Best Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software
Platform as a service, or PaaS, is a cloud computing model that provides users with a complete development to deployment environment in the cloud. The main goal of PaaS is to provide a holistic view of cloud platforms and centralize the development and maintenance of cloud applications.
PaaS tools include, but are not limited to, development kits, database tools, and application management capabilities. A PaaS offering includes infrastructure, such as servers and storage, and middleware, such as development tools and database management systems. Third-party vendors provide users with virtual resources to build, deploy, and launch software applications, reducing the need for back-end software development.
Businesses utilize PaaS to outsource hosting, database construction, cloud security capabilities, and data storage. Companies often use PaaS clouds as scalable platforms for new applications or expanding applications to larger audiences. PaaS offers a pay-as-you-grow model, which helps businesses avoid long-term investments in development time and middleware. Development teams use the service as an alternative to constructing and hosting at the back end of applications with integrated development environments (IDE). PaaS’ hosted database and storage services include similar capabilities to mobile backend-as-a-service (mBaaS) products, which are specifically for mobile applications. PaaS providers range from established software vendors to open source projects. In recent years, hybrid cloud has emerged as a popular form of PaaS deployment. Hybrid cloud computing takes different cloud infrastructures, such as public and private clouds, and manages them as one.
To qualify for inclusion in the PaaS category, a product must:
Best Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software At A Glance
G2 takes pride in showing unbiased reviews on user satisfaction in our ratings and reports. We do not allow paid placements in any of our ratings, rankings, or reports. Learn about our scoring methodologies.
Salesforce Platform is the leading low-code development platform that empowers your team to build and extend your Customer 360 with AI, automation, and data. With the Salesforce Platform, you can exec
Salesforce is a cloud-based platform designed for managing customer data, automating workflows, and creating custom user interfaces. Users frequently mention the platform's high level of customization, its ability to integrate with other tools, and its robust reporting and dashboard capabilities as key benefits. Users reported issues with the platform's complexity, particularly for new users, its high cost, especially for smaller teams, and occasional performance issues.
580,855 Twitter followers
AWS Lambda lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. You pay only for the compute time you consume - there is no charge when your code is not running. With Lambda, you can run code
2,220,162 Twitter followers
DigitalOcean is a cloud computing platform designed to assist businesses and developers in creating, deploying, and scaling applications efficiently. This infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) solution c
221,395 Twitter followers
Azure Functions is a serverless compute service that enables developers to build and deploy event-driven applications without the need to manage infrastructure. By automatically scaling resources base
13,088,482 Twitter followers
SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) is a multi-cloud platform-as-a-Service optimized to work with SAP solutions. It is a unified platform of technologies SAP uses for its own innovation, to ext
SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) is a unified environment designed to enable businesses to innovate, integrate, and extend their IT landscapes. Reviewers appreciate the platform's comprehensive integration and extensibility capabilities, its ability to bring integration, data, and application development into one unified environment, and its flexibility and ease of integration. Users mentioned the platform's steep learning curve, high costs, complex user interface, and the difficulty in finding specific implementation guidance.
297,265 Twitter followers
Spring is the most popular application development framework for enterprise Java™. Millions of developers use Spring to create high performing, easily testable, reusable code without any vendor lock-i
62,787 Twitter followers
Vercel’s Frontend Cloud provides the developer experience and infrastructure to build, scale, and secure a faster, more personalized web. By providing the toolkit frontend teams love and delivering gl
407,134 Twitter followers
Kinsta: Simply better hosting for WordPress. Experience hosting that's fast, secure, and built to scale, backed by expert support you can trust. Kinsta delivers top-tier performance with daily b
15,844 Twitter followers
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is an open source, enterprise-grade Kubernetes platform for building, deploying, and managing containerized applications across on-premise, private cloud and publi
299,067 Twitter followers
Run your code in the cloud with no servers or containers to manage with our scalable, pay-as-you-go functions as a service (FaaS) product. New customers get $300 in free credits to spend on Functions
31,775,247 Twitter followers
Azure App Service is a fully managed platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering from Microsoft Azure that enables developers to build, deploy, and scale web applications, APIs, and mobile backends efficien
13,088,482 Twitter followers
Cloudways is a managed web hosting provider that frees businesses from hosting & server management with its two unique managed hosting solutions: Cloudways Flexible & Cloudways Autonomous. Ove
221,395 Twitter followers
Railway simplifies your infrastructure stack from servers to observability with a single, scalable, easy-to-use platform. Build and Deploy: Craft a complete full-stack application with a powerful
Oracle Cloud platform as a service (PaaS) helps enterprise IT and independent software vendor (ISV) developers rapidly build and deploy rich applications - or extend Oracle Cloud SaaS apps.
