Render

Render offers much more than static site hosting. You can set a good old server to run PHP or Ruby. Run a Docker Container. Easily set CRON Jobs and create databases. It's gaining a lot of popularity and becomes a modern alternative to Heroku.

Written by:
  • Thom Krupa

    Thom Krupa

Last update: April 18, 2021
  • Render logo
  • Website: render.com
  • Founded: 2018
  • Total raised: $6.8M
  • Infrastructure: AWS, GCP
  • Serverless: None

Last update: April 18, 2021

Infrastructure

Render is a multi-cloud platform. They use AWS for the European region and Google Cloud Platform for the US region as a data center.

Web services, static hosting

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The main advantage of Render over other Jamstack deployment platforms is its support for servers. If you need to run a server and scale it for some reason, Render handles this great. Support every backend you can imagine, from Node to good ol’ PHP.

No serverless yet

You can’t run serverless functions like Amazon Lambda on Render. That’s for sure might be a blocker for some. It’s a top feature request, but there is no ETA. Render team didn’t confirm if they plan to support lambdas or no. If you’re looking for Function as a Service (FaaS), Render is not a good option.

Conclusion

Render is great if you develop both static apps and server backends. They position themselves as competitors to Heroku with better pricing, more flexibility, and even easier UX. It supports static websites with a global CDN. If you like Heroku, you will love Render.

Features
  • Automatic HTTPS
  • Database
  • CRON jobs
Use Cases
  • Serverful web apps.
  • Static sites.
  • Databases.
  • Docker containers.

Compare Render with

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