{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1", "title": "Scalingo Blog", "home_page_url": "https://scalingo.com", "feed_url": "https://api.feedifyrss.com/scalingo/blog/feed.json", "description": "RSS feed for blog", "items": [ { "id": "urn:sha256:d528a4ad5b62fb3a6b59844d833f68a314676d23fea4ea618ef32d4e598c3f8f", "content_html": "

Alongside the latest updates to our platform, Scalingo recently took on a new challenge: running its very first company hackathon. Why organize one? How do you make it work in a fully remote environment? And what came out of this first experiment? Here’s what we learned.

From idea to reality

It all started with a simple question. After adding new capabilities to the platform, particularly around AI with pgvector and the k-NN plugin for OpenSearch, we wanted to see what those features could enable in practice. What better way to do that than by building real projects?

A hackathon quickly emerged as the obvious format. It gave our engineers the opportunity to explore what they could create using the platform they work on every day.

There were a couple of reasons behind that choice. We had seen similar initiatives work well in other companies, often leading to creative and impactful projects. Just as importantly, it was a chance for the tech team to step away from their usual work, experiment with new tools, and collaborate with colleagues they do not typically work with as closely.

Once the idea was clear, we shared it during one of our regular All Hands Meetings, a company-wide moment where teams reflect on the past quarter and look ahead to what is next. That is where the proposal was presented and quickly validated by both leadership and managers. From there, it was time to start planning.

Organizing a hackathon: challenges and lessons learned

The theme came together quickly: build AI-related projects using Scalingo.

As Samir Akarioh, DevRel at Scalingo, puts it:

“In practice, that could mean an application hosted on Scalingo, a project using a Scalingo database, or more broadly anything that showcases at least one feature of the platform.”

We also wanted the projects to be more than just fun experiments. The idea was to work on real use cases, either internal ones or challenges our customers actually face.

At the end of the three-day event, each team presented their project remotely, as expected in a fully remote company, walking through what they built, their technical choices, and the thinking behind them.

One of the first challenges was making sure participants could fully focus on the event. That meant freeing up time, which was no small task. Managers and HR worked together ahead of time to make sure the hackathon was treated as a priority, not something to squeeze in on top of everything else.

As Samir explains:

“We made sure early on, with both managers and HR, that the hackathon would be recognized as a priority, not just an extra activity.”

This required some internal reorganization to maintain our usual level of service, especially on the support side, without disruption. At the same time, we set a few ground rules to keep things balanced, including limiting work to normal hours so the event stayed within a healthy framework.

Security was another important consideration. As a secure cloud hosting provider, we have strict internal requirements. Our InfoSec team was involved early to make sure everything stayed compliant.

“We defined a set of guidelines to account for those constraints. It is essentially a lighter version of our production processes,” explains Matthieu Bronner, Engineering Manager.

To make things more engaging, we also set up a jury to review the projects after the presentations and select a winner, with a prize for the winning team. That said, staying true to Scalingo’s culture, every team was rewarded for taking part.


\"Image

Results and feedback

Feedback started coming in as early as the kickoff meeting.

“We had initially defined a fairly detailed set of criteria,” recalls Stéphane Le Choisnier, Engineering Manager. “But right from the start, it became clear that it made things unnecessarily complex. Since this was our first hackathon, we adjusted on the fly and simplified the evaluation to avoid discouraging participants.”

One example is that using both an MCP and a vector database was originally mandatory. After discussion, that requirement was made optional.

From there, teams were free to organize themselves over the three days. Some chose to spend time exploring documentation and tutorials, especially when working with technologies they were not yet familiar with.

In the end, four AI-focused projects came out of the hackathon:

We will be sharing more about these projects in upcoming articles.

Overall, the feedback was very positive. Leadership and managers were on board from the beginning, with a strong focus on making sure the setup worked for both the company and the people involved.

Participants, for their part, appreciated the break from their usual routine and the chance to explore technologies they would not normally work with. Cross-team collaboration was another highlight. It brought people together in new ways and pushed teams to build more ambitious, technically advanced projects by combining different areas of expertise.

