AppHarbor vs Convox: What are the differences?

AppHarbor: Instantly deploy and scale .NET applications. AppHarbor is a fully hosted .NET Platform as a Service. AppHarbor can deploy and scale any standard .NET application to the cloud; Convox: Launch a Private Cloud in Minutes. The simplicity of Heroku. The power of AWS. Convox is an open source Platform as a Service that runs in your own Amazon Web Services (AWS) account. Instead of signing up for a multi-tenant PaaS like Heroku, you can have your own. This gives you privacy and control over your platform and avoids the substantial markup on AWS prices that other platforms charge.

AppHarbor and Convox can be primarily classified as "Platform as a Service" tools.

Some of the features offered by AppHarbor are:

• You push .NET and Windows code to AppHarbor using Git, Mercurial, Subversion or Team Foundation Server with the complimentary Git service or through integrations offered in collaboration with Bitbucket, CodePlex and GitHub.
• When AppHarbor receives your code it will be built by a build server. If the code compiles all unit tests contained in the compiled assemblies will be run. The result and progress of the build and unit test status can be monitored on the application dashboard. AppHarbor will call any service hooks that you add to notify you of the build result.
• If everything checks out the application is deployed and configured on AppHarbor application servers. AppHarbor can scale an application vertically and horizontally within seconds for better request throughout, performance and failover. AppHarbor balance load across all instances running that application. Scaling an application gives higher request thoughput, redundancy in case of instance failure and better performance.

On the other hand, Convox provides the following key features:

• Instant Deploys
• Runs in your AWS account
• Open Source

"Has a totally free account option" is the top reason why over 7 developers like AppHarbor, while over 5 developers mention "Your own scalable Heroku in 5 minutes" as the leading cause for choosing Convox.