What Is The Difference Between Paas And Traditional Web Hosting?

PaaS (Platform as a Service) hosting is very different from the traditional forms of web hosting like shared or VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting. In the traditional style of hosting, the developer has to shoulder many responsibilities, like setting up the application server, setting up the MySQL database, setting up the run-time platform, checking for proper execution, diagnosing issues, reconfiguring and setting up everything again, and many more. And all these before they can even think about code.

Basically they have to spend a hell of a lot of time in ensuring the perfect state of production environment so it is good enough to host their application. There are additional issues too, like monitoring, load balancing, etc. PaaS hosting offers HTTP caching server which allows the application to load faster. Also, issues like redundancy, fail-over, backup, etc. are built end-to-end into the system, which means even if failures occur, there is no downtime. There is no setting up or configuring of servers needed.

The user can easily deploy their application to all the servers with a single command and also scale it up by adding more servers to run it. So, the main difference between the two types is the user’s competence related to managing servers - if they want to avoid management related issues, they should go for PaaS, else stick to the traditional types of hosting.

PaaS (Platform as a Service) is one of the three models in which the cloud services are offered. There are a few significant ways it differs from the traditional web hosting.

PaaS (Platform as a Service) does not require setting up or configuring of servers at the client’s end. It is a platform where multiple instances are implemented for a single account rather than relying on a single instance. PaaS can be more useful for the high-traffic websites which have performance issues in a shared environment.

PaaS offers HTTP caching servers that ensure loading of applications faster while eliminating issues the latency, downtime even if one server goes down. The infrastructure is provided by the service vendors, maintenance, security, updates, etc. are their responsibility.

Some features of PaaS include providing infrastructure for application development and support, auto-scaling, networking, load balancers, redundancy, monitoring, on-demand services, around the clock support.

Traditional web hosting requires the providers to set up application servers, database servers, ensure seamless execution, diagnose issues, setup again, configure and more. Web hosting is offered in different ways- shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated server hosting.

While the shared hosting and VPS hosting are platforms where a customer’s websites and applications are uploaded along with several others. The server is owned and maintained by the hosting company. While shared hosting does not allow any flexibility, VPS allows the customers to host their own applications and give them the control.

Another web hosting platform is the dedicated server. This platform is exclusively leased by one single entity. That entity has total control of the server though the server is owned by the hosting company. The traditional web hosting relies on a single server and risks of downtime when the server is down is always there. The hosting providers extend support depending on the plan chosen by the customers.