What’s next

This hackathon reinforced something we have already touched on in previous articles about life at Scalingo. In a fully remote company, creating shared moments outside of day-to-day work is essential. It helps build connections and keeps teams engaged over time.

And while this was our first hackathon, it will not be the last. Everyone involved in organizing it is keen to do it again, this time around a different theme.

Nothing has been finalized yet, but a few ideas are already being explored, from observability to tackling real-world challenges faced by our customers or internal teams.

We will also be publishing follow-up articles diving deeper into the projects built during the hackathon, hopefully giving you a few ideas for your own AI projects on Scalingo.

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/life-at-scalingo-running-a-hackathon-as-a-fully-remote-team", "title": "Life at Scalingo: Running a Hackathon as a Fully Remote Team", "summary": "Why and how Scalingo ran a Hackathon around AI with a fully remote team.", "date_modified": "2026-05-12T00:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "insights" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:0340b72246dd76fe4fc6c605e1006a1317bc746081d50ca4189b135b23ab4194", "content_html": "

Changing cloud providers can feel daunting. New processes, new workflows, new terminology to learn, everything is new, and that can be a little bit scary. Because when you manage a company and teams, new things are fun, but you also want familiarity and stability to be able to continue to run your business as efficiently as possible. That’s something our engineers learned too, in their professional experience, but also while working on their side projects. That’s why they work hard everyday to reduce friction for people using Scalingo, no matter if they’re deploying a brand new app on our service or migrating from another cloud provider, like Heroku. And Scalingo can be a great alternative if you want to find a new home for your apps: same ease of use, familiar deployment flow, everything needed to keep your work efficient, on an secure European platform.

What is Scalingo?

Like Heroku, Scalingo is a PaaS (Platform-as-a-service): we manage the infrastructure, while you just have to create your apps and deploy them on our service to set them live. No DevOps needed, we take care of everything. You can use Scalingo from your dashboard or using our CLI, if you prefer command line.

On Scalingo, you'll find all the features you loved on Heroku: direct integration with Git, GitHub and GitLab for quick and easy continuous deployment of your apps, Review Apps, autoscaling and more. And, good news: if your app works on Heroku, it will work on Scalingo. Like Heroku, we use Cloud Native Buildpacks to detect and run your app automatically, so you don’t have anything new to learn to deploy your apps efficiently. Learn more in our documentation.

But we don’t stop there: 2026 is a big year for Scalingo, with lots of new features planned. We already talked about Private Networks recently, now available, and we have more to come, because our dedication to improving our platform is stronger than ever.

Why move from Heroku to Scalingo?

Some of our clients already made the move from Heroku to Scalingo. Here’s why they decided to trust Scalingo with their apps:

“With Scalingo, we get all the features we loved about Heroku, plus the advantage of keeping our data in France.” Guillaume Wrobel, CTO and Co-founder of Yespark


“I like the flexibility in all the configuration and the cost control. It saves us money!” Sébastien Saunier, CTO of Le Wagon


“Our goal is to deploy as fast as possible, and Scalingo is perfect for that.” Guillaume Briday, Lead Developer of Per Angusta


“The best: the customer service is a big plus. If I have a question or a problem I want to discuss, Scalingo gives me the answer almost instantly with the embedded chat. I can exchange with real human beings.” Sylvain Gautier, Chief Technical Officer (CTO) and co-founder of Baqio


“The feature outside of flexibility that’s very important to us is the Review Apps because it’s essential to our process. As soon as you work on a feature, you can show it.” Robin Komiwes, Co-founder of Dernier Cri


And since our PaaS is ISO 27001 and HDS-certified, with a SecNumCloud-qualified region available, our service is suitable for hosting apps and databases with sensitive data.

Migrate to Scalingo now

You want to make the jump? Here’s a small lexicon and some tips to make it extra easy for you:

Dynos

Procfile

Buildpacks

Manifest file

Config vars

If you’re using Heroku currently but want to try Scalingo for yourself, we’re happy to help: contact us and tell us you want to migrate from Heroku to obtain 200 € in credits to try the migration process now. No credit card, no forced commitment: we believe you’ll love Scalingo.

