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Render Review 2024 – Is It Worth It?

Tony Loton Tony Loton Web Hosting Expert

Let me make it easy for you. If you don’t know what a YAML file is, you’re probably reading the wrong review. However, the more technically minded among you will find a very developer-friendly host here, which will allow you to deploy anything from a static site to an API on its cloud platform, and deliver it via a global CDN.

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Overview

Screenshot 2019 10 11 at 11.18.47Launched in April 2019, California-based Render is a fresh face in the cloud computing world. It aims to provide a cheaper alternative for developers and small businesses wanting to deploy their apps in the cloud.

Render’s sleek, interactive website in English, and its prices are displayed in U.S. dollars.

Features and Ease of Use

Render is a developer-friendly host that allows you to deploy almost anything to the cloud, including static sites, web apps, Dockerfiles, APIs, and PostgreSQL databases. You can deploy straight from GitHub or GitLab, then secure your site with free SSL and serve your content via a global CDN for faster loading and protection against DDoS attacks.

Deploy the following to the web with Render:

  • Web Apps
  • Static Sites
  • Background Workers
  • APIs
  • Cron jobs
  • Dockerfiles
  • PostgreSQL
  • Private Servers

Creating a PostgreSQL database takes just one minute with Render, and your database will sit on SSD storage for faster performance and greater reliability than traditional HDD storage. You don’t need to worry about losing data because this company conducts daily database backups that are retained for at least seven days.

The more technical among you can take advantage of Render’s “infrastructure as code” which means you can specify your infrastructure requirements in a YAML file and deposit it to GitHub to be picked up by this host.

Pricing and Support

Render offers competitive prices compared to other cloud platform providers such as Heroku, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. While all services are non-refundable, you can pay for what you use through monthly billing. Payment can be made using a major credit or debit card.

Support is provided via a community forum, a Slack chat channel, or email, but my exploratory email went unanswered. One-to-one support may not be needed, however, because Render has published a plethora of documentation relating to all the technologies it allows you to use:

Screenshot 2019 10 13 at 14.36.25

4.3

Pricing

Comparison

How does Render match up to the competition?

KamateraCompareOur Score4.8Compare
Liquid WebCompareOur Score4.8Compare
RenderCompareOur Score4.3Compare
Tailor Made ServersCompareOur Score2.9Compare

Render REVIEW: BOTTOM LINE

Render is a very impressive, relatively recent entrant to the cloud computing scene. It allows developers to deploy almost any static or dynamic (app-driven) content on its cloud platform, and make it available or “consumable” via a global CDN. You might need to support yourself, but there’s plenty of documentation to help you do just that.

Pros

  • Developer-friendly hosting
  • Deploy direct from GitHub
  • SSD, SSL, and a global CDN
  • Pay-per-use pricing

Cons

  • No simple shared hosting
  • No pre-sales support response (for me)

Reach out to Render for developer-friendly hosting.
Tony Loton Tony Loton
Tony Loton has been a prolific writer and editor of business, technology and finance books, magazine articles, and corporate content for longer than he cares to say. It’s a vocation, not a job!
1.0
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Unclear charges.

They need to fix the pricing descriptions. I had one failed deployment that in Google Cloud and Azure is not charged, but was charged in Render.com. Also the pricing says 90 days free PostgreSQL, but was charged at the end of the first month. Also, github integration was taking too long.

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Konstantinos, Netherlands
November 02, 2022
1
Render Snapshots made me loss 4000$

their snapshots are not reliable, one day I tried to restore snapshot of my services IDs: mysql-wordpress-48ha wordpress-48ha after 10 days of negotiations with customer service and community they told me this: Hi Anass, unfortunately the restore process for MySQL databases (and therefore Wordpress sites) might have required more explicit backup requirements.

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Anass Habrah, Turkey
July 01, 2022
1
Family sharingMulti User SharingExpert SupportBackupSmart syncPersonal SolutionBusiness SolutionTeams optionsOffline foldersFile history and recovery
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