The market is divided between sovereign providers — such as Clever Cloud or Scalingo — and providers partially or fully operating on American infrastructures, such as Vercel, DigitalOcean, or Upsun. Each offers a different balance between performance, automation, and control, but all pursue the same objective: simplifying hosting and ensuring the operational maintenance of applications.
Key points
- A PaaS handles hosting, deployment, and part of application supervision (scalability, backups, observability), reducing the operational workload for teams.
- Sovereign alternatives (Clever Cloud, Scalingo) emphasize strategic data autonomy: reversibility, local compliance, and protection from extraterritorial laws.
- Global platforms (Vercel, DigitalOcean, Upsun) prioritize large-scale ease of use, but offer no sovereignty guarantees since they rely on American clouds.
Clever Cloud stands out through a “by design” resilience approach (autoscaling, disaster recovery plan, backups), certified security (ISO 27001, HDS, Zero Trust) and full control of its stack down to the hypervisor.
Understanding PaaS: strengths and limitations
A PaaS provides an abstraction layer between the code and the infrastructure: the platform standardizes provisioning, deployment, scalability, and part of the observability, allowing teams to focus on the product rather than the infrastructure.Because a PaaS relies on cloud-native principles (12-Factor App, stateless patterns, automation), some monolithic or tightly coupled applications must be adapted to take full advantage of autoscaling and continuous deployment.
The 5 best PaaS alternatives
1. Clever Cloud
Clever Cloud is a sovereign European PaaS platform, founded in 2010 in France. It enables hosting, deployment, and operational maintenance of applications and databases, with a focus on resilience by design (autoscaling, disaster recovery plan, backups) and certified security (ISO 27001, HDS, Zero Trust).
Advantages
- Hosting is sovereign: data is never subject to extraterritorial laws, and reversibility is guaranteed.
- “By design” mechanisms include autoscaling, redundant architecture, automated backups, and a disaster recovery plan (DRP).
- Security relies on a Zero Trust model and certifications such as ISO 27001 and HDS.
- The platform supports a wide range of runtimes: Node.js, PHP, Docker, .NET, Go, Python, etc.
Limitations
- Non-cloud-native applications sometimes require adaptation to fully benefit from the managed model.
- The PaaS model does not expose low-level infrastructure control (e.g. hypervisor tuning, kernel-level networking), as this complexity is intentionally abstracted to guarantee uniformity, security, and operational stability. (Concretely, teams control the application and PaaS parameters, but not the underlying OS or hypervisor.)
Clever Cloud controls the entire stack down to the hypervisor, and builds its own open-source components, ensuring sovereignty, automation, and resilience without external dependency.
2. Scalingo
Scalingo is a French PaaS that simplifies the deployment and hosting of web applications, offering an experience close to Heroku along with dedicated migration guides.
Advantages
- Scalingo provides European hosting, compliant with ISO 27001 and HDS, ensuring regulatory compliance for data.
- The interface is intuitive and close to Heroku’s, easing adoption for developers.
- The platform integrates directly with GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket, simplifying continuous deployments.
- The autoscaler automatically adjusts the number of containers once configured, adapting to load peaks without manual intervention.
- The platform supports several languages (Node.js, PHP, Ruby, Python…), making it versatile for different types of projects.
Limitations
- The add-on catalog is limited compared to hyperscalers.
- Options for hybrid setups, edge deployments, and air-gapped environments are limited.
3. Vercel
Vercel is a front-end-oriented PaaS, particularly suited to modern JavaScript frameworks such as Next.js and React.
Advantages
- Native Git integration enables fast deployments and previews for every pull request, easing code reviews.
- The Edge/CDN architecture improves latency and performance for static sites and SSR rendering.
- A very extensive catalog of managed services.
- Documentation and the Next.js ecosystem provide a well-equipped environment for front-end teams.
Limitations
- Serverless Functions run on AWS regions, within a global Edge/CDN network and GCP integrations, meaning no data sovereignty.
- Functions are subject to maximum execution times (up to 15 minutes depending on the type), limiting long-running processes.
- The platform is less suited to back-end workloads or applications requiring fine-grained infrastructure control.
4. DigitalOcean App Platform
DigitalOcean’s App Platform is its PaaS offering: it allows code to be deployed through Git or Docker, without managing infrastructure.
Advantages
- A clear interface and structured documentation make onboarding easier.
- The platform supports Docker and integrates with DOKS (managed Kubernetes) for container-based workloads.
- Pricing is transparent and predictable, which suits small teams.
Limitations
- As it is operated by an American provider, it does not guarantee data sovereignty in Europe.
Multi-region or multi-zone deployments require additional engineering (e.g. through Kubernetes), beyond the standard PaaS capabilities.
5. Upsun (formerly Platform.sh)
Upsun, formerly Platform.sh, offers a multi-cloud GitOps-based approach with reproducible environment cloning.
Advantages
- Multi-cloud support allows choosing the provider (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, IBM, OVHcloud) for each project, providing deployment flexibility.
- Clonable environments facilitate realistic CI/CD pipelines and testing, improving reproducibility.
- The platform documents its Git-centric workflows (CLI, environments), structuring the application lifecycle.
Limitations
- Upsun relies on American clouds (AWS, GCP, Azure), which excludes full data sovereignty.
- Its learning curve is higher than plug-and-play PaaS platforms due to advanced GitOps configurations.
- Deployments may be more complex to configure for teams unfamiliar with this model.
Choosing the best PaaS
The best PaaS depends on your technical requirements and your data governance constraints.
- If your priority is sovereignty, protection from extraterritorial laws, reversibility, and by-design automation, Clever Cloud is a leading European option (ISO 27001 and HDS certifications, built-in resilience).
- If you want a Heroku-like experience in a French sovereign environment, Scalingo offers a simple interface, clear documentation, and a configurable autoscaler.
Other platforms (Vercel, DigitalOcean, Upsun) can address specific needs, but they rely partly on American infrastructures, with no sovereignty guarantees.