Need a little bit more help? You can find more about the migration process in our documentation, in our written tutorial and our video tutorial. And, of course, our support team is always only one click away on your dashboard.

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/how-scalingo-makes-migrating-from-heroku-easy", "title": "How Scalingo makes migrating from Heroku easy", "summary": "Ready to find a new cloud provider? We show you how you can easily migrate from Heroku to Scalingo, a great European alternative to Heroku.", "date_modified": "2026-04-14T00:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "insights" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:aae2136f9dbdb5357a944d98b718a09c97b5cc43045f9aa74018746828b85e17", "content_html": "


PostgreSQL 17 joins Scalingo’s Database-as-a-Service offering. This new version brings performance improvements and enhances the way applications work with their data, especially when handling JSON.

Whether you deploy critical applications or testing environments, you benefit from a sovereign managed service that supports you throughout the entire lifecycle of your database — from initial deployment to upgrades, backups, and support from our engineers based in France and across Europe.

Why PostgreSQL 17 on Scalingo?

PostgreSQL 17 introduces several improvements that make the database faster, easier to operate, and better suited to modern applications.

A simple and reliable upgrade process

Upgrading to PostgreSQL 17 on Scalingo remains just as straightforward as with previous versions.

The upgrade process has been designed to limit service interruption to just a few minutes, whether you are on a Starter, Business, or Enterprise plan.

\"Screenshot


  1. Check the prerequisites. Make sure your instance is running the latest PostgreSQL 16 minor version. If not, we will suggest the required intermediate upgrades. This step ensures optimal compatibility for both your database and its extensions.

  2. Launch the upgrade in one click. From your database dashboard, simply click the “Major Upgrade” button. We take care of the rest, with no manual intervention required on your side.

  3. Quickly available, then gradually optimized. Once the upgrade is complete, your database becomes accessible again within a few minutes. Some internal operations, such as ANALYZE, may continue running in the background and can temporarily impact performance before the system fully stabilizes.

To help you understand and prepare for this upgrade, we have created a dedicated section in our documentation explaining the major upgrade process in detail. Learn more here: Understanding the major upgrade process.

Your extensions, up to date

Beyond the core engine, the extensions supported on Scalingo expand the range of use cases covered by PostgreSQL. From time-series workloads to vector search, geospatial data, and anonymization, the main extensions are available in recent versions:

You can find the full list of supported extensions and their respective versions in our documentation.

Upgrade to PostgreSQL 17 today

PostgreSQL 17 is now available on Scalingo in a mature and stable version that delivers tangible improvements in performance and reliability. Migrating takes only a few minutes thanks to the one-click upgrade available in your dashboard. We encourage you to plan your upgrade today. And if you have any questions, our support team is ready to help you every step of the way.

Curious about Scalingo or want to try PostgreSQL 17 on a managed platform that simplifies application deployment? Try Scalingo today and take advantage of our free trial offer!

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/postgresql-17-is-now-available-on-scalingo", "title": "PostgreSQL 17 is now available on Scalingo: faster and just as easy to upgrade", "summary": "PostgreSQL 17 is now available on Scalingo. This new version introduces several improvements, that make the database better suited to modern applications.", "date_modified": "2026-04-13T00:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "product" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:53ee037cdb06c2985a70188d48dceeaaf621d0b34bd43ada3bc1808eac07d387", "content_html": "

We are happy to announce our Private Networks feature. In this blog post, we explain what the new Private Networks product includes before diving deep into the technical details of how we implemented this.

Private Networks on Scalingo

Private Networks is a new feature allowing the containers of a set of applications to share a common private secured network that they can leverage to communicate between apps and between the containers of these apps without having to pass through public endpoints.

Up to now, in the Scalingo architecture, all containers were deployed in isolation from each other. They couldn't communicate with each other at all.