825,317 Twitter followers
SAP Integration Suite (formerly SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite) is an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) that allows the user to integrate on-premise and cloud-based applications and proc
SAP Integration Suite is a platform designed to simplify system integration and connect different systems in one platform. Users like the control and transparency it provides, its flexibility, reliability, and the time it saves with ready-made integration flows and APIs. Reviewers noted that the learning curve can be high, especially for new users, and troubleshooting errors is not always easy due to unclear error messages.
297,265 Twitter followers
Learn More About Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software
What is Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software?
The advent of cloud computing brought with it a slew of “as a service" (aaS) offerings. These solutions aim to simplify aspects of the business infrastructure by offering complete cloud platforms to handle databases, IT infrastructure, disaster recovery, and more.
Platform as a service (PaaS) may sound generic—especially since most cloud service offerings are platforms—but in reality, PaaS solutions serve a very specific purpose: they enable companies to develop, deploy, and maintain software and applications from the cloud. By building in the cloud, companies don’t need to possess their own infrastructure. Instead, they rely on the PaaS provider’s infrastructure or public, distributed cloud. PaaS software is built to bring equal or greater power than their on-premises counterparts, while also supplying convenient accessibility and better overall cost management for the development lifecycle. These products are ideal for companies who either lack the immediate infrastructure to build and deploy applications or anticipate significant scaling for their developed products.
What are the Common Features of Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software?
The following are some core features within PaaS software that can help users save money and time:
Prebuilt backend infrastructure: A key part of what makes PaaS solutions popular is that they significantly cut the setup time and cost needed for building software and applications. PaaS software takes care of all the prebuilt infrastructure requirements, empowering users to start coding right away.
Development tools: This can involve a wide array of features, including but not limited to text editors, code libraries, code snippets, frameworks, and more. When looking for a PaaS solution, it’s important to ensure the software in question can handle the company’s language requirements.
Diverse development capabilities: PaaS solutions can be used to create diverse products, ranging from solutions to databases to applications and beyond. Regardless of what the buyer is developing, PaaS software needs to be able to handle it.
Management: PaaS software needs to provide high-level management capabilities for pre-, mid-, and post-development stages. These might include reporting, code management, tracking, and other functions.
Deployment: The software that is developed with a PaaS solution is only useful if the user can actually deploy it. PaaS software gives companies the capability to deploy their software where they need it and then maintain that software with management features once deployed.
What are the Benefits of Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software?
Development speed: PaaS solutions allow developers to build software more quickly since they provide developers with prebuilt backend infrastructure. Developers spend less time setting up the framework for their software or applications, so they can use that saved time to strengthen the software’s performance and features. PaaS software typically includes staging and testing tools as well, which also improves development speed by consolidating these functions into one platform.
Scalability: PaaS software is designed to scale with a company’s needs. Reaching larger, or even international audiences can put a lot of strain on companies that might not have the necessary infrastructure in place to handle such growth. PaaS solutions, because they are cloud-based, can scale development and hosting according to a business’ needs without putting the infrastructure burden on the business itself.
Reduced costs: Most PaaS solutions will offer pay-as-you-grow pricing options based on usage levels, making them particularly beneficial for companies that might not be able to afford extensive development solutions. This gives companies a huge opportunity to build at a low cost and then scale as the need or demand rises.
Who Uses Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software?
Developers: Software and application developers will be the primary users of PaaS software in a company. Since these solutions are built for helping specifically to build, deploy, and maintain software and applications, these personas find the most value in this software.
Security professionals: Security professionals won’t typically be utilizing PaaS software to perform their day-to-day tasks. However, many PaaS solutions integrate with a company’s security systems, meaning security teams may need to access PaaS software to ensure a high quality of security throughout the company.
Software Related to Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software
Related solutions that can be used together with PaaS software include:
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS): As the name may suggest, infrastructure as a service software offers companies virtual infrastructure (e.g., servers, networks, and desktops) necessary for a company’s computing goals. What IaaS offers in general virtual infrastructure, it tends to lack in software development capabilities.
