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What is the best alternative to dotCloud?
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Heroku
All
10
Experiences
Pros
7
Cons
3
Top
Pro
Easy to start with
Getting started with Heroku is very easy. It's a very straightforward procedure and a beginner can set up their first app in two minutes. Often it's just a matter of a couple of git commands and it's all set up and running. The official Heroku docmentation also helps a lot.
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Con
Constrained by addons
If you want to fully customize your production environment, then Heroku can be seriously constraining. Installing libraries or services can not be done unless there is already a Heroku plugin for it.
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Pro
Excellent error logs
When your deploy fails you see a legitimate error log. Many of the other PaaS give you nondescript messages and debugging is a pain. Debugging Heroku wins by comparison.
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Con
Further deployments are slow
While starting with Heroku is fast and easy, and the first few deployments are actually very fast, larger applications tend to have slower deployments. It takes some time for the dynos to restart and while they are restarting the application is completely offline. Which means that you can lose precious seconds of application time.
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Pro
Add-ons let you easily add features and technologies
Heroku has a vast list of plugins and services that can be added to an instance. These plugins cover things from databases to email systems. This remove the task of having to install services and setting them up manually. Heroku does it all for you.
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Con
Really expensive
Heroku starts getting really expensive once you leave that free tier. It's not just the bare Heroku service that is costly, the addons as well are very pricey.
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Pro
Simple scaling
Heroku instances can easily be scaled up or down by increasing or decreasing the number of available dynos for that instance. This can be done through the CLI or through Heroku's web UI.
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Pro
Dedicated build servers
Heroku has dedicated servers for building app dependencies, to ensure that you won't have issues like "out of memory" errors when deploying your app.
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Pro
Mature
Heroku is one of the oldest PaaS providers. The fact that it's been around for such a long time means that it had a lot of time to mature over the years. There's also a massive number of articles, guides and tutorials on Heroku out there for beginners and advanced users.
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Pro
Free option
Heroku offers a free tier which contains a single dyno instance. It offers 512MB of memory and 100MB swap space.
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Experiences
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84
7
PythonAnywhere
All
8
Experiences
Pros
6
Cons
2
Top
Pro
Easy setup
It's literally a matter of minutes to get a Python-backed website up and running.
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Con
Python-only on the server side
Obviously you can put JavaScript in your web pages and so on, but you can't use Rails or Node.
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Top
Pro
Easy scaling
You pay for a number of "Workers" for your web app (to handle requests), or CPU seconds for code that you run outside a web app, and you can get more workers or CPU seconds by upgrading your plan any time.
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Top
Con
No WebSocket support
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Top
Pro
Excellent customer service
Really fast turnaround, friendly.
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Top
Pro
Free option
You can run a website at USERNAME.pythonanywhere.com for free, and it's good enough for a light-traffic website -- it runs 24/7. You get a free MySQL or SQLite database too.
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Top
Pro
Flexible payments
You can pay monthly and cancel any time, or pay for a year up front to get a discount.
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Top
Pro
Not too expensive
A basic site with no custom domain is free. $5 a month will afford the user enough power for a typical 100,000 hit a day website.
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Experiences
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32
3
Google App Engine
All
6
Experiences
Pros
2
Cons
4
Top
Con
Not a core Google product faces uncertin future
Google is notorious with flipping on technology directions, this product is clearly not the focus of Google.
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Top
Pro
Increases application speed considerably
Google App Engine integrates with Google's CDN out of the box and it distributes your application's assets through that, increasing loading speed considerably.
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Top
Con
Expenses are very hard to control
The monitoring for expenses is limited at best.
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Top
Pro
Easy to use
Google App Engine is very easy to use. All you need to do is install the SDK (which in itself is easy as well, and the documentation is very heplful) and run the command needed depending on the type of project to deploy it. For example, to deploy a golang application, you run golang deploy inside the project folder and it will be automatically deployed.
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Top
Con
Problematic support even in the paid grade
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Con
No SQL database available
Google App Engine uses Google's NoSQL cloud database. There's no option to use a SQL database with your application.
