8 Best PostgreSQL Hosting Services for Fast, Reliable Databases
You are a beginner and have heard and read about the enormous benefits of excellent PostgreSQL hosting, so you want to get started with one.
Or, better still, you are a techie and want to try out a new hosting service for your PostgreSQL database. Whichever category you fall into, this article is your guidance angel.
SiteGround
A2 Hosting
Bluehost
DigitalOcean
Heroku
It's a thing to download PostgreSQL from the official website. It's another thing to host the database.
Downloading and installing is free, but hosting is not, especially if you are a fan of fast and reliable databases.
Still, there are many hosting services for PostgreSQL today, and it can be difficult to know the right one to choose.
Here is where this article comes in. It will simplify your selection process by taking you through eight hosting services for PostgreSQL with their features, pros, cons, and prices.
It will also show you ways to host your PostgreSQL Databases.
Just ensure you read to the end if you don't want to miss out on this and many more.
Best PostgreSQL Hosting Services
1. SiteGround
Best Overall
- SiteGround's site tools is one of the best custom dashboards you would ever get
- The caching service is a lifesaver if you have many visitors or you want to serve them faster
- Enjoy the improved server restore technology, anti-bot artificial intelligence system, and machine learning
- Access to automated updates and reminders
- Presence of 6 data centers on 4 Continents
- Access to 24/7 advanced priority support on issues you report on chat or ticket
- SiteGround’s uptime performance is one of the best, but its speed is not
- The renewal prices can be three times as much as the original prices
- The highest memory you get on any cloud hosting plan is 20GB
SiteGround, an award-winning hosting service, offers support for PostgreSQL on its shared and cloud hosting plans. If you want the cheapest option, go for any shared hosting plan, but if you want to use rich management tools, then your best bet is any cloud hosting plan.
Founded 18 years ago, SiteGround has grown into a full-grown adult in the hosting industry, providing hosting services for more than 2,000,000 million domains.
Key Features
Fast Scaling and Robust Security
Whether you design your plan to scale automatically or manually increase the RAM or CPU cores in the control panel, your managed database resources are automatically available for immediate usage. SiteGround also boasts top-notch security features such as custom firewall rules, proactive server patches, and anti-hack monitoring systems. This helps to maintain your data integrity.
Website Transfer
Does the idea of shipping sites impress you? If it does, welcome to SiteGround. Suppose you manage a team of developers who might have to develop PostgreSQL projects for clients. In that case, SiteGround allows you to transfer a website from your account to a different SiteGround client.
Collaborations
Easily recommend the hosting plan and other extra services necessary for activation to your clients. And if you have people who help build and maintain your website, add them as collaborators to your site on any hosting plan you choose. These people would access the website’s site tools, their client area, and the ability to contact the SiteGround customer support team, provided it is a necessary part of site maintenance.
Daily Backups
Regarding daily backups, SiteGround is a masterpiece as it automatically backs up your account daily while keeping seven offsite copies which might even be stored in a data center located in a different city, state, or country for an extra layer of security. Create instant backups in a click when you need them; generate up to 5 free backups on demand from your control panel, each of which is kept for seven days.
Pricing
- 12 CPU Cores
- 16GB RAM
- 120GB SSD
- 5TB Data Transfer
2. A2 Hosting
Affordable Option That Still Boasts a Very Fast Speed
- Enjoy a very fast website speed thanks to the SSDs and Turbo optimization
- A2 Hosting allows you to choose your desired server location
- Comprehensive website and visitor statistics are available on all plans
- Availability of unique features that are hard to come by in other competitors
- Move your site to A2 Hosting for free, and contact customer support when you need help
- 24/7 Guru crew support is available
- Limited concurrent HTTP connections to the server on every shared hosting plan
- A2 Hosting does not offer free domain, although it boasts of cheap domain name registrations
- The best sets of features, such as Turbo Servers, are only available on the last two plans
After seeing and testing out the rich security options and fast speed of A2 Hosting, I could have chosen it as the best hosting service in place of SiteGround. However, the fact that you can only change your version on the pricey VPS plan affected its chances of coming out as the best overall.
A2 Hosting offers reliable technical support for PostgreSQL on its shared and VPS hosting plans, and it currently runs the 9.6 version.
