iPhone App Server Hosting

When it comes to mobile app hosting, the iOS platform is highly sought-after and relied upon by millions of Apple device users worldwide.

It is pretty challenging for developers to build a high-performance, secure iOS app. But, having the right services and resources for app development, deployment, and also management can simplify the app development process. For meeting the storage and hosting requirements of iOS apps, cloud hosting is the ideal option as the physical server infrastructure restrictions are eliminated.

Take a look below to know the benefits of iOS app development and some of the popular server hosting providers for iPhone applications. 

Advantages of developing for iPhone

 Here are some benefits of developing an application for the iPhone.

• Security

The high-end security layers that users are provided with are one of the major advantages of iPhone application development. This feature is a delight for organizations determined to protect their sensitive, delicate data.

Users of iPhone are effectively safeguarded against viruses, malware, and other serious threats that regularly intervene with everyday enterprise operations.

With iOS, users are protected against data encryption, data duplication, and data theft. Also, iPhone users can securely maintain their user identity, data privacy, and app data in the cloud. 

• Audience

iPhones are already hugely popular across the world, and this is a known fact. What organizations need to realize is that not everybody uses iPhones, but a certain slice of society.

iPhone devices are decidedly preferred by the tech-savvy audience looking for a simple but effective interface. As such, a great audience is already present to buy the products, software, or apps that you are planning to build or implement.

• Higher return on investment

By developing iPhone applications, enterprises or businesses can reap a higher return on their investments. Thanks to its better reach toward targeted users, iPhones are a much more sophisticated option than Android in driving a brand’s success.

Top 10 iPhone App Server Hosting Providers

Here are the best hosting providers for an iPhone app.

Back4app

Back4app is one of the most sought-after open source BaaS (Backend as a Service) providers and a widely-used iOS app hosting option. This open-source backend allows developers to build scalable, extensible web and mobile apps at a rapid pace. It offers users a very high level of performance and flexibility.

This fully managed BaaS solution comes up with automatic provisioning and scaling of iPhone-based apps. Moreover, this solution helps developers to personalize and optimize each of their applications differently. This unique aspect makes Back4app one of the most preferred options among app developers.

Back4app is a perfect solution for developing, scaling, hosting, and managing apps within an integrated platform. It can host IoT, web, and mobile app APIs. 

Some of the most promising features of Back4app include a spreadsheet-like database, REST and GraphQL, scalable hosting, live queries, and push and email notifications. The pricing structure is quite flexible as well. Developers can start with a free account, and there’s no need to provide credit card details to get started.

By using the free account, you will be able to have a test drive. Then, you can move on to shared or dedicated resources according to the needs of your application. Shared service started from only $5/month, and the dedicated plan starts from $250/month.

CloudKit

CloudKit is Apple’s Backend as a Service platform. It is designed specifically for iOS applications. It was introduced in 2014 as a solution to integrate iCloud in apps with ease. This cloud solution by Apple is a type of framework that is meant to power apps on the Apple platform by combining the power of iCloud. 

CloudKit is worth considering for hosting iOS apps as it draws on the benefits of the iCloud to power up the platform-specific application. 

CloudKit is a feature-rich application programming interface (API) that helps users to store and query data within the cloud. Users can access this service through macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS, and other Apple ecosystem offerings.

Key features of CloudKit are automatic sync, secure and straightforward sharing, data management dashboard, and database. It takes care of the scalability, backend, server-side storage solutions, and authentication to ensure the services are secure.

As for CloudKit’s pricing structure, it offers an ample amount of transfer and data storage services for free. Average paid services can be availed from $0.03 per GB. 

Google Cloud

The GCP (Google Cloud Platform) is a suite of cloud services that are hosted on Google’s infrastructure. Along with a set of management tools, it offers a range of modular cloud services, including data storage, computing, machine learning, and data analytics. GCP provides a platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and serverless computing environments.

Today, Google Cloud is a widely-used cloud computing offering as it is complete with a wide range of features for efficient computing and storage. By using Google Cloud, developers can enjoy fuss-free application development, and users get access to useful collaboration options and better security.

Those who are new to Google Cloud can create an account to analyze the platform in real-world scenarios. New users even get a $300 credit to test, run and deploy workloads. 

Heroku

Founded in June 2007, Heroku is a cloud platform that lets enterprises build, monitor, deliver and scale applications. Whether you’re building a simple prototype or a complex business-critical product, the fully-managed platform gives you the simplest path to quickly delivering apps.

This leading PaaS offering might be enough for handling all of your iOS cloud hosting needs. iOS app developers can utilize this platform to easily launch, scale and manage apps based on specific requirements. 

Developers prefer Heroku across the globe as it offers support for myriad programming languages, such as Python, Java, PHP, Clojure, Scala, Node.js, Go, and Ruby. Heroku Dynos are perfect for initiating swift application operations.