Software as a service (SaaS): SaaS is the cloud offering of a completed software solution. SaaS products are convenient for companies who would like remote access to that software and the information contained in it. PaaS software has the capability of developing such solutions.
Mobile backend as a service (mBaaS): Focused distinctly on backend functionality, mBaaS software provides companies with the ability to connect their application’s cloud storage and other cloud resources with the application’s backend resources. These solutions, as the name suggests, specialize with mobile platforms, gaining an advantage on PaaS products specifically in that domain.
Challenges with Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software
Software solutions can come with their own set of challenges.
Lack of control: As is the common concern with other cloud service software, anything offered as a service is vulnerable to outages or downtime from the provider. While downtime might be helpful to improve the service platform, it still puts a blip in the PaaS tool functionality, which can be painful for developers. If the service goes down unexpectedly, a business doesn’t have the power to help bring it back online either—that responsibility falls to the platform provider.
Vendor lock-in: What if, after building the software and platform through a PaaS solution, the company needs to switch solution providers? This isn’t an easy task. Switching providers from one PaaS software to another involves a huge amount of work and expense, requiring the coordination of data migration, security changes, configuration changes, and more. It’s important to spend a lot of time researching before choosing PaaS software to avoid potentially significant costs and time consumption.
Which Companies Should Buy Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software?
Any company with a development team can benefit from PaaS software. Below are a few major examples.
SaaS companies: SaaS companies build and maintain one or multiple SaaS products. As these companies scale, they can reuse existing APIs and components in the cloud to streamline their development process.
Tech startups: Tech startups tend to develop and sell great software, but may be lacking the budget and resources necessary to maintain a development infrastructure. These companies benefit greatly from the pay-as-you-go nature of many PaaS offerings, which eases the burden of infrastructure maintenance without breaking the bank.
Mature enterprise companies: Many enterprise companies looking to replace a tangled web of legacy software can do so with PaaS offerings. PaaS software offers an all-in-one package that can replace multiple disparate software tools in one swoop.
How to Buy Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software
Companies looking for PaaS software, whether for the first time or to replace existing tools, can move forward with confidence using g2.com reviews as a guide.
When searching for PaaS software, buyers must consider their “must-haves” when it comes to things like pricing structure, feature set, and integrations. For example, a company may be looking for a straightforward cloud-hosted development environment rather than paying for a robust, multifaceted platform to handle everything from deployment to performance monitoring. Buyers should zero-in on the features they need to begin developing on a hosted platform, then reference G2 reviews to find the right fit and ensure proper integration with their other tools.
Narrowing down the pool of PaaS solutions by clearly defining a company’s needs allows decision making teams to then perform more direct comparisons to find the best tool for their needs. G2 reviews can make this process even easier by providing authentic insights from similar buyers.
Compare Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software Products
Create a long list
At first, buyers should keep their options open to consider the full range of PaaS tools available to them. Using their predefined must-have features, buyers can explore the many offerings on the market to get a feel for what might be viable.
Create a short list
Along with a company’s must-have features and pricing matrix, G2 reviews can help to narrow in on a short three to five product list. At that point, buyers can begin to make more granular comparisons and reference specific pros and cons to make an informed decision.
Conduct demos
All of the products that wind up on a company’s short list should be demoed. During demos, buyers should seek out specific information related to their must-haves; for example, one might ask to be walked through the ease of integration between the PaaS product and a security solution.
Selection of Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software
Choose a selection team
Companies of all sizes should involve any relevant personas when conducting the PaaS software selection process. Large companies might have the resources to assign individual team members to fill roles such as decision maker, project manager, system owner, and developers. Smaller companies with fewer employees might overlap roles make the best assessment.
Negotiation
Many companies offer PaaS solutions that go beyond certain companies’ needs to include application performance monitoring, monetization tools, and more. While some companies will not budge on the configurations of their packages, buyers looking to trim costs should try to negotiate down to the specific functions that matter to them in order to get the best price. For example, a vendor’s pricing page might indicate that the buyer’s desired functionality is only included with a robust all-in-one package, whereas a sales conversation may prove otherwise.
Final decision
After this stage, it is important to perform a trial run if possible with a small selection of developers. This will help to ensure that the PaaS software of choice integrates well with a developers’ day-to-day work. If the PaaS tool is well liked and well utilized, the buyer can take that as a sign that their selection is the right one. If not, reevaluation of the options may be necessary.