Moreover, Scalingo previously forced web containers to listen on the environment variable PORT and to be exposed on the internet. But for some use cases, our customers pointed out that they needed to be able to listen on any port, without exposing the application on the internet.

With this new feature, you can deploy an application inside a private network not exposed on the internet. This application can listen on any TCP and UDP port, allowing various new use cases and new ways to use the Scalingo platform.

This blog article walks you through the technical iterations we followed to achieve this important milestone for Scalingo: offering private networks per project to Scalingo customers!

Starting Point : The Original Architecture

In the Scalingo architecture, all applications are deployed inside Docker containers. A Docker container is a Linux network namespace (usually abbreviated netns) inside the root network namespace of the server:

\"A


The application network namespace (labelled “app netns”) contains a single interface eth0 to communicate with the outside world, via the local Docker bridge. The only port exposed on the Scalingo network is the one defined in the environment variable PORT. Hence this is the only port usable to communicate with the application.

With the current setup, only web containers have a PORT assigned. Other container types cannot listen on any port.

The first requirement we want to satisfy is to group application containers in a private way. We want a customer’s containers to be in the same private network to enable container communication in a dedicated network.

VXLAN to Group Containers

The choice of VXLAN was not immediate. We first investigated various private network technologies. The reason why we eventually decided to use VXLAN is out of the scope of this article but it turned out to be the ideal solution for grouping containers in a private manner at Scalingo.

VXLAN is an already well known technology at Scalingo. When we worked on the databases high availability setup, we already used it to hide database nodes from the outside world. We open sourced the technology to dynamically create VXLAN private networks named SAND.

VXLAN (Virtual Extensible LAN) is a network virtualization technology that aims to overcome the limitations of traditional Layer 2 networks. VXLAN works by encapsulating Ethernet frames inside UDP packets, allowing the creation of virtual networks over physical infrastructure.

For our new Private Networks offering, VXLAN serves as the core technology to group containers. It ensures they are treated as if they belong to the same local network, even if they are spread across different shared virtual machines.

Using VXLAN in the context of Scalingo offers key benefits:

Technically speaking, having the container inside a VXLAN consists of adding a new network namespace and a group of interfaces:

\"adding


We created a network namespace for the VXLAN which contains a virtual Ethernet (veth) interface (app-1-web-1-veth0) to communicate with the interface inside the Docker container (vxlan-1-veth0).

This VXLAN also contains a bridge interface (br0). If a second container inside the same VXLAN is started on the same server, we would create a second veth in the VXLAN network namespace and also plug it to the bridge.

Last, there is a VXLAN interface (vxlan0) in charge of encapsulating/decapsulating the Ethernet frame inside the UDP packet and adding a VXLAN Network Identifier (VNI). In the VXLAN terminology this interface is named a VXLAN tunnel endpoint (VTEP).

One can note that it’s still possible for the application to communicate with the internet via the eth0 interface connected to the Docker bridge on the server.

This setup is a good foundation, but it does not implement all the requirements we have for the Private Networks product. Even though this is not yet usable, an evolution of the product will consist in adding the ability for a container to communicate in multiple private networks.

Getting Ready for Multi-Private Networks

In terms of architecture, the VXLAN setup is already ready to support a container in multiple private networks:

\"VXLAN


In terms of code, SAND wasn’t ready to support a container inside multiple private networks. This step doesn’t require a lot of work, and we are eager to offer the possibility to our customers to have a container inside multiple private networks!

Keeping Things More Private With Encryption

While VXLAN provides a way to group and route container traffic, it doesn't inherently offer strong security for the data in transit. This is where WireGuard, a modern VPN protocol, comes into play.

WireGuard is known for its simplicity, high performance, and cryptographic strength. WireGuard ensures that data traveling between containers is protected from eavesdropping or tampering. The protocol uses state-of-the-art cryptographic primitives (such as Curve25519, ChaCha20-Poly1305 and BLAKE2s) to deliver robust security with minimal overhead. Moreover, it is already available out of the box in all modern Linux kernels.