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42
6
AWS Cloud 9
All
25
Experiences
Pros
19
Cons
6
Top
Con
Lacks subdomain options
Building an app that needs subdomains is impossible.
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Top
Pro
Full terminal access
Cloud9 gives full terminal access to home directory. In their hosted Linux Ubuntu environment it has sudo powers. No UNIX commands have been blocked - npm, ifconfig, chmod, chown, tar, etc work. All commands can be accessed and any package can be installed. And if the terminal is used when using Remote SSH feature it connects directly to the server and runs the commands on that server.
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Con
Part of Amazon Web Services
While the c9.io site is still up and running, Cloud9 is exclusive for AWS Customers only, and you pay the AWS Compute pricing when you use Cloud9.
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Pro
Capable editor
Cloud9 uses their own editor called ACE. Besides the basics, it covers most important advanced code editor features such as code folding, converting cases, auto-completion, code analysis and refactoring, regex search and offers easy access to relevant documentation. It also gives access to the CLI, has support for Vim and Emacs keybindings, includes multiple cursors and zen coding mode that removes all distractions and allows focusing on code.
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Top
Con
Free plan asks for credit card details
Free plan requires you to provide a credit card due to the nature of Cloud 9's "Free Workspaces" to be relatively abused. According to the developers, this is the only way to prevent such.
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Top
Pro
Great documentation
Cloud9 has extensive, well-organized documentation at docs.c9.io.
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Top
Con
Lacks a built-in Java builder and runner
While there is no built-in Java builder or runner currently, C9 has provided instructions on how to set them up. Instructions can be found here.
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Top
Pro
Enables real-time online collaboration
An important feature of Cloud9 is the real-time collaboration ability. It allows pairing programs or perform code reviews really easily as well as simultaneously text chat.
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Top
Con
Does not accept New Registrants on c9.io Anymore
As being acquired by Amazon Web Services as part of AWS Cloud9, the c9.io service won't accept new sign ups.
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Top
Pro
Integrates with AWS
Prior to being part of the AWS Toolchain, AWS integrates deeply with CodeStar and AWS Lambda, allowing you to build serverless architechtures.
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Top
Con
Terminal will not work on Windows (Cloud9 SDK)
The terminal package does not work on the Cloud 9 SDK in Windows because it cannot find an appropriate unix shell. This might be a recurring bug undergoing fixes.
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Top
Pro
Offline editing
By installing and running a client application that syncs the local file system and cloud storage Cloud9 can be run locally. Great alternative for situations when the Internet connection is unreliable.
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Pro
Can be hosted on own server
Since Cloud9 is an open source project with source code available on GitHub, it can be run as a self-hosted solution on own hardware and behind a firewall.
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Pro
Git & Mercurial support
Git and hg commands can be run in the command-line, the same way as in a local terminal. There are also built-in add-on services for GitHub, BitBucket and GitLab.
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Pro
Runs any language
The runner has built-in functionality fo Apache, Node, Python, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Go, CoffeeScript, Julia, Mocha and Shell script, but any other language can be used by creating a runner for it.
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Pro
Desktop application is available
Prior to the Cloud9 core source code being released, an Alpha version of a desktop version can be built from the source which is based from NW.js. Instructions can be found here.
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Pro
SSH Workspace
Allows you to connect directly to your external server via SSH. Modifying files directly on your server using a cloud based editor allows you to have the portability of the a cloud based workspace with the control of your own server (including complete DNS control).
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Pro
Debugging with breakpoints for NodeJS server side JavaScript
Breakpoints allow specifying a stopping points in the execution of the application. When these breakpoints are hit, the application will stop executing and give the ability to examine data such as local variables, run commands and control the execution flow of the application.
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Pro
Ability to clone multiple repos in one project
Cloud9 provides one free private workspace. However, I can host multiple projects there by cloning as many repositories into the root project directory, thanks to the full access terminal.