Key Features
Management
Conveniently access the cPanel, where you have every tool you need to manage your databases in a user-friendly dashboard. A2 Hosting is updated and tuned for high-level performance and security on their SwiftServers. Talking of the servers, A2 Hosting features AMD EPYC Servers with NVMEe drives. The results are 40% faster CPU performance, 2X faster to first byte, 9X more traffic, and 3X faster read/write speeds.
Supported Versions
A2 Hosting offers the 9.6 solution, although servers’ support for older versions is also available. Here’s a look at some other development software available in your account; Python 3.4, PERL 5.10, FTP/SFTP, MYSQL 5.6/MariaDB. phpPgAdmin is pre-installed on your account, together with the PHP version of your choice. And likewise, SSH access is available, provided it’s your preferred database management.
Security and Compliance
Included for free in your account is HackScan Protection, which helps to block hacks before they do site damage. Other features in the security groups are Reinforced Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Protection, brute force defense, rebootless kernel updates, and a dual firewall. Another is ANSI Standards Compliance.
Backups
A2 Hosting offers a free file recovery program known as Server Rewind, which helps to preserve your data in the case of loss and corruption. Account backup snapshots are taken regularly, and you can easily access server rewind from your control panel.
Shared Hosting Pricing
- 1 Website
- 100GB SSD Storage
- 1 GB RAM
- 1 CPU Core
- Unlimited Websites
- Unlimited Storage
- 1 GB RAM
- 2 CPU Cores
- LightSpeed Web Server
- HTTP/2 & HTTP/3
- 2 GB RAM
- 2 CPU Cores
- LightSpeed Web Server
- HTTP/2 & HTTP/3
- 4 GB RAM
- 4 CPU Cores
Unmanaged VPS Pricing
- 1GB RAM
- 1 Core
- 20GB SSD Storage
- 0.5 TB Transfer
- 2GB RAM
- 2 Cores
- 75GB SSD Storage
- 2 TB Transfer
- 4GB RAM
- 4 Cores
- 150GB SSD Storage
- 3 TB Transfer
- 8GB RAM
- 2 Cores
- 200GB SSD Storage
- 4 TB Transfer
3. Bluehost
Bluehost Puts You in Good Control of Your Database
- Enjoy free domain name plus good domain management features
- Maximize the generous storage and unmetered bandwidth
- The clean and user-friendly interface makes Bluehost a very simple-to-use host
- Bluehost is one of the solutions with the most flexible and cost-effective pricing plans
- You would enjoy the automatic updates and easy-to-use dashboard
- Round-the-clock live support and a 30-day money-back guarantee are available
- Bluehost’s databases are limited
- Lack of migration support for VPS or Dedicated Server accounts
- Bluehost’s advanced features are good but not impressive
Three things got my attention when I was testing Bluehost, and they are good management features, generous storage, and excellent security options. Still, my favorite thing about Bluehost is its easy-to-use and intuitive dashboard, which allows you to manage everything from one place amply.
Bluehost is most famous for providing exceptional web hosting for WordPress websites and is even the number one web hosting provider that WordPress itself recommends.
But that is not all it is about, as it also provides support for PostgreSQL in its hosting plans.
Key Features
Management and Control
Bluehost gives you access to multi-server management and access control. For example, you can add more VPS, Shared, or even Dedicated hosting services to your account and manage it all from a single place. As per the access control, easily create passwords for specific access like server administration or ownership. Better still, you can create passwords for everything.
Domains and Root Access
Upload, download, or modify files on your virtual server by creating unlimited file transfer protocol (FTP) accounts. You can host unlimited domains and websites while getting complete access to divide and organize your server environment.
Dashboard and Unlimited Bandwidth
Manage your websites, analyze performance, and get access to all the tools you need to do these and more on the user-friendly VPS dashboard that Bluehost provides. As long as you comply with the Acceptable Use Policy, there is no limit to the amount of traffic your VPS websites can receive.