We want the application network namespace to have a single interface to communicate inside the private network. And this interface must encrypt all communications. In order to achieve this, we need to create one more network namespace:

\"creation


We introduce a new network namespace (“binding netns”) where the VXLAN veth are moved. Then there is a small magic trick we need to explain to understand how the WireGuard interface (wg0) communicates with the binding network namespace.

WireGuard has a unique feature: when a WireGuard interface is created, it remembers the namespace where it was initially created. Even if the interface is later moved to a different namespace, it will retain the memory of its original namespace. This is because the UDP socket which actually sends and receives encrypted packets is created in the original namespace.

In our setup, this means we create the WireGuard interface in the binding network namespace, then move it to the application network namespace. All clear packets sent in the WireGuard interface are forwarded encrypted via the UDP socket which remains in the binding network namespace.

Wrapping Up Everything

We described a complete setup with interconnected network namespaces to create encrypted private networks. Let’s wrap everything up with an example of an application with two container types: web and backend. In this example, we want to highlight how an IP packet travels from the web container type to the backend (IP address 10.240.0.2):

\"encrypted


The application sends the IP packet through the WireGuard (wg0) interface (step 1). WireGuard maintains a list of the possible peers this container can communicate with, associated with their public keys. WireGuard uses the destination public key to encrypt the packet. The packet is encapsulated into a UDP datagram.

This datagram goes through the UDP socket which remained in the binding network namespace (step 2). A route table in the binding network namespace directs the datagram to the VXLAN network namespace through the interface vxlan-1-veth0.

The datagram is sent to the VXLAN interface (vxlan0) via the br0 one (step 3). The VXLAN interface receives an Ethernet frame which contains the UDP datagram. This datagram contains the original IP packet sent by the application. VXLAN encapsulates the received Ethernet frame into a UDP datagram that is sent to the destination VXLAN network namespace.

In the destination VXLAN network namespace, the Ethernet frame is decapsulated to get the WireGuard UDP datagram (step 4). It is sent to the binding network namespace through the app-2-web-1-veth0 interface.

The datagram is forwarded through the WireGuard UDP socket to be sent to the application network namespace (step 5). When received on the WireGuard interface (step 6), the datagram is decapsulated and decrypted to get the original IP packet. This packet is forwarded to the backend container.

Internal Domain Names

Based on this example, we understand it’s important for an application to determine the IP address of the other containers in the same private network. This is why we introduce internal domain names. An internal domain name is composed of the container number (optional), container type (optional), the application ID, the private network ID and a common internal network identifier (private-network.internal).

Here are some examples with an application ap-a71da13f-7c70-4c00-a644-eee8558d8053 and a private network pn-ad0fd6a1-d05e-40ea-bf63-c4f8a75a9d8c:

These domain names can be inferred by knowing the application ID, the private network ID and the application formation. The application and private network IDs are injected in the application environment at runtime.

You can also list them using the Scalingo CLI:

scalingo --app my-app private-networks-domain-names

Conclusion

Voilà, this is the (rather technical) story of how we offer our customers a new Private Networks product. Add a domain name for all containers in the private network which resolves to the IP address inside the private network, and this product lets you deploy web applications that are not exposed on the internet.

Our new Private Networks solution, built on the combined power of VXLAN and WireGuard, offers an innovative, scalable, and secure networking layer for your applications deployed on the Scalingo platform.

The Private Networks product is designed to provide secure and seamless communication between your applications. A neat consequence of this new product is that you can now deploy web applications that are not exposed on the internet. Best of all, it’s easy to use and fully integrated with our Platform-as-a-Service offering, so you can focus on what matters most: building and running your applications

Interested in Private Networks? Contact our support team via the chat embedded on the dashboard or by email at support@scalingo.com.

Stay tuned to our blog for updates on future developments regarding this feature, more is coming.

