Free PHP hosting on the cloud for developers

When you are developing new PHP application, you would like to test it out on a free hosting platform. A number of cloud providers have started providing such services for developers. However, caveat-emptor -- these may be beta services and you should not run production stuff on them, the service may be "freezed" at anytime.

http://fortrabbit.com/pricing
FOC for developers and you get MySQL database with your PHP server.


https://www.openshift.com/developers/php
https://www.openshift.com/products/pricing
FOC for PHP developers

http://bowery.io/pricing/
Interesting twist. They try to make it easy for developers
to setup their cloud development environment

https://elasticdot.io/pricing
PHP Developer -- always free + MySQL Database

Here is a comparison done (in 2014) by the FortRabbit folks
http://blog.fortrabbit.com/cloudscapes-revisited-php-cloud-overview/

Not needing credit card to sign-up is really useful for academic setting, or places where credit cards are not so common among the developers. 

"dotCloud made a 540deg turn. As far as is read the story: Like AppFog (and us in the future), they ditched the freemium plan. Alongside they open-sourced a core component of their platform: Docker (LXC made easy). Docker went boom. DotCloud pivoted and became Docker.comoffering B2B solutions services around Docker. Alongside a new category was born: Docker as a Service with commercial services like: Flynn,Stackdock, Deis, Orchard, Tutum, Appsdeck … A really interesting story about combining open source and business." -- source: FortRabbbit blog article.

I think it is pretty interesting about what's happening with dotcloud.com ==> docker.com
Freemium is not the only path. For a PHP developer, LXC/Docker.com provides a plug+socket kind of arrangement when deploying your PHP app+LAMP stack.

http://www.slideshare.net/bingoarunprasath/docker-demo-on-php-application-deployment

Many docker cloud "sockets" out there to plug your PHP application in.
https://www.orchardup.com/
https://www.tutum.co/
https://stackdock.com/
https://flynn.io/
http://deis.io/get-deis/

D