Solid State Drives (SSD)
Instead of the much slower SATA disk drives, Bluehost equips every virtual private server with high-level SSD hard drives, leading to increasingly fast performance
Pricing
- 2 Cores
- 30GB SSD
- 2GB Memory
- 1TB Bandwidth
- 1 Dedicated IP Address
- 2 Cores
- 60GB SSD
- 4GB Memory
- 2TB Bandwidth
- 2 Dedicated IP Addresses
- 4 Cores
- 120GB SSD
- 8GB Memory
- 3TB Bandwidth
- 2 Dedicated IP Addresses
Learn more about Bluehost pricing or Bluehost review
4. DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean’s Managed Database Supports PostgreSQL 14 Version
- The user interface is clean, crisp, and easy to use
- Easily modify the PostgreSQL clusters and enjoy DigitalOcean’s flexibility and scalability
- Availability of fully automated replication and backups
- Launch a PostgreSQL cluster fast
- Availability of good dashboard and metrics
- Handy customer support to set you back on track when you are lost
- It might be overwhelming for a beginner to get the hang of it
- Image backups cost more than a dime, and speed can be faster
- Lack of money-back guarantee unlike its top competitors
Fast setup, high scalability, fast and reliable performance, automatic daily backups, and end-to-end security are DigitalOcean’s best benefits. But before anything else, note that DigitalOcean does not offer a money-back guarantee or any annual discount.
DigitalOcean is a leading cloud hosting provider that allows developers to build, manage and scale applications quickly and easily, regardless of size.
It offers exclusive and worry-free hosting where your task is just to focus on building the great apps that you want.
Key Features
Setup
With just a few clicks, launch a PostgreSQL cluster fast and access it afterward through the simplified API or UI. You can also migrate your database from another location without experiencing any major downtime.
Scalability
DigitalOcean is highly scalable. As your business grows, increase resources like CPUs, RAM, and storage on existing MySQL clusters while spinning up read-only nodes to scale read operations.
Free Daily Backups and Performance
DigitalOcean automatically backs up every day, and you can restore to any point, provided it’s within the previous seven days. Should any failure occur, managed databases automatically switch handling to a standby mode to minimize downtime.
Integrated Insights and Alerting
This feature is what you need to understand your database performance, resource usage, and inaccuracies to efficiently scale, size, modify and configure PostgreSQL cluster.
Automated Failovers
Apart from managed databases running in your account's private network, there's encryption in transit and at rest. Moreover, only the allowed requests through the public internet can access your database.
Pricing
DigitalOcean charges based on the CPU option that you choose.
Generally, the pricing starts from $15 per month.
And if you have special use cases, complex business requirements, or want to know more about DigitalOcean pricing, then you can contact the sales team.
5. Heroku
The One With the Best Security Features
- You can quickly run dedicated Instances with a few clicks
- Easily provide your encryption key if you want
- Access SSL-protected access and off-premises storage irrespective of the plan you choose
- Heroku is equipped with adequate security protection and compliances
- Availability of Postgre extensions on all plans
- Enjoy access to 24x7x365 support, including on-call engineers to help debug and restore
- Heroku is expensive and can be unstable sometimes
- The add-ons are also expensive
- Limited customization and configuration options
Security. That's the keyword for this Heroku Postgres hosting service because its security groups and protection features are many and completely awesome. I also love how it allows one to create reports against production data and share them with anybody.
Heroku is a top-tier go-to cloud application platform for Postgres experts who want to build and deploy engaging, complex data-driven apps.
Key Features
Forks
After perfectly cloning your database via a single command, fork your production database and run the new migrations against the fork to test new schema migrations. If you want to load a test, you have to fork and run your testing environment against it.
Followers
Followers are simply no other than read-only replicas that stay updated with changes you can query. Followers help to simplify the setting up and maintaining replication task. It distributes database read traffic, thereby providing horizontal scalability.
Dataclips
Instead of going through the complex route of sharing insights via difficult dashboards or analytics tools, any team member conversant with SQL can effortlessly create reports against live production data types. And, afterward, use a unique URL to share the results with anybody.
Security and Protection
To start with, Heroku provides awesome security features almost unbeatable to its competitors. For example, the continuous protection feature helps ensure optimal data integrity. It automatically replicates every write to highly-durable storage in different centers, thereby accelerating the rebuilding of a live database in case of failure.
Pricing
Heroku offers one free tier and five paid plans.
The lowest paid plan costs $9 per month while the highest plan has a custom pricing.