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/deep-dive-private-networks", "title": "Deep Dive into the new Private Networks Feature", "summary": "In this blog post, we explain what the new Private Networks product includes before diving deep into the technical details of how we implemented this.", "date_modified": "2026-03-02T23:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "engineering" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:b3bfbff6164b209d5a8c0de443c1cbf6c809aea6e515efd4269d5386b134fcc8", "content_html": "

In the past, building a RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) meant juggling many different tools. Today, the process is much simpler: you just need tools like HuggingFace to get your model and OpenSearch® as a vector database. In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through the entire process step by step, and show you how to build your own RAG using Scalingo and our OpenSearch® offering.


📼 If you’d rather watch than read, here’s the video version of this tutorial.

Getting started

The first step is to create an account on Scalingo or log in to your existing one.

Keep in mind that the 30-day free trial offered at sign-up does not include the integration, use, or activation of OpenSearch®. If you want to follow this tutorial right away, you’ll need to end your trial by adding a payment method.

Alternatively, you can use your free trial period to explore other features of the platform, and then come back to this tutorial once you’re ready to get started with OpenSearch®.


💡 More info on our free trial and what is included.

Once your account is set up, choose one of the OpenSearch-provided pretrained models. In our example, we’ll be using huggingface/sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2.

Creating Your App on Scalingo

Now, head back to your Scalingo dashboard. We’re going to create an application on the platform, to set up the OpenSearch® Dashboard.

\"Creating


Choose the Git deployment option, selecting the HDS (Health Data Hosting) or SecNumCloud offering if your app uses sensitive data. Else, leave the default option.

\"Deploying


Back in the Scalingo dashboard, it’s time to add an OpenSearch® database to our application. To do this, click on your application, and in the “addons” section, click on “manage”. Next, click on “add an addon” and select OpenSearch®.

\"Selecting


Scalingo offers several database plans, depending on your needs. But, for this app, we recommend choosing the Business plan so you can take advantage of high availability and multi-node setups.

\"Selecting



💡 Need help choosing the right plan? Visit the comparison page or reach out to our team.

Now it's time to install the OpenSearch® dashboard. To do this, go to the Environment Variables section of your OpenSearch® Dashboard app and add the following environment variable:

BUILDPACK_URL=\"https://github.com/Scalingo/opensearch-dashboards-buildpack\"

Installing the OpenSearch® dashboard will make it easier to track each stage of the process and give you access to the Dev Tools.

In your code editor, clone our repository for OpenSearch® Dashboard:

git clone https://github.com/Scalingo/opensearch-dashboards-scalingo

Navigate into the folder (cd) and add the remote connection with: git remote add scalingo <your_opensearch_dashboard_app_url> Replace with the remote URL of your OpenSearch® Dashboard application on Scalingo.

Finally, push your commit to Scalingo.

Setting Up the Model and Vectors

Now it’s time to deploy and register the model in OpenSearch®. Registering the model tells OpenSearch® how to connect to your custom model server.

To do this, your model must be in the ONNX format. You can find more details on how to configure your model on its page on Hugging Face.

Go back to Scalingo and select the application that contains your OpenSearch® Dashboard. Open it and make sure the OpenSearch® dashboard page loads correctly. Log in using your user credentials, which can be found in the environment variable SCALINGO_OPENSEARCH_URL on your application dashboard, then navigate to Dev Tools.

Next add the following parameters:

\"Opensearch


These parameters are crucial to ensure your model is correctly loaded and optimised across your entire cluster.

This is also where you’ll be able to register your model group, by entering this request in the DevTools. You can choose the name you’d like for your group, but make sure to keep the ID obtained after sending your request. Follow the steps 4 and 5 of this page to complete the registration of your model and its deployment. All the information about the model you chose, like its name and version, are available on the OpenSearch® website. After these steps, keep your model ID handy.

Now, you’ll need a way to convert your documents into embeddings. To do this, create an ingestion pipeline by following the process described here. Make sure to put the ID obtained in the previous step in the model_id field .

Next, you’ll need to create a vector index. A vector index is a structure that allows you to store and efficiently retrieve vectors. Enter the request indicated on the OpenSearch® website and make sure to modify the “default_pipeline” field so that it matches the name you gave to your pipeline created in the previous step.

