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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Platform as a Service
  4. Platform As A Service
  5. Apollo vs Empire

Apollo vs Empire

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Empire
Empire
Stacks7
Followers28
Votes4
GitHub Stars2.7K
Forks156
Apollo
Apollo
Stacks2.7K
Followers1.8K
Votes25

Apollo vs Empire: What are the differences?

What is Apollo? GraphQL server for Express, Connect, Hapi, Koa and more. Build a universal GraphQL API on top of your existing REST APIs, so you can ship new application features fast without waiting on backend changes.

What is Empire? A Self-Hosted PaaS Built on Docker and Amazon ECS. Empire is a control layer on top of Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS) that provides a Heroku like workflow. It conforms to a subset of the Heroku Platform API, which means you can use the same tools and processes that you use with Heroku, but with all the power of EC2 and Docker.

Apollo and Empire can be primarily classified as "Platform as a Service" tools.

Apollo and Empire are both open source tools. Apollo with 7.53K GitHub stars and 935 forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Empire with 2.53K GitHub stars and 156 GitHub forks.

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Advice on Empire, Apollo

Márton
Márton

CTO at Media4Care

Aug 31, 2020

Decided

We wanted to save as much time as possible when writing our back-end, therefore Apollo was out of the question, we went for an auto-generated API instead. Hasura looked good in the beginning, but we wanted to retain the ability to add a few manual resolvers and modifications to auto-generated ones, which ruled out Hasura. Postgraphile with its Plug-In architecture was the right choice for us, we never regretted it!

37.1k views37.1k
Comments
Raj
Raj

CTO & Founder at Novvum

Oct 5, 2020

Review

Hey Brian, it's hard to pick a best tool for any situation, however, there are tools that offer advantages dependent on use case.

Server Side

If you're looking to quickly generate a GraphQL API, you can use a Graphql As A Service like FaunaDB, Slash Graphql, or 8base.

If you want something more advanced on the server side: Prisma with Postgres, Nexus, & Apollo Server (js) is a great stack to try out. Examples here

Check out TypeORM and TypeGraphQL too

If you're have some existing data on Postgres, PostGraphile or Hasura are your best bet!

If you are using a lot of AWS services, check out Amplify and AppSync. Tutorial here

On the client side:

Check out Gatsby! Graphql is already configured and used to query static or remote information at build time. It's a great way to get your feet wet!

Apollo Client is often the choice for more advanced use cases. But URLQL and gqless are some pretty good alternatives too!

Hope this helps! 👍

293 views293
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Empire
Empire
Apollo
Apollo

Empire is a control layer on top of Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS) that provides a Heroku like workflow. It conforms to a subset of the Heroku Platform API, which means you can use the same tools and processes that you use with Heroku, but with all the power of EC2 and Docker.

Build a universal GraphQL API on top of your existing REST APIs, so you can ship new application features fast without waiting on backend changes.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
2.7K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
156
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
7
Stacks
2.7K
Followers
28
Followers
1.8K
Votes
4
Votes
25
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 1
    BSD License
  • 1
    Easy deployment
  • 1
    12-factor methodology
  • 1
    Open source
Pros
  • 12
    From the creators of Meteor
  • 8
    Great documentation
  • 3
    Open source
  • 2
    Real time if use subscription
Cons
  • 1
    File upload is not supported
  • 1
    Increase in complexity of implementing (subscription)
Integrations
Docker
Docker
Amazon EC2 Container Service
Amazon EC2 Container Service
GraphQL
GraphQL

What are some alternatives to Empire, Apollo?

Heroku

Heroku

Heroku is a cloud application platform – a new way of building and deploying web apps. Heroku lets app developers spend 100% of their time on their application code, not managing servers, deployment, ongoing operations, or scaling.

Clever Cloud

Clever Cloud

Clever Cloud is a polyglot cloud application platform. The service helps developers to build applications with many languages and services, with auto-scaling features and a true pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Google App Engine

Google App Engine

Google has a reputation for highly reliable, high performance infrastructure. With App Engine you can take advantage of the 10 years of knowledge Google has in running massively scalable, performance driven systems. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow.

Red Hat OpenShift

Red Hat OpenShift

OpenShift is Red Hat's Cloud Computing Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. OpenShift is an application platform in the cloud where application developers and teams can build, test, deploy, and run their applications.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Once you upload your application, Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring.

Render

Render

Render is a unified platform to build and run all your apps and websites with free SSL, a global CDN, private networks and auto deploys from Git.

Hasura

Hasura

An open source GraphQL engine that deploys instant, realtime GraphQL APIs on any Postgres database.

Cloud 66

Cloud 66

Cloud 66 gives you everything you need to build, deploy and maintain your applications on any cloud, without the headache of dealing with "server stuff". Frameworks: Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Jamstack, Laravel, GoLang, and more.

Jelastic

Jelastic

Jelastic is a Multi-Cloud DevOps PaaS for ISVs, telcos, service providers and enterprises needing to speed up development, reduce cost of IT infrastructure, improve uptime and security.

Dokku

Dokku

It is an extensible, open source Platform as a Service that runs on a single server of your choice. It helps you build and manage the lifecycle of applications from building to scaling.

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