iOS App Hosting is easy for those we already have full fledged server, nodes or bare metal. But for a new developer, it can be a challenging point. Normally the developers are not aware of an excellent free to test option – Platform as a Service (PaaS). If you are not sure what is Platform as a Service, you can read and watch this video. Also, you might be interested to read 3 Reasons to Select PaaS. We have quite good number of articles on various PaaS services like Red Hat OpenShift, Heroku Cloud or App Fog – the reasons we are giving importance of PaaS for iOS App Hosting are :
- PaaS is Free for Testing purpose or even for lifetime free hosting if the usage is not really high
- The usual need of server setup for a typical iOS App can be met by PaaS
- PaaS gives command line access, we can change setup to some extent; like for Heroku Cloud, we can Specify the Webroot from Apache httpd File.
- You are getting SSL for free with the default fully qualified domain name (FQDN)
iOS App Hosting : Comparing Various Options
Obviously, there are various iOS App hosting options, practically from bare metal to simple virtual private server. For some Applications, however root access might be mandatory and shared hosting is not a valid option. Additionally shared hosting, has some typical issues like longer outages.
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Unless the App is targeted for a larger audience, there is no need of costly dedicated hosting, instead flexible one server cloud setup with 512MB to 2 GB RAM is enough at lower cost – these are typical IaaS. One can choose from Rackspace, Amazon or HP Cloud, depending on the need. Rackspace has an additional support level, which is actually good for us as we have lot of websites, for one App, $100 USD / mo. only for support probably will be out of budget for the most. What are the hosting needs for the particular iOS App, is important to give importance.
What’s œHosting Content with Apple
This is a new feature which came with iOS 6 development cycle, you can have Apple to host your content, such as images and videos. If you are looking to support anything below iOS 6, then you should select no (assuming you have content that needs to be hosted), if your in App purchase does not need to download anything, then just select no. This actually provides the option to host the content associated with a server based in-app purchase on Apple™s own App Store servers. This service is provided by Apple to the application developers at no additional cost. Prior to iOS 6, it was the responsibility of the developer to set up and configure a server based system for server based in-app purchases.
We are avoiding this part because assumably the reader is searching for own webhost either for testing or for real full or partial deployment.
iOS App Hosting : What Should Be Considered
The technology you use to implement the REST services will have a far less significant impact on performance and hosting costs than the way you use HTTP. Learning to take advantage of HTTP is far more than simply learning how to use GET, PUT, POST and DELETE. Use whatever server side technology you already know and spend some quality time reading the RFC2616 specification. You will save yourself a ton of time and money.
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