FindHost

Pagoda Box

A PaaS built for PHP alone, launched in 2011. Succeeded by Nanobox, which DigitalOcean acquired in 2019 and later retired.

PHP platform-as-a-service, acquired and retired.

Pagoda Box was a platform-as-a-service for PHP and nothing else, launched in 2011 on rented infrastructure. Applications were deployed by git push and described in a file in the repository — a boxfile that named the components an application needed — which is close to how a container-based platform is configured today.

The team’s answer to the mid-decade squeeze on general-purpose PaaS was Nanobox: the same idea rebuilt so that a developer’s machine and the production environment ran the same containers, deployable to any cloud account rather than to the vendor’s own. DigitalOcean acquired it in 2019, folded the ideas into what became App Platform, and the product itself was retired.

Both halves are a pattern this list keeps repeating. A platform narrow enough to be genuinely good at one language struggles to be a business on its own, and the acquisition that rescues the team rarely rescues the product.

Identity

Founded
2011
Ownership
Independent
Status
Discontinued2

Deployment

Deployment
Git

Regions and law

Headquarters
United States

Sources

  1. 2026-08-07: description
    www.sitepoint.com/introducing-pagoda-box-paas-just-php/
  2. 2026-08-07: Status
    blog.cloud66.com/paas-graveyard-why-platforms-keep-dying
Are you Pagoda Box? Link back to this record.

The badge means this provider has a record on FindHost. It is not a rating, a rank, or an endorsement. It cannot be bought. A record exists whether the badge is displayed or not. More about the badge.

Listed on FindHost LISTED ON FindHost

  • HTML, with the badge

    Inline, so it loads nothing and takes the colour of the text around it.

    <a href="https://www.findhost.app/pagoda-box/">
  <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="120" height="44" viewBox="0 0 120 44" role="img" fill="currentColor">
    <title>Listed on FindHost</title>
    <rect x="0.5" y="0.5" width="119" height="43" rx="3" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" />
    <text x="60" y="17" text-anchor="middle" font-family="ui-sans-serif, system-ui, sans-serif" font-size="8" letter-spacing="1.5">LISTED ON</text>
    <text x="60" y="35" text-anchor="middle" font-family="ui-sans-serif, system-ui, sans-serif" font-size="18" font-weight="900">FindHost</text>
  </svg>
</a>

  • HTML, text only

    For a footer with no room for artwork.

    <a href="https://www.findhost.app/pagoda-box/">Listed on FindHost</a>

  • Markdown

    For a README or a documentation page.

    [Listed on FindHost](https://www.findhost.app/pagoda-box/)

Last reviewed · Listed since Edit on GitHubThis page as markdown

Somehow similar providers

Ordered by how many of category, regions, software, runtimes, entry price and operating system they share with this record. A field left blank on either side does not count.

  • Aptible

    A platform for deploying apps and managed databases on AWS infrastructure with HIPAA and SOC 2 controls enforced by default.

  • CodeRed Cloud

    CodeRed Cloud is a managed hosting platform for Django and Wagtail sites, run on Microsoft Azure by a Cleveland web development firm.

  • Diploi

    Finnish platform that puts a cloud development environment and the hosting for the same application in one place, billed by the hour it runs.

  • fortrabbit

    Managed hosting platform for developers since 2012, runs on AWS capacity in Ireland and the US.

  • Heroku

    Heroku is a polyglot PaaS — the original "git push to deploy" platform, now a business unit of Salesforce.

  • Hypernode

    Dutch platform built for Magento and Shopware, descended from Byte's engineering and now part of team.blue.

  • Liara

    An Iranian cloud platform selling platform-as-a-service, virtual servers and managed databases, priced and billed in Iranian rial.

  • mittwald

    German managed hosting platform with per-project containers, a control plane called mStudio, an official CLI and a public REST API.

  • Ploi Cloud

    Managed application platform from the team behind the Ploi server-management panel, running customer apps on rented UpCloud infrastructure.

  • Railway

    Railway is a polyglot deployment platform with subscription plus usage billing, four regions and a build system that detects most common languages.

  • Upsun

    Upsun is the PaaS formerly known as Platform.sh. Projects are described in YAML and billed per resource, on top of a per-project and per-user fee.

  • Alibaba Cloud

    Alibaba Group's cloud platform, selling virtual machines, containers, serverless functions and managed services.

  • Clever Cloud

    French platform-as-a-service that detects, builds and runs an application from a git push, with managed databases and storage sold as add-ons.

  • Deploio

    A Swiss platform that turns a git push into a running application, on infrastructure held entirely in Switzerland and under Swiss law.

  • Divio

    Divio is a Swiss platform-as-a-service that runs Dockerised applications of any stack, deployed from git.

  • EvenNode

    Managed hosting platform that deploys Node.js and Python applications by git push or FTP.

  • Galaxy

    Container hosting for Meteor.js, Node.js, Python and AdonisJS apps, billed by the container-hour, from Meteor Software.

  • Gigalixir

    Gigalixir is a platform-as-a-service built around Elixir and Phoenix, keeping hot upgrades, remote observer and distributed clustering intact.

  • Huawei Cloud

    Huawei's public cloud, selling virtual servers, managed Kubernetes, serverless functions and GPU instances.

  • Koyeb

    French platform that deploys containers and repositories across global regions with scale-to-zero, per-second billing, GPUs and serverless Postgres.