6. Amazon RDS
Scalable Solution With Extensive Tools, Services, Replicas, and Pricing Options
The RDS service was first launched in 2009 with support for MySQL. Later, managed services for other databases such as Oracle and PostgreSQL were added.
Getting started with Amazon RDS can be a bit difficult, especially if you are a beginner with little to no experience, but once you get the hang of it, AWS RDS is definitely worth its salt.
Key Features
Managed Deployments
With just a few clicks in the AWS Console, you can launch and connect to a production-ready PostgreSQL in a matter of minutes. Pre-configuration with parameters and selected server type settings are included in the Instances, including the Reserved Instances.
Backup and Recovery
Amazon RDS provides automatic backups that enable recovery of your Instance to any point within your marked retention period of thirty-five days. Easily perform user-initiated backups of your DB Instance and access these full backups anytime until you intentionally delete them.
Monitoring and Metrics
Amazon RDS provides Amazon CloudWatch metrics for your Instances without charging you extra dollars. Additionally, thanks to the Amazon RDS Enhanced Monitoring, you can access over 50 CPU, file system, memory, and disk I/O metrics
Availability and Read Replicas
Your databases can enjoy enhanced availability and durability, which makes them very fitting for production workloads, thanks to the Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployments. Elastically exceed the capacity constraints of a single Instance for read-heavy workloads.
Pros
- AWS RDS is the best alternative to the Azure database and the Google cloud platform
- Easily access configuration parameters
- Choose from a variety of available computing and storage options on AWS RDS
- Availability of automated patching, automated backups, and other useful security features
- Access to recommendations to achieve efficient utilization, performance, and security of the RDS Instance
- Discounts are available for the Amazon RDS Reserved Instances
Cons
- There is no scale-out for write workloads
- You might find the performance monitor a little bit clunky
- Lack of automated partition management and automated compression management
Pricing
Amazon RDS allows you to pay only for the resources that you use.
The On-Demand DB Instance is about letting you pay for compute capacity by the hour your DB Instance runs.
Reserved Instances allow you to reserve a DB Instance for a particular year, say one or three.
Request a pricing quote to know what you would be paid in real time.
7. ElephantSQL
Fully Managed PostgreSQL Hosting With Support for Streaming Replication Across Multiple Clouds
If you want to get fully managed databases fast, go for ElephantSQL.
It offers fully managed PostgreSQL hosting as a service and allows you to get started as fast as possible.
Key Features
Automation
Every part of the setup and running of clusters is automated by ElephantSQL, while PostgreSQL experts handle the server management and monitoring. Daily automated backups stored in cloud file storage for any time access are also available. Additionally, you can restore your PostgreSQL database by using point-in-time recovery.
Team Collaboration
Let’s say you invite your team members or co-workers; ElephantSQL gives them access to separate ElephantSQL accounts. However, they would still manage the same set of instances. You can then choose where to send notifications for who is responsible for bill payments.
PostgreSQL Browser
This is a browser tool for SQL queries that allows you to create, update, read and remove data straight from your web browser.
Monitoring
If you want to access tools that you can maximize for quality monitoring, you have to navigate to the provided control panel. Measure performance and view slow queries by viewing server metrics from the monitoring tools that ElephantSQL amply provides.
Security
Apart from its audits against many important criteria, ElephantSQL complies with SOC 2 by AICPA, GDPR, and HIPAA. It utilizes SSL/TLS to ensure secure transition and regular update of SSL certificates.
Pros
- A free plan is available
- ElephantSQL offers flexible pricing that fits all budgets
- Database administrator support is available on all paid plans in case your PostgreSQL expertise is not up to par
- You can do anything you want on your data straight from your web browser plus access a browser tool for SQL queries
- Explore integrations with multiple useful tools like Amazon EC2 and Heroku
- Availability of 24/7 customer support
Cons
- ElephantSQL might not be your preference if you are not a fan of Data as a Service (DaaS)
- Dedicated Instances can be costly
- The best set of features are available on the Dedicated plan
Pricing
ElephantSQL bases its pricing on the type of instance you choose.
The Shared Instances has free and three other paid plans, starting from $5 per month.
8. Linode
You Would Enjoy the Free Bundled Services
Linode offers worry-free and fully managed PostgreSQL hosting, simple pricing, detailed product documentation, and all you need to get started by creating a free account.
