, which can generate a big<\/strong> development overhead for an inexperienced team.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
6. Rackspace Cloud Servers<\/a><\/h1>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nDifficulty level:<\/b> Easy.<\/p>\n
Cost: <\/b>$$$<\/p>\n
Languages\/Frameworks supported: <\/b>Ruby, Node.js, Python, Java, Go and PHP.<\/p>\n
Overview:<\/b> Heroku is one of the big names of the new generation of PaaS (Platform as a Service). It takes care of scaling your application and load-balancing it — meaning it automatically<\/strong> creates\/removes new virtual machines to your website cluster depending on the number of clients accessing it. They also have almost plug-and-play integration with a wide variety of services<\/a>, ranging from pay-as-you-use databases to monitoring, logging, searching and a whole set of other useful tools.<\/p>\n Development Workflow Implications: <\/b>Heroku provides a CLI (command-line interface) that integrates with Git, so, after an initial and fairly simple setup, developers just need to run a single command to send updates to the backend. It also has its own protection against various attack types, so that the backend developers can focus on the application development itself.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Difficulty level:<\/b> Easy.<\/p>\n Cost: <\/b>$$<\/p>\n Languages\/Frameworks supported: <\/b>Java, Ruby, PHP, Node.js, Python and Perl.<\/p>\n Overview: <\/b>Red Hat OpenShift Online is a very powerful alternative to Heroku. Having the same capabilities of easy deployment, autoscaling and load balancing, OpenShift only lacks the user-friendliness and awesome CLI that its main competitor offers. On the other hand, the developers have more control over how things run in the host machine — even though it’s not necessary (nor recommended<\/strong>) to deal with any low-level configuration.<\/p>\n Development Workflow Implications: <\/b>OpenShift offers a Git hook that is triggered whenever new code is pushed to the repository, and it handles distribution over all machines in the cluster. Similarly to Heroku, this enables really straightforward continuous integration, letting the development team focus on the business logic rather than on setup overhead.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Difficulty level:<\/b> Intermediate.<\/p>\n Cost: <\/b>$$<\/p>\n Languages\/Frameworks supported: <\/b>Go, Java, .NET, Node.js, PHP, Python, Ruby and Docker.<\/p>\n Overview: <\/b>Elastic Beanstalk is the complicated cousin of Heroku. Amazon has put together a lot of their individual solutions together to make something that would, at least in theory, make the lives of backend developers easier. However, as robust and reliable as Amazon Web Services are, user- (or developer-) friendliness is definitely not<\/strong> one of their sweet spots, and EB is considerably less configurable than its competitors.<\/p>\n Development Workflow Implications: <\/b>Once you manage to make EB work for the first time, the benefits of using it are the same as Heroku and OpenShift — letting your team focus on the application, not on deployment and manual scaling overhead.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Difficulty level:<\/b> Advanced.<\/p>\n Cost: <\/b>$$<\/p>\n Languages\/Frameworks supported: <\/b>Any.<\/p>\n Overview: <\/b>AWS EC2 is basically a virtual machine running an OS of your choice. It’s up to your team to install\/build anything on top of it. Although this gives a lot <\/b>more flexibility than any of the tools above, it also requires a considerably more experienced team to ensure your web server is stable and reliable.<\/p>\n Development Workflow Implications: <\/b>There are no automated deploy tools connected beforehand, although Amazon provides some solutions that you can plug in for that, like AWS CodeDeploy. This cloud service is ideal when the engineering team already has a consolidated development workflow, associated with tools like Ansible, Chef or Puppet, and can also handle the configuration of services like Elastic Load Balancer and the setup of Auto-Scaling Groups.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Difficulty level:<\/b> Advanced.<\/p>\n Cost: <\/b>$<\/p>\n Languages\/Frameworks supported: <\/b>Any.<\/p>\n Overview: <\/b>DigitalOcean Droplets are the equivalents of AWS EC2 instances. They are also virtual machines with SSH access, providing a lot of flexibility to the engineering team. Although DigitalOcean is considerably cheaper than AWS EC2, it also does not offer the huge variety of plug-and-play services that its competitor does.<\/p>\n Development Workflow Implications: <\/b>Developing with DigitalOcean is as hardcore as it gets when dealing with cloud services. They offer virtual machines with good bandwidth that are able to communicate between each other. Period. The development team will be the responsible for building (or using open-source solutions) for load balancing, scaling and deployment, which can generate a big<\/strong> development overhead for an inexperienced team.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n2. Red Hat OpenShift Online<\/a><\/h1>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n3. AWS Elastic Beanstalk<\/a><\/h1>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n4. AWS EC2<\/a><\/h1>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n5. Digital Ocean<\/a><\/h1>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n6. Rackspace Cloud Servers<\/a><\/h1>\n
![\"Rackspace](\"https:\/\/ckl-website-static.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/rackspace_logo_08_07_20122.jpg\"){kind=logo}
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