
PHP Fog Raises $1.8 Million To Be The Heroku Of PHP - ggordan
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/10/php-fog-raises-1-8-million-to-be-the-heroku-of-php/
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tmcw
Don't really get this one. First off, PHP doesn't have the deploy/run process
of Sinatra/Ruby/Node/etc. Second, 1.8 mil isn't much money; that's probably
the amount you could bootstrap with some past success. And the business-plan-
like graphic doesn't reveal that there's anything interesting in their tech
approach than any commodity hosting.

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chanrises
I am also confused. What are the benefits of phpfog if it normally only takes
15 min to create a linux server with php/mysql on amazon ec2? The only things
I could see different are db slave replication and http caching, but generally
those you don't worry till much later, and are not critical.

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alanstorm
If you haven't been paying much attention to EC2 until now, getting your head
around the pricing structure, what plan makes sense, and the whole "You have a
VM but no permanent disk" thing can take some time. PHPFog's value proposition
would seem to be "We've figured out EC2 for you, and have default VMs setup
for Drupal and Wordpress and a way to deal with those system's need for
permanent disk space. If you can get your code in a git repository we'll
handle the rest." Just getting Drupal and Wordpress out of a shared hosting
environment is a huge win security/stability wise, and if their VMs have a
configuration that deals with a lot of the well known attack vectors that
aren't shared host related all the better.

I'm not sure that I'd use it myself, because I'd like to spend to time to get
familiar with EC2, but with shared hosting becoming a less reliable solution
as internet traffic patterns change (and shared hosts increasingly go he
commodity route) there's going to be a lot of PHP professionals (and PHP
hacks, and non-programmer hacks using PHP systems) looking for a turn-key
cloud solution, so I can see the interest in PHPFog.

TL;DR: There's large swaths of the PHP community that doesn't know how to make
EC2 work, PHPFog is aiming to be their middleman.

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jeffbarr
> the whole "You have a VM but no permanent disk" thing can take some time.

Not to sidetrack the discussion, but EC2 has had persistent disk storage since
the fall of 2008 ( <http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2008/08/amazon-elastic.html> ).

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alanstorm
Hey, not a sidetrack at all, and I appreciate the link.

At the risk of putting this __back __on discussion though, from the outside
EBS looks like a separate, but complimentary product for EC2, which will
further muddy the waters for someone not familiar with Amazon's platform,
which leaves room for a someone like PHPFog to swoop in as a middleman to
provide a turnkey solution to the problem of getting PHP developers and
Drupal/Wordpress site owners up and running in a scalable cloud environment.
It's not that this is hard for someone to solves on their own, it's that for a
lot of developers in the PHP Ecosystem there's too much inertia to get around
to it.

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gexla
Anyone else tired of hearing about "the Heroku of x?" However, you can be
pretty sure you hit the right combo of good timing and implementation when
your own startup is followed by services which are referred to as "[insert
your startup name] of x."

ETA: Let's have some fun and play with the tagline they have on their pricing
page which is "Like Heroku, but better."

Like Heroku, but without ninjas and rockstars.

Like Heroku, but better, but less cool.

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aresant
Tired or not it's not a bad way to make value proposition clear and in
hindsight is pretty handy:

\- "Youtube is the flickr of Video" -
<http://slashdot.org/articles/05/08/14/1320217.shtml>

\- "AdMob is the doubleclick of mobile"
[http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/200...](http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/11/google_buys_adm.html)

etc

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gexla
Sure, but wouldn't it be better if you could make that proposition from your
own presentation without having to refer to other services? If PHPFog is the
Heroku of PHP, then what was Heroku the Heroku of? ;)

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aresant
You do realize that "The Heroku Of PHP" is not a line from PHPFog right?

It's how TechCrunch is explaining what the site is.

<http://www.phpfog.com/>

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gexla
Actually, it's right on their pricing page. Maybe they didn't think of the
line themselves, but it's on their site and not as a quote.

PHP Fog is like Heroku for PHP. But better. We will provide simple one-click
installations of some of the most popular PHP applications out there.

ETA: However, I do agree that "like Heroku for PHP" is a big difference from
"is Heroku for PHP." My mistake.

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robryan
It's a good way of explaining it to people as many more have heard of Heroku.
It's not like their directly competing so I can't see a negative side.

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cmelbye
The future is heterogeneous Platform as a Service (for example,
<http://dotcloud.com/>) in my opinion. I can't imagine going back to Heroku
where I can only host Ruby along with a selection externally hosted add-ons.

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pstinnett
Why is Shopify listed under the apps? I always thought Shopify was a hosted
rails app.

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cardmagic
[http://blog.shopify.com/2010/6/18/official-php-adapter-
for-s...](http://blog.shopify.com/2010/6/18/official-php-adapter-for-shopify-
api)

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encoderer
Like the service, hate the name. Though I personally would like it better if
it included plug-and-play framework too. (Heroku has Rails, for example)

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noodle
i hope the funding will allow you to create a free plan, like heroku. i like
the idea of whats provided. i don't like the pricing structure.

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cardmagic
We are working on some features I think you will be excited about!

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noodle
i hope so. been following progress since you guys announced it (here? i don't
recall). i'd like to see it fit my needs, but it doesn't yet.

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Timzzz
nice work!I hope to use it when I can get an account. I just hope it is as
easy as they say.

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dylanz
Congrats Lucas!

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cardmagic
Thank you!