Key Features
Management
With the Managed database resources, you can deploy a new database fast while shelving task management tasks such as managing high availability, configurations, replication, disaster recovery, and backups. Use the Linode Cloud Manager, API, or CLI to deploy a production-ready database.
Daily Backups and Secure Access
Linode backups your data every 24 hours so you can rest assured of its security without worrying about any data loss. Also, you can easily restore the service anytime. If you want your data to be accessible only by particular IP addresses, you just need to add trusted sources to ensure secure access.
Free Bundled Services
Whether you want to launch, secure, or scale your applications, Linode offers free cloud services that allow you to get started fast. With Linode, buying and managing cloud infrastructure is simple and convenient.
Security and Native IPv6 Support
Apart from the modern and secure facilities offered by Linode, you can also enjoy other security features such as 24/7 on-site security, high availability, and access control. Enjoy DDoS protection for all underlying machines(the virtual ones), whether you are on a big or small Linode plan size.
Pros
- Availability of preconfigured templates and predefined machine images
- Availability of extensive peering leading to increased traffic speed
- Enjoy the load balancer service, which is easy to spin up and configure
- Simple and consistent pricing structure for its database as a service without any commitments or hassle
- You don’t have to pay for your cluster’s master services
- Availability of 7-day money-back guarantee
Cons
- It can be difficult to migrate a group of data
- There is limited storage support for the lower plans
- Recent downtime has been often
Pricing
Linode offers dedicated CPU and Shared CPU plans for its fully-managed clusters.
5 Ways to Host PostgreSQL Databases
There are two major ways to host your database; Self-Managed PostgreSQL and Managed Services.
Furthermore, we'll consider each of the five available options' management, performance, scalability, and cost.
1. Install on your local development computer
Management
The management complexity is low, and you would hardly experience any management challenges that can keep you stuck.
You can easily and reliably access and manage PostgreSQL databases when you install it on your local development machine.
You are also required to keep track of instances, especially if you place a premium value on your data.
Performance
As far as installing on your local development machine is concerned, it is safe to say that here is where you get the lowest performance output.
The reason is not far-fetched; your hardware and the amount of resources you can sacrifice will be the major determinant factor of performance.
For example, your usage will be as far as your available hardware and resources can carry.
Although, what seems to be an advantage here is that your database is mostly accessible to you alone, and you can solely enjoy your resources for testing or developing locally.
If you want an increased performance or output, you might want to consider a better option.
Scalability
The scalability for hosting on your development machine is close to a total zero.
Of course, you can increase or decrease the amount of resources you allocate to PostgreSQL but only in an inconsequential way.
Upgrading your development machine is also not a feasible option that can be useful in the foreseeable future.
While you can also configure your local Instance for external access, it’s usually not worth the effort due to resource limitations and the instability of the consumer network.
Cost
There is no fee for setting up PostgreSQL on your development machine since the database is already being run from an active computer.
What you would only have to do is to consider the amount of resources that are being consumed by PostgreSQL when it is underway.
2. Install on a distinct server
Management
To start with, the management complexity of this option is very high.
Even though it is the most flexible option, it requires the greatest amount of hands-on management.
And you can manage it yourself or devote in-house expertise to its effective management.
Maintaining top-notch security could be difficult if you go through the DIY route, as you would be responsible for your Instance and all its data types.
You also need to manage the costs and configuration.
Proactive monitoring is also required, more importantly when changes that involve extra hardware are to be made.
Consider dedicating expertise to your management to get the most out of your hosting.
Performance
Deploying PostgreSQL on separate servers can produce high performance since you are not using shared servers.
Moreso, machines running PostgreSQL are under your control.
Thus, you can select the hardware that matches your needs.
Also, you can fine-tune your database configuration to gain high performance.
Play around with the settings on memory management, open file handling, caching, and client connections, and increase your output as much as you want.
Here is a big warning: it requires lots of time, expertise, and experimentation.
The time and money you allocate go a long way to determine the benefits that you would enjoy.
Scalability
Let’s say you have to expand; how well does this option fare? The answer depends on you.
You would be the one to react to any changing demands that might arise.
And there are two options that you can take.
