Diango hosting as well as Django servers are something software developers who use Python are often interested in and ask about. While the Django framework may not be the most popular one (14.2% of software developers utilize it), it is both appreciated (as much as 55.3% of them want to continue), and wanted (9.4% of those who are not developing with it yet, want to start doing it). So it seems to be a bright future for Django as well as Django hosting providers – at least those who stand out positively.
But how to identify them fast? Are the most popular Django-compatible providers the best ones? Which features are necessary, and which are just nice-to-haves? What to pay attention to when choosing the best hosting for Django? Below, you’ll find the selection of those hosting providers that are close to perfection in a way – being very useful, reliable, versatile, all-encompassing or simply flawless.
Table of contents:
- Django hosting – features you simply cannot go without
- 10 best Django hosting providers
- Django hosting tailored to your needs
Django hosting – features you simply cannot go without
There are dozens of Django hosting providers in the market that are trying hard to draw the attention of their prospective clients. What it’s best to pay attention to? First of all, a truly Django-friendly hosting supports this framework fully. In particular, features that are essential for hosting an app include sufficient scalability allowing for customization, superb support as well as free domains offered and servers placed in multiple countries. It’s also good to remember about factors such as server resource requirements and availability of shared hosting plans – especially important for smaller to medium-type applications.
10 best Django hosting providers
Among dozens of Django web hosting providers, there are some worth putting in the limelight and getting to know better. It’s good, however, to distinguish large hosting platforms from medium size hosts for our Django app. The former usually provide great support and reliability and are well-suited for large-scale projects. On the other hand, they may be overkill for smaller applications, and it’s quite often the case with pure Django apps. As for medium-sized platforms, they are usually easier to start with, and better suited for medium and small projects. However, they can be quite limiting in the case of multiple language projects or those with more complex architecture.
The list of 10 best Django hosting providers – regardless of their size – encompasses:
1. AWS
It’s one of the longest-existing hosting providers that has been proved and tested, is reliable, and offers great support. On the other hand, it’s innovative and powerful enough. Many features, as well as internal solutions, are provided to build the desired architecture. It’s one of the best Django hosting providers for large-scale projects that provides top scalability. On the downside, it may be difficult to start with, disk space and bandwidth are limited, and the pricing model – a little confusing.
2. Microsoft Azure
While this cloud-based platform is fully scalable, offers a lot of built-in features, and has many data centers across the world (over 40), it may be regarded as complex and difficult to start working with. It is worth mentioning that Azure is often chosen by big corporations due to its great integrity with the whole Microsoft environment.
3. Google Cloud Platform
Great platform support as well as outstanding analytics tools, well suited for machine learning projects – these are only some of the Google Cloud Platform’s distinguishing features. Superb integration with all Google products is also in the cards – the Django app would work well on the infrastructure of all other Google products, being fast and reliable. Google’s platform is expensive, though, and offers fewer features when compared to AWS.
4. Hetzner
It’s worth noting mainly due to providing functionalities of other large hosting providers, yet at a smaller price. It is not perfect for everybody, though, as it’s not very user-friendly and suits mostly German users, with only a few data centers (in Germany and Finland).
5. DigitalOcean
It’s one of the best-rated and most user-friendly platforms. Not only is it affordable and highly configurable but reliable and secure, too. On top of that, it can, with some limitations, be used even for larger projects. DigitalOcean, however, does not provide native support for Windows Server OS on virtual private servers called droplets.
6. Heroku
It offers support for many programming languages, including Python. Moreover, it’s user-friendly and easy to start working with. But one cannot enjoy those advantages only up to medium-sized projects, as it’s not suited for large ones. In the case of the latter, it can be expensive, too.
7. PythonAnywhere
It offers possibly the best support for Python / Django project setup, which is easy. It’s reliable but quite limited, not suited for large projects, and does not support other languages. In the backend, it runs on Amazon EC2 servers.
8. A2 Hosting
What sets this Django hosting provider apart are high performance as well as unlimited disk space and bandwidth. However, it does not offer a free Django hosting account for testing the features, which are restricted in cheaper plans.
9. Bluehost
It’s relatively cheap for up to medium-sized projects, offering good support 24/7 and quite a lot of features for the price. Performance, in turn, is not very impressive, nor is Python support (it’s not preinstalled).
10. Hostwinds
It’s powerful, flexible, and its varied hosting packages may attract businesses and projects of various sizes. Apart from services like shared hosting, VPS, and dedicated servers, it also gives an uptime guarantee of 99.99% while prices are relatively low.
Django hosting tailored to your needs
As you can see, no Django hosting provider is perfect for every purpose or to host a Django app of any kind. Of course, making the right choice depends on the user’s needs, the scope and purpose of the project and the organization in question, the industry it operates in, the level of support required, as well as many other circumstances.
But, certainly, some Django hosting providers excel in one way or another. We may say that, all in all, Django hosting at its best is brought to you by such providers as DigitalOcean, Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud Platform. But before you use them in your projects, carefully analyze offers of at least several other leading hosting providers, trusted by thousands of users to date.
And do you have experience in choosing a Django hosting provider? What challenges did you have to face? Are you satisfied with the choice you’ve made? Would you recommend it to other software developers?
