Best 10 Cloud Servers for Apps

This article will explore ten of the best cloud server for mobile and web apps. The will include IaaS, PaaS, and BaaS, so you can have flexibility in selecting the level of value-added services you want.

Best 10 Cloud Servers for Apps

Cloud servers these days provide ample resources and features, making it easier for developers to build dynamic and high-performance applications.

Here are 10 of the best cloud servers available for developers right now, ensuring high scalability and flexibility in the app-building process.

Back4app

Back4app is an extremely popular cloud server provider, offering developers a low code scalable backend to store and query relational data for modern applications on the cloud that is accessible over GraphQL and REST.

It is an open-source platform that offers several features, including relational data storage, APIs, cloud code functions, authentication, file storage, and push notifications.

For mobile and web app hosting, it is offered as a Backend as a Service (BaaS) implementation, allowing developers to build and manage apps effortlessly.

The feature-rich service synchronizes the data between your apps and cloud, which, along with Live Queries, allows users to handle real-time data management easily.

Back4app offers two types of deployment, shared hosting and dedicated hosting. Also, tailor-made customer support is available 24/7.

Heroku

Heroku is one of the oldest Platform-as-a-Service implementations available to developers, offering a plethora of tools and services to build and deploy applications entirely on the cloud.

Heroku is a fully managed platform that handles patching and upgrading the code, failovers, build systems, 24/7 ops and security, etc., so that your development team can focus on improving the user experience on the app.

Heroku natively supports several popular development languages and frameworks, including the likes of Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, Node.js, Clojure, Scala, Go, etc.

It follows a container-based model, meaning your apps run inside isolated smart containers in a fully managed runtime environment. Scaling is handled by adding more containers (called Dynos) to the app stack, keeping the performance consistent when there is a traffic spike.

Moreover, you get built-in monitoring of throughput, resource usage, response times, etc. 

Firebase

Backed by Google, Firebase is essentially one of the most popular platforms for developing and deploying mobile and web apps.

It offers one of the most comprehensive lists of computing and development tools that will help you throughout the development journey of your app.

Therefore, you also get tools for tracking, analytics, app crash reports, A/B testing, etc., that can be used by developers to improve the user experience of their app.

One of the standout features has to be the real-time database, which essentially follows the JSON document protocol to store and sync data among users and the cloud.

Moreover, it ships with web and mobile SDKs, allowing you to build apps without the need for servers. These SDKs create a local cache when your users go offline, which is synced when they come online.

Digital Ocean

While not as big as some of the other names on this list, Digital Ocean is one of the most popular cloud hosting platforms.

One of the main reasons for this popularity is the low cost, as you can set up a virtual machine underpinnings for as low as $5 a month. They also have some of the most requested services on offer, including Kubernetes, load balancing, object storage, database, etc.

When your userbase on Digital Ocean grows, predictable pricing means that cloud computing remains affordable. Cloud hosting plans start at $5 per month and you get $100 credit to start.

The platform is supported by a robust and supportive community that will help you learn new concepts and get started with the programming languages and frameworks for your project. It also supports various third-party integrations for additional functionality.

It is a great cloud hosting service and you should try.

Google App Engine

One of the most versatile and reliable offerings on this list, GAE is Google’s cloud computing platform as a service (PaaS) offering for developing and hosting web apps in data centers managed by Google.

As a developer, you get a fully managed, serverless platform that can be used to build highly scalable applications without having to manage anything in the backend.

Developers can start building on GAE in their preferred development language as it extends support for all the popular ones, or they can bring their own runtimes and frameworks too.

With no need to focus on the backend, your developers can focus on improving the code, managing the resources from a powerful CLI, debugging the source code, and running API backends easily.

Backendless 

Marketed as a visual app development platform, Backendless is a codeless full-stack app builder with an infinitely scalable serverless backend.

It offers a plethora of solutions, including API services, a UI builder, push notifications, etc. It is an extremely intuitive solution for new developers who can use the platform to improve the user experience of their applications.

UI themes, the CSS/LESS UI builder offers wide-ranging flexibility in designing your app exactly how you want it, with complete control over the look and feel of the app. You can manage your data with a graphical browser and SQL-driven search and relations. 

AWS

Amazon Web Services is probably one of the most popular cloud computing platforms. It provides multiple pro-level solutions for computing power, CDN, database, etc., that can be leveraged to build, deploy, and scale highly dynamic apps with advanced capabilities.

Depending on the requirements of the project, you can use one of the multiple solutions to power and run your apps on the cloud.

Moreover, you can integrate multiple services from AWS like EC2, S3, Lambda, Amplify, etc., with each other and improve the performance of your application hosted on the data servers managed by Amazon.

It is available in 25 geographical locations, with 21 more availability zones in the pipeline.

Linode

Linode is particularly popular among Android developers as it offers web hosting along with VPS cloud plans powered by Linux servers.

It has nine global data centers across three regions and offers a selection of tools that help developers compute, store, and network easily.

Offered as an Infrastructure as a solution (IaaS) implementation, Linode is extremely easy to get started with. The Linode Kubernetes Engine is of special feature that allows developers to deploy and manage containerized apps and workloads.

With fully featured APIs, it provides programmatic control of your infrastructure; a powerful CLI provides exceptional control over the resources; an intuitive cloud manager interface makes it easier for developers to get their products out of the production machine.

Cloud hosting services start at $5 per month and you get $100 credit to start.

UpCloud

Labelled an enterprise-grade cloud platform, UpCloud is another extremely popular cloud computing and hosting platform that enables users to run business-critical applications.

It is primarily favored by developers due to a consistently reliable service using the scalable MaxIOPS block storage, which is better for business-grade apps compared to the standard SSDs.

Moreover, managed databases and self-service private cloud ensure high performance and 100% uptime SLA while eliminating the hassles of maintaining the backend servers.

You can easily add more resources, like CPU and storage, with a single click, as UpCloud directly connects to your existing cloud infrastructure. 

Azure

Microsoft’s Azure platform is one of the top three most widely used cloud computing platforms with a comprehensive set of product offerings, including its own software like IIS, Exchange Server, MS SQL, etc.

It offers a robust Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) portfolio with Platform as a Service (PaaS) features for Windows and Linux. Developers can deploy VMs in seconds to create highly scalable and versatile enterprise-grade apps with industry-leading performance.

Azure is a popular cloud server hosting choice among developers focusing on the Microsoft tech stack, but it also provides extensive support for Linux app stacks. Moreover, you can build your own docker file image and deploy it for better control over the development process.

Conclusion

Cloud hosting provides several distinct advantages over traditional on-premise server hosting.

Not only does a cloud server improve the speed and performance of your application, but it is also better for security and preventing data redundancy.

The list above should get you started on cloud servers if you are on the way to deciding one for yourself.

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