Add additional hardware and resources to your PostgreSQL server or balance your requests across a pool of PostgreSQL servers.
Cost
You would have to buy or rent the server space you’ll use if you run PostgreSQL on a dedicated or shared machine.
Regardless of the server's location, whether on-premise at your organization, operated as a virtual machine, collocated in a data center, or even hosted by a cloud provider.
Note that the cost of a server varies as low-powered VPS tend to be more affordable than multiple dedicated servers, which can be quite expensive.
Another cost you might have to meet is the management, which might include the personnel costs to manage the hardware, server software, and database layer.
All these costs are based on the hosting environment, high availability requirements, and operational scale.
3. PostgreSQL with Docker
Containers and Kubernetes
Run Docker containers on a cluster made of many servers with Kubernetes.
This way, the downtime of any server in the cluster due to maintenance will not affect PostgreSQL.
Kubernetes will move the PostgreSQL container to a different server once the underlying data partition is not inaccessible.
Another option is to run your application that utilizes PostgreSQL on Kubernetes, leading to reduced network latency between PostgreSQL and the application.
Management, Performance, and Scalability
After considering and juggling different variables, I will rate the management complexibility and performance rating of hosting your PostgreSQL with Docker as medium-high.
Even though they are not low compared to what you would have gotten by hosting on a local development computer, they are still not what I would call an all-time high.
In short, they are not the maximum performance nor the minimum management complexity you can get.
It is a fact that Docker can make particular aspects of running PostgreSQL a lot easier, but then it can also increase your network configuration’s complexity.
Although, this depends on your configuration.
Cost
The cost for this hosting option is variable.
Also, note that you would have to factor in the costs incurred in purchasing or renting an additional server together with additional management costs.
4. Going through cloud providers
Management
The management complexity of hosting the managed databases with different cloud providers is low.
When you consider how your chosen cloud provider manages the time-consuming administrative tasks and only lets you enjoy the PostgreSQL deployments, you can understand why there’s nearly zero management complexity.
Even though they handle most of the PostgreSQL configuration, you can also manage access, tweak settings, and set up scaling options.
Although, a management drawback is that you might not be able to reach the tuning level you desire.
But, this is not a problem as this only happens in a few cases.
Performance
The optimal performance you get from this hosting option is flexible and highly variable.
Most times, you are the one in the control seat of your performance output.
For example, various cloud providers offer different pricing plans for PostgreSQL deployments, mostly graded from the cheapest to the most expensive.
Generally, the more you pay, the more resources and power you get.
You get high-performance tuning when you pay more or opt for private clouds with your own cloud.
Scalability
With cloud providers, scalability is on the high side.
If you can cover the costs, you can explore using private clouds, where you create your own cloud account and scale in the cloud as much as you want.
With this option, you can also enjoy multi-cloud support.
For example, you can quickly configure the resources allocated to your managed databases.
Increase storage capacity, memory, and computing power, or the number of replicas, by changing your account settings.
However, you have to dynamically scale your resources based on your current demand while being intentional with your configuration.
Cost
The costs of having your PostgreSQL databases managed by cloud providers are as flexible as their scalability.
The pricing of one might be different from the pricing of another different cloud provider.
Some even offer a free plan that comes with minimal performance and uptime.
If you choose automatically to meet any demand that might arise, you might have to sacrifice lots of money, especially if you get a sudden increase in traffic.
Still, what you use is what you get. You even have access to cost alerts or automatic offs with some providers who keep you informed when your usage or costs reach a specified point.
5. Third-party PostgreSQL database management
Management
Even though you have access to powerful management options, the management complexity of this hosting option is not high.
Although, there is a range of complexity because there is a need for coordination between the two providers.
That is the hosting cloud and the database management service. Such coordination can lead to an increased complexity compared to using a native database service that a cloud provider offers.
On the basic level, you are the determinant of the complexity of your management.
Performance
Talking of performance, the best way to know the output that you would be getting is to test your performance against the native databases that your cloud provider offers.
The reason is that your database's performance is not a fixed variable.
Your provider can tune the server configuration plus the PostgreSQL settings since the installation is on compute instances in the cloud.
And they, therefore, might be able to adjust settings to resonate with your needs.