Note: Make sure that the dimension in your mapping matches the output dimension of your model.

Finally, we’ll add documents to our index. To do this, ingest the documents you chose with the following request:

PUT /my-nlp-index/_doc/1\n{\n\"passage_text\": \"Hello world\",\n\"id\": \"s1\"\n}

Perform the operation as many times as necessary, changing the number at the end of the endpoint, as shown in this example.

You can also add several documents at the same time, with the /_bulk endpoint, as you can see in this example. Make sure to edit the index so it matches yours.

After this step, you can set up your research pipeline and send in a request to make sure everything is working. The request can be found here. Don’t forget to edit the request to include your own model ID.

Conclusion

You now have everything you need to build your own RAG with OpenSearch® and Scalingo: automatic embedding generation and an ingestion pipeline. From here, simply add documents to your OpenSearch® index, and you’ll be able to run queries directly from the OpenSearch® dashboard.

Need more guidance on using OpenSearch® with Scalingo? Reach out to our friendly team!

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/a-rag-in-minutes-with-opensearch-and-scalingo", "title": "Tutorial : Build your RAG in minutes with OpenSearch® and Scalingo", "summary": "Creating a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system used to require piecing together several complex tools. Thanks to OpenSearch® and Scalingo, the process is now much more streamlined.", "date_modified": "2026-02-18T23:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "tutorials" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:d7baa06685e9e3a411a9d1e28e513c03305cc813234e9da0b9544a47f5dc682b", "content_html": "

We are thrilled to announce the availability of MySQL 8.4 LTS on our platform! This release is a major milestone for our Scalingo for MySQL service, bringing a set of improvements focused on stability, performance, and security.

In this article, we will take a closer look at what’s new in MySQL 8.4, from the new LTS release model, to security updates and removal of deprecated features defaults. We will also walk you through the simple upgrade process so you can start benefiting from these improvements immediately.

A clear migration path before MySQL 8.0 end of support

MySQL 8.0 is expected to reach end of life in April 2026, which makes upgrade planning a priority for production and compliance.

MySQL 8.4 LTS is now available on Scalingo to provide a long term supported target version, so you can test and migrate in the coming months, ahead of the MySQL 8.0 end of support.

What’s new in MySQL 8.4 LTS?

A new LTS release cycle

While MySQL 8.0 benefited from a long support window, MySQL 8.4 is the first version explicitly released as an LTS under MySQL’s new lifecycle model.

On Scalingo, we only ship MySQL LTS releases. MySQL 8.4 is the current LTS line, and it is the recommended target for production upgrades as MySQL 8.0 approaches end of support. The next LTS series will move to MySQL 9.x.

For more details on the new MySQL release lifecycle, refer to the official MySQL documentation.

Safer authentication defaults

Starting from MySQL 8.4, the legacy authentication plugin mysql_native_password is disabled by default. At Scalingo, we kept this plugin enable for now as some customers are still waiting to be migrated but it should disabled in our next updates.

Stays reassured as mentioned in our previous MySQL release, new databases coming from 8.0 and newer are already using the new password method.

This will ensure a stronger security by default and block the creation of new users using this authentication method.

Deprecated features removed

MySQL 8.4 enforces stricter rules on some legacy or ambiguous schema definitions:

If your database schema relies on features that are no longer supported (such as AUTO_INCREMENT on FLOAT or DOUBLE columns, or prefixed columns in partitioning keys), the upgrade will be stopped by our system.

Upgrading to MySQL 8.4 LTS

Upgrading your databases to MySQL 8.4 LTS is straightforward. Just click the Upgrade button on your database dashboard. However, it is advised to follow our best practice guide before upgrading.

\"Screenshot

For a short transition period, new MySQL databases will still be created on MySQL 8.0 LTS. This is intentional and allows you to create test instances, validate the upgrade process, and run migration checks before upgrading your production databases. The upgrade process is designed to be seamless for Business instances, with no expected downtime, and typically causes only a few seconds of downtime for Starter plans (depending on the database size).