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Pro
Package manager
Similar to package managers for the desktop, Cloud9 also includes their own package manager, c9pm, which allows adding new software from a list of available utilities. Apt-get can be used in the project's workspace terminal to install/update/upgrade software. Composer, Bower or any other utilities of choice can be installed to manage dependencies and packages.
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Pro
Provides with a simple way to deploy apps
Cloud9 allows quickly deploying apps via CLI. There are instructions on how to deploy to Azure, CloudFoundry, OpenShift, NodeJitsu, Modulus and Heroku. For example, all hosted environments have Heroku's toolbelt installed by default so all heroku commands are available from the get-go.
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Pro
Provides with own runtime environment
Cloud9 can connect to a dedicated VM to provide a powerful Ubuntu runtime environment in the cloud using Docker. Apps can be either run from the run panel where a selection of runners is provided or from a terminal.
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Top
Pro
Support for most databases
In addition to launching a server to run code, Cloud9 will also host a database to develop against. Support for MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB and SQLite.
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Pro
Browser testing support
Cloud9 integrates with Sauce Labs a browser testing suite that allows previewing the app in any desktop or mobile browser.
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Top
Pro
Provides with a simple way to deploy apps
Cloud9 allows quickly deploying apps via CLI. There are instructions on how to deploy to Azure, CloudFoundry, OpenShift, NodeJitsu, Modulus and Heroku. For example, all hosted environments have Heroku's toolbelt installed by default so all heroku commands are available from the get-go.
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Experiences
AWS Pricing
99
22
AppFog
All
5
Experiences
Pros
4
Cons
1
Top
Pro
Allows multiple app instances
Limits are based on total memory allocation, you can allocate as much RAM as you want for each instance. Even the pricing is based on the total amount of RAM allocated, $0.04/GB.
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Top
Con
Slow deployment
The deployment process with AppFog is generally nice and easy because of its CLI. Unofrtunately the only downside of that process is the fact that it takes too long. A deployment to AppFog genereally takes up to 40 seconds, which should be fine if you are deploying once a week, but when you deploy every hour it starts bothering you too much.
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Top
Pro
24/7 live chat support
While it's true that AppFog may be relatively new and the online support is not very extensive, they offer 24/7 professional live chat support for any questions or problems you may have.
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Top
Pro
Simple command-line deployment tool
AppFog has a simple command line utility to recursively push a directory to production
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Top
Pro
Supports multiple data centers worldwide
AWS US, Europe, Asia, Rackspace, HP, Azure, and even Private Clouds.
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3
1
Back4App
All
3
Experiences
Pros
2
Cons
1
Top
Pro
Open source
Back4app is an open source BAAS and Backend generator.
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Top
Con
Uses MongoDB for the backend, which is not considered very safe by many
Back4App uses MongoDB as the database where data is stored. Mongo has been known to have issues with data corruption and data loss.
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Top
Pro
Smooth migration from Parse
Back4App offers a smooth migration for all former Parse users who wish to migrate their data now that Parse has announced that it will stop soon.
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205
49
Modulus
All
3
Experiences
Pros
2
Cons
1
Top
Pro
Great support
There are a number of ways available to contact their support team (email, twitter, IRC and even through phone). They usually respond very fast even to emails and the responses are very friendly and helpful.
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Top
Con
Slow deployment process
The deployment process in Modulus can be slow depending on the size of the project. On every deploy the whole application is bundled (except node_modules and deployed to Modulus. Since it doesn't use something like git it has to upload every file on each deploy instead of "diffing" them.
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Pro
Great support for Meteor
Modulus has a tool called demeteorizer which takes a standard Meteor application and turns it into a regular Node application so that it can run on Modulus.
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2
1
Azure Web Apps
All
2
Experiences
Pros
2
Top
Pro
10 free web apps in each datacenter
There's a free plan which provides you with up to 10 free apps hosted on each datacenter, albeit with some restrictions on hard disk size, CPU and RAM.
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Top
Pro
Easily scale up and down
It's very easy to scale up or down your app in Azure. You can either scale the CPU or RAM according to your needs. There's even an option for autoscaling which lets Azure itself choose when to scale up or down depending on traffic.
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6
4
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