On the flip side, they might be unable to access the low-level hardware layers and virtualization necessary for fine-tuning.
Scalability
Generally, the scalability for third-party-managed databases is awesome, and it’s even one of the highest scalability on any hosting option.
The ‘’why’’ is that your provider can offer you a wider variety of scaling options, even more than the cloud providers, since they can deploy on any compute instant with abundant resources.
Your third-party services can span multiple availability zones or providers if your intent for scaling is also connected with increasing availability.
Cost
The cost of third-party managed databases is highly variable as it is an aggregate of what the cloud provider and the database management service charge.
The costs on the side of the cloud provider might be a little bit lesser since you are only paying for more basic resources instead of a managed database, while that of the management service provider will very likely be on the high side.
Consider finding out the cost on each side so you can know the total costs. Doing so is a lifesaver in the long term.
FAQ
PostgreSQL is an advanced and top-tier open source relational database management system that supports both SQL and JSON querying, that is, relational and non-relational querying.
With over 30 years of active development, it is widely known and certified for its reliability, stability, robustness, and performance.
For a significant number of web, geospatial, mobile, and analytical applications, PostgreSQL serves as the primary data store.
It is the container for the data warehousing process, which involves query and analysis.
The latest major version is PostgreSQL 14, while PostgreSQL 15 is in beta testing mode.
Even though both PostgreSQL and MySQL fall under the relational database, under the types of databases, there are concrete differences between them.
PostgreSQL is the most advanced database system, while MySQL is the most popular database system. Here are a few other differences.
– DBMS: PostgreSQL is an object-based relational DBMS while MySQL is a relational-based DBMS.
– ACID and SQL Compliance: PostgreSQL is completely ACID compliant, while MySQL is ACID compliant only when used with NDB Cluster Storage engines and InnoDB. PostgreSQL is largely SQL compliant, while MySQL is partially SQL compliant.
– Best Use Case: PostgreSQL boasts a good performance for executing complex queries, while MySQL performs well in OLAP & OLTP systems when there is a requirement for read speeds.
Access to the PostgreSQL license does not cost anything.
Why? PostgreSQL is a free and open-source relational database system that charges no licensing fee, even if you go for the commercial version.
Although, if you use a commercial version, you might have to pay for support and maintenance.
Where the actual pricing sneaks in is in hosting your PostgreSQL.
While a few hosting providers offer free hosting services, the paid ones generally charge between $5 – $400 per month.
So it depends on your chosen vendor, the features you need, and your database’s size and complexity in the long run.
Installing PostgreSQL is a no-brainer activity as you can simply install it from the official PostgreSQL website.
It doesn’t require root access, and when you are confused or stuck at any point, you can check out the comprehensive documentation to get clear directions.
However, note that the installation process for different operating systems and application platforms differs.
If you are on the windows operating system, use the Graphical Installer and if yours is Linux, use the Apt Package Manager.
Better still, if you are on macOS operating system, take advantage of the Homebrew Package Manager.
Use the Linode Cloud Manager, API, or CLI to deploy a production-ready database.
Where Can I Get Cheap PostgreSQL Hosting?
Hosting providers (including the ones in this review) differ in their offerings, solutions, and prices.
Many are full-fledged web hosting providers with hosting provisions for different use cases.
Some providers only offer support for PostgreSQL on specified plans, mostly high-end ones.
The cheapest hosting is A2 Hosting.
But you need to watch out because A2 Hosting might not be “the one” you want.
And fortunately, there are other cheap options too.
Indeed, here are our five best hosting providers with their best use cases.
SiteGround
A2 Hosting
Bluehost
DigitalOcean
Heroku
Explore Further
- Best MongoDB hosting providers
- Best Node.js hosting providers
- Best Python hosting services
- Best Java hosting services
- Top Cloud Service Providers in 2022
Was This Article Helpful?
Martin Luenendonk
Martin loves entrepreneurship and has helped dozens of entrepreneurs by validating the business idea, finding scalable customer acquisition channels, and building a data-driven organization. During his time working in investment banking, tech startups, and industry-leading companies he gained extensive knowledge in using different software tools to optimize business processes.
This insights and his love for researching SaaS products enables him to provide in-depth, fact-based software reviews to enable software buyers make better decisions.