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AppHarbor vs Azure Websites: What are the differences?
Developers describe AppHarbor as "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. On the other hand, Azure Websites is detailed as "Deploy and scale modern websites and web apps in seconds". Azure Websites is a fully managed Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) that enables you to build, deploy and scale enterprise-grade web Apps in seconds. Focus on your application code, and let Azure take care of the infrastructure to scale and securely run it for you.
AppHarbor and Azure Websites 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, Azure Websites provides the following key features:
- .NET, Java, PHP, Node.js, Python
- Built-in AutoScale and Load Balancing
- High Availability with Auto-Patching
"Has a totally free account option" is the top reason why over 7 developers like AppHarbor, while over 14 developers mention "Ease of deployment" as the leading cause for choosing Azure Websites.
Pros of AppHarbor
- Has a totally free account option8
- Low cost2
- GitHub integration2
- BitBucket integration2
- Startup friendly2
- Wide choice of integrations2
- Service bus2
- Document database2
- Relational database2
- PostgreSQL2
- .NET Webhosting1
- Add on easy setting1
Pros of Azure Websites
- Ease of deployment17
- Free plans for students6