Criteria
| Criteria | Description |
|---|---|
| Start | Must be painlessly quick and simple to get started. Ideally, it should take less than five minutes to have the latest version of CakePHP up-and-running with a MySQL database. |
| Configure | Environments must be easily configurable. For example, it must be easy to specify a different database config for local development and live production environments. This may be achieved, for example, via a deploy hook or an environment variable. And ability to add PHP modules. |
| Manage | Must be able to manage source code via a local Git repository or by linking to a GitHub repository. |
| Deploy | Must be able to access deploy hooks in order to execute scripts whilst deploying. For example, to empty caches when deploying. |
| Monitor | Must provide monitoring of the entire service stack – either as part of the solution or via integration with New Relic, Cloudkick or similar. |
| Scale | Must be painlessly quick and simple to scale the service – either via something as simple as a slider control in the GUI or automagically based on demand. |
| Schedule | Must provide task scheduling functionality via Cron or similar. |
| Support | Must be able to access documents and have good community. |
In the running
| Service | Description |
|---|---|
| Heroku | Heroku has a good community and there is a lot of information available about the service on-line. Easy to use original CLI tool. Customizable services such as PHP & Apache |
| OpenShift | OpenShift has an easy to use admin page however there is limited documentation. It is still in development. They are collecting ideas openly, this should make it a good service in the future. |
| Orchestra | Orchestra has Singapore available as a location, although it doesn’t have a CLI tool. Limited documentation available for PHP Developers. |
| Pagoda Box | Pagoda Box is easy to deploy and setup, it uses a YAML file for configuration and deployment. A strong community with good support, and plenty of documentation. |
| PHP Fog | PHP Fog is easy to use for PHP developers and deployments are quick. However it does not give you permission to change the environment. i.e. PHP Conf. |
Results
| Heroku | OpenShift | Orchestra | Pagoda Box | PHP Fog | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Score (out of 5) | 5 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 4 |
| Original CLI tool | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Change php verison | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| SSH Access | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Git | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| MySQL | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Monitoring | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Original SSL | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Cache | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Location | Singapore | Unknown | Singapore | USA | USA |
| Documents | Heroku | OpenShift | Orchestra | Pagoda Box | PHP Fog |