PaaS hides the stack. DuploCloud automates it.
That’s the real difference.
Platforms like Heroku, Render, Railway, and other Platform as a Service were built to hide infrastructure from developers. And for a while, it has worked for many small startups and hobbyists. A simple git push and your app was live, no servers to configure, no pipelines to set up. Perfect for prototypes, hackathons, and MVPs. They are a great tool to get you up and running and show your idea has merit and might even get you through your first levels of product market fit
However, as you grow, hiding the stack comes at a cost. At scale, these platforms turn become expensive black boxes. You don’t control the runtime. Compliance is limited or nonexistent. Costs can spike unpredictably. And when customers or regulators start asking about SOC 2, HIPAA, or PCI, or you need to implement complex RBAC your hidden stack becomes a liability.
That’s where DuploCloud takes a fundamentally different approach.
What if you could keep the speed of Heroku or other PaaS platforms, but with the compliance, uptime, and control of a big cloud provider?
Instead of hiding the stack, DuploCloud automates it, end to end inside your own AWS, GCP, or Azure account. Your developers get the same easy to deploy experience as a PaaS, but with enterprise-grade governance, compliance, and scale built in from day one. Our professional services team helps you migrate with best practices and then automates the day-to-day maintenance of your infrastructure.
With hundreds of successful migrations under our belt, our expert team ensures a seamless transition, avoiding the common pitfalls that cost companies time and money. DuploCloud automates the day-to-day maintenance of your infrastructure. Customers routinely cut DevOps costs by 60%, improve time-to-deploy by 10x, and rely on 24/7 support with a 15-minute SLA for critical systems. The result: the simplicity of PaaS, the resilience of enterprise cloud, and measurable ROI.
Why DuploCloud is Different
To understand how DuploCloud achieves this, let’s look at its key differentiators:
- Developer speed of PaaS – a modern developer experience with streamlined workflows, intuitive interfaces, and fast onboarding, preserving PaaS-like simplicity while abstracting away the compliance, security and scale limitations from the day to day experience.
- Enterprise-grade DevSecOps + compliance: DuploCloud comes with SOC 2, HIPAA, and PCI controls built in from day one, so you meet regulatory requirements without extra tooling or headcount. These compliance guardrails are continuously enforced across your infrastructure, reducing risk and audit overhead while letting your team move fast.
- DevOps as a Service: DuploCloud removes the need to build and staff a large DevOps team by automating cloud provisioning, security, scaling, and compliance inside your own account, reducing cost and operational risk while letting your developers stay focused on delivering business value instead of managing the infrastructure.
- Native control in your own account– everything runs in your AWS, GCP or Azure account. This is not a SaaS solution, but a DevOps as a Service solution to keep your systems running following best practices and experiences across the industry.
- Expert-led migration and operations – delivered by seasoned DevOps professionals. Our team has done hundreds of migrations and manages hundreds of clients on our platform. They can anticipate issues and solve them before they become an outage.
- 24/7 support with a 15-minute SLA – because uptime isn’t optional.
Bottom line: PaaS hides control of your infrastructure. DuploCloud gives control back to you, fully automated, fully compliant, and built to scale.
Comparing the Landscape
Here’s how DuploCloud stacks up against today’s platforms:
| Traditional PaaS | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform | Value | Limitation | DuploCloud Solution |
| Heroku | Simple git push hosting; great for startups | Locked runtime, limited compliance, scaling costs spike | Same push-to-deploy workflow inside your AWS, Azure, or GCP account but with compliance guardrails |
| Render | Modern Heroku replacement | Still black-box hosting | Render-like DX + enterprise-grade monitoring & compliance |
| Fly.io | Deploy apps globally, reduce latency | Proprietary infrastructure, compliance gap | Global reach via AWS, Azure and GCP with compliance |
| Railway | Instant deploys, hobbyist focus | No compliance or enterprise controls | Same speed, but inside your own cloud account |
| Dokku / CapRover | Open-source, Heroku-like | DIY ops, no scale, no compliance | Simplicity + automation + compliance at scale |
| Serverless Platforms | |||
| Platform | Value | Limitation | DuploCloud Solution |
| Vercel | Optimized for Next.js & frontends | Weak for backend/ compliance | Same frontend speed + backend depth & compliance |
| Netlify | Great for JAMstack sites | Not designed for mission-critical apps that aren’t on JAMstack | Full-stack automation in AWS, Azure, and GCP |
| Glitch / Replit | Great for prototyping | Hobbyist, not enterprise | DuploCloud scales prototypes into production-ready infrastructure |
| Enterprise / Internal Platforms | |||
| Platform | Value | Limitation | DuploCloud Solution |
| OpenShift | Enterprise Kubernetes | Heavy operational overhead, costly | Same compliance benefits, without the platform engineering tax |
| VMware Tanzu | Enterprise PaaS for Java apps | Complex, bank / gov-level ops | Tanzu-like control, but automated for SMBs |
| Humanitec | Internal platform tooling | Requires building your own PaaS | DuploCloud = “platform engineering in a box” |
The Takeaway
PaaS was built to hide infrastructure. That works for a sprint, but not for the marathon of scaling a real business.
With DuploCloud, you don’t just get speed. You get speed plus visibility, control, compliance, and scale, delivered by some of the most experienced DevOps professionals in the industry.
Simplify, Automate, and Scale Your Migration Journey
Migrating off PaaS or from legacy infrastructure doesn’t have to be painful. DuploCloud has delivered successful migrations from Heroku and many other PaaS environments into AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Here’s how we help:
- Assessment & Planning: We map your existing stack, dependencies, and compliance requirements to design the right landing zone.
- White-Glove Migration: Our experts handle lift-and-shift or re-platforming, ensuring minimal downtime and zero data loss.
- Compliance from Day 1: SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI, GDPR, and more are built in as guardrails during migration, not bolted on afterward.
- Automated Future Ops: Once migrated, DuploCloud automates day-to-day cloud provisioning, monitoring, and compliance inside your account.
- Proven ROI: Customers routinely cut DevOps headcount requirements in half, accelerate time-to-deploy by 10x, and gain 24/7 support with a 15-minute SLA.
With DuploCloud, you don’t just migrate — you modernize.
Ready to stop hiding your stack and start having full control of it? DuploCloud offers a risk-free way to experience this transformation with white-glove onboarding included. See firsthand how enterprise-grade security and effortless scaling work in your own cloud environment, without sacrificing the developer experience you love.
Talk to DuploCloud today and see how you can cut DevOps costs by 60% and deploy 10x faster — without losing the simplicity developers love.
