Running on a PaaS Provider

In choosing to run a project on a PaaS provider, you are choosing simplicity over ability to easily customize and transfer your installation. Each of these companies provide a custom command line tool for automatically configuring and deploying an application.

Choosing a provider

There are a number of PaaS providers who support Django web applications. Most of these will work fine for supporting RapidSMS. It is important to consider the availability and cost of extra services since you will be relying on the services provided out of the box and there is little room for customization.

It should also be noted that there have been a number of PaaS solutions that are no longer operating businesses. Since there is less portability, it is important to consider the longevity of the provider when finalizing a decision. Also, with respect to portability, since you are choosing to invest in a single company’s tools, the documentation and support that are provided by the company must be vetted before deciding to go down a particular path.

Finally, another important consideration to take into account is the command line tool provided by the PaaS provider itself. With a virtual machine, for example, you can choose from a number of tools to put on top of the VM to help provision a new instance while with PaaS, you are locked in to the tools decided on by the provider.

Here’s a short list of popular PaaS providers that support Django:

Examples

The RapidSMS wiki has a page with links to examples of how people provision and deploy RapidSMS applications.