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Appfog or Heroku

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  • 26-04-2013 2:46pm
    #1
    Graham
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 17,642 Mod ✭✭✭✭


    I'm currently testing out two PAAS providers (www.AppFog.com and www.Heroku.com) for hosting a PHP application.

    So far both providers are coming out fairly evenly matched.

    Both currently run on AWS Europe West (Ireland) and even on the minimum plans for each provider the app is blisteringly fast, much quicker than my dedicated server or Irish hosted VM.

    Does anyone have any experience of using either (both)? If so I'd be really interested in hearing about your experience with them? Any major gotcha's I should be aware of? Any recommendations?
    Tagged:


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    #2
    Graham
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 17,642 Mod ✭✭✭✭Graham


    Update:

    A fairly big negative for AppFog, one of the initial attractions was MySQL support.

    Free package - 100MB MySQL Database
    Basic Package ($20 month) - 200MB MySQL Database

    The app I'm testing has a fairly large database, with very little in the way of usage/traffic so the above limits wouldn't be sufficient. Unfortunately you can't just increase the database size. The only option is to increase to the $100 month package which has a 1GB MySQL Database or the $380/month package which has a 2GB MySQL Database!

    They do offer an integrated MySQL add-on from Xeround, 50MB MySQL free of charge. Unfortunately, no way to upgrade that either at the moment?

    I could probably open a separate Xeround account which I would be able to size appropriately but one of the attractions of AppFog was being able to source everything in the one place.

    Time to investigate MySQL support on Heroku I think.


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    #3
    Graham
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 17,642 Mod ✭✭✭✭Graham


    Looks like clearDB (www.cleardb.com) may be an option on both AppFog and Heroku.

    Looking at the cleardb website it suggests that DB hosting is only available in AWS Europe West (Ireland) for customers wanting dedicated servers. Setting up the test 5MB database through AppFog/ClearDB appears to have located it in AWS Europe West anyway though. Happy days.

    Now to try the same with Heroku and ClearDB.


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    #4
    Graham
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 17,642 Mod ✭✭✭✭Graham


    Glad I couldn't go for the Xeround option, they announced yesterday all free MySQL hosting to end in a week and all paid MySQL hosting to end in 2 weeks.

    In the end I went with AppFog and ClearDB, I'll post about my experiences with them in the future if anyone's curious.


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    #5
    stonecoldsa
    Registered Users Posts: 1 ✭stonecoldsa


    They both are pretty good options, depends on your situation. In general, I'd say Heroku is better for deploying many smalls apps, and rolling back releases and patches when needed. Appfog is more powerful for a single app, but apps on the account share resources. This blog post describes the pros and cons pretty well. Check it out.


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    #6
    Talisman
    Registered Users Posts: 6,034 ✭✭✭Talisman


    Personally I have never used Heroku but I love AppFog as I've used it for hosting the backend for mobile applications without any issues.


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    #7
    Graham
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 17,642 Mod ✭✭✭✭Graham


    Talisman wrote: »
    Personally I have never used Heroku but I love AppFog as I've used it for hosting the backend for mobile applications without any issues.

    Also been using AppFog as a mobile back end for 6 months now, no issue at all.

    Also occasionally throw something up on Heroku and again, no major issues. The biggest pain with Heroku is the length of time it takes to spin up a sleeping instance of an app.


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