The pricing options offered by Heroku are for organizations and apps of all sizes. Non-commercial apps can use the platform for free, while plans for business-focused apps start from $25 per month. As your application grows, you can scale up the resources you require and only pay what you consume.

Firebase

Launched in 2011, Firebase is a software development platform by Firebase Inc. In 2014, the platform was acquired by Google. It started as a real-time database, and today it has eighteen services, along with dedicated APIs. The entire platform is a BaaS (backend as a service) solution both for web-based and mobile apps that include services for developing, managing, and testing apps.

BaaS solutions enable you to eliminate the requirement of managing backend databases and acquiring corresponding hardware. Instead, you can plug them into your application through dedicated APIs for each separate service.

In the case of Firebase, there are seven of them that cover the entire spectrum of backend technologies for an application. Firebase integrates with iOS, as well as Android, Unity, and Web. The key features of Firebase include real-time database, authentication, fast hosting of apps, notifications with no additional coding, and so on.

AWS Amplify 

Amazon Web Services is one of the biggest cloud platforms in the world. Enterprises of all sizes and types use it regularly to run their businesses. Since AWS accounts for over half of Amazon’s operating income, it offers a wide range of tools to make it user-friendly. One of the tools is AWS Amplify.

AWS Amplify was first launched in late 2017. It is a package of services and tools specifically designed to make it simpler for developers to build and launch applications in AWS. It includes ready-to-use components, code libraries, and a built-in CLI. With the help of AWS Amplify, one can reliably and quickly implement a host of features for everything from AI to API. 

AWS has components for analytics, data storage, authentication, and push notification. The framework supports iOS, along with React Native, Web, and Android apps. Also, Angular, React, Vue.js, and Ionic are supported for web apps. While the framework’s components and libraries are free, users have to pay for the services that they are using to build and deploy their apps. 

App Engine 

Google App Engine (GAE) is a reliable cloud computing technology that allows developers to build and host applications on a fully managed serverless platform.

Apps are sandboxed and run across various servers. For web apps, App Engine provides automatic scaling. As the number of requests increases for an app, GAE automatically allocates more resources for the app so that it can handle the additional demand. 

GAE primarily supports .NET, Go, Java, PHP, Node.js, Python, and Ruby apps. However, it can also support other programming languages through custom runtimes. The service can be used for free up to a specific level of consumed resources and only in a standard environment.

In a flexible environment, you cannot use the service for free. Fees are charged for bandwidth, additional storage, or instance hours that the app might require.

The services provided by App Engine include PaaS to build and deploy scalable apps, developer tools for support, and hosting facilities in fully managed data centers. 

Vultr

Vultr offers high-quality SSD cloud servers that have a global footprint. It strives to create the most effective and reliable hosting service for developers. 

Using the latest generation of Intel CPUs on a feature-rich control panel, Vultr provides solid-state drives (SSD). You can select between fourteen locations across the globe that are of low latency in just sixty seconds, the cloud server instance can be spun up.

With prices starting from $5 per month, Vultr is one of the cheapest cloud hosting services that you can consider for your iOS application.

Some of the features that Vultr offers to help developers and businesses include a custom control panel, worldwide network, dedicated IP address, outstanding speed, ultra-fast Intel core, huge variety of data centers, top-of-the-range security, three powerful hosting plan types, and more.

You can select between cloud compute (CV2), bare metal simplified and block storage, and dedicated instances when it comes to hosting.

Linode 

Linode is one of the most reliable cloud hosting providers boasting one million-plus user and eleven global data centers. Linode focuses on offering Linux-powered virtual machines to support a host of apps.

The cloud hosting company provides Internet hosting, VPS, and cloud computing services based out of Pennsylvania. It covers more than 196 countries.

When Linode was launched in 2003, it was considered to be ahead of its time with virtualization hosting. Its server location is optimized for serving a global audience in terms of improving UX and reducing latency.

The core products of Linode are developer tools, compute, managed services, networking, and storage. It mainly focuses on the delivery of SSD Linux servers to back a wide variety of apps. 

UpCloud

UpCloud is one of the most amazing and efficient providers of cloud hosting services. It is the fastest VPS provider and efficient cloud infrastructure that gives an uptime of 100%. Its service is quite affordable and costs only $5/month. 

The cloud infrastructure has the fastest servers that are even faster than SSD-performance. The servers have the capability of reaching up to 100000 IOPS. UpCloud has offices in Europe, Asia, and North America, and the servers are set up in 6 countries.

Users can automate its infrastructure with the feature-rich API that helps users create, configuring, and deleting cloud servers.

Conclusion

Building an iOS app to meet the global standards, prepare it for the launch, and scale the app is important. Choosing the right hosting and cloud computing service provider will directly impact app development and performance outcomes.

The options mentioned above are some of the top iOS cloud hosting choices that are worth considering because they provide everything necessary for storage, agile development, and app management. To make the right decision, compare the features offered by the hosting providers.

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