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PaaS (Platform as a Service)

SFBy Sitraka Forler · Lecturer, Durham Business School·Updated 13 September 2026· About this site

A managed platform where you deploy your own code and the provider runs the servers.

You bring the application; the provider runs the operating system, the language runtime (such as Python itself), scaling and hardware. Heroku, Google App Engine and Azure App Service are PaaS, and so is Vercel, which hosts EcoFinLearn. Do not confuse it with SaaS: on a PaaS you still write, deploy and fix your own code, and its bugs, data and configuration remain your job.

# inside the git repo of your app: creates the app and a remote called heroku
heroku create
# the platform builds, runs and serves your code
git push heroku main