Before upgrading to MySQL 8.4 LTS, the dashboard will first prompt you to upgrade your database to the latest MySQL 8.0 patch release. This ensures a smooth and supported upgrade path.

As always, if you have questions or need assistance during the upgrade process, our team is ready to help. Simply reach out via your dashboard, and we will be happy to guide you.

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/mysql-8-4-is-now-available", "title": "MySQL 8.4 LTS is now available", "summary": "We are thrilled to announce the availability of MySQL 8.4 LTS on our platform! This release is a major milestone for our Scalingo for MySQL service, bringing a set of improvements focused on stability, performance, and security.", "date_modified": "2026-02-03T23:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "product" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:79e37e3a0780712bfbeda3c73b18b5745f052c17a5bbbb06bba72eaa620f1f5d", "content_html": "

You love Heroku for its ease of use and versatility — but now you’re looking for a European Heroku alternative that gives you more control, transparency, and data sovereignty? Welcome to Scalingo!

Many of our customers, including Le Wagon and Yespark, have already made the move from Heroku to Scalingo. They wanted to keep the friendly PaaS experience they were used to, while benefiting from data hosting in France and high-quality, responsive support.

The good news: Scalingo is designed to make Heroku migrations straightforward. In most cases, you can be up and running on our platform in just a few minutes. This tutorial walks you through the process step by step.

Getting Started

Let’s start by choosing an app to migrate. In this tutorial, we’ll work with FilmReco — a lightweight movie-recommendation app. Users type in a short description of a film, and the app returns the closest match from its catalog.

The stack is simple:

\"App


For the purpose of this tutorial — and to stay as close as possible to the experience of a Heroku user preparing to move — we first hosted the app on Heroku.

If your own application doesn’t match this exact setup, no worries: Scalingo supports a wide range of languages, frameworks, and databases. You’ll simply need to adapt the next steps to your stack, but the overall process remains the same.

Now, let’s see how to migrate this application to Scalingo.

Good to know: at Scalingo, just like on Heroku, we rely on a buildpack-based system. Buildpacks let our platform automatically detect your app’s technology and install the right dependencies. They also give you the option to extend what the platform can do by using custom buildpacks.

Retrieving the app and setting it up on Scalingo

First, clone the application currently hosted on Heroku to your local machine. As explained in our documentation, here are the commands to run — just replace “filmreco” with the name of your own app:

# Log in to Heroku\nheroku login\n\n# Clone the Heroku app\nheroku git:clone -a filmreco\n\ncd filmreco

After this step, you should have the full application code locally, including the Procfile, requirements.txt, and your environment configuration.

Next, you’ll need to create the application on Scalingo. You have two options:

To log in to Scalingo and create the app with the CLI:

# Log in to Scalingo\nscalingo login\n\n# Create the app\nscalingo create filmreco

Just like Heroku, Scalingo automatically sets up a git remote for you right away:

git remote rm heroku\ngit remote add scalingo git@ssh.<region>.scalingo.com:filmreco.git

From this point on, a simple commit is enough to deploy your application. But before we do that, let’s add a database to our Scalingo app.

Creating and setting up the database

As mentioned earlier, our demo app uses PostgreSQL — specifically the pgvector extension, which is available in our PostgreSQL offering.

If your application uses a different database, the steps will be very similar. For more details, feel free to check our documentation, which covers all the databases supported by Scalingo.

The first step in setting up our database on Scalingo is to retrieve the data from Heroku. To do that, we’ll export a dump of the database from Heroku:

heroku pg:backups:capture --app filmreco\nheroku pg:backups:download --app filmreco

On Scalingo, we now need to add a database add-on. Head to the dashboard, select your application, and open the “Resources” tab. In the Add-ons section, click “Add an add-on.” Choose the database you want and the plan that fits your needs, then follow the steps to confirm.

Once the database is provisioned on Scalingo, a DATABASE_URL environment variable will be created automatically. You can find it in the “Environment” section of your app’s dashboard.

Connect to the database using our CLI:

scalingo db-tunnel filmreco-db\npg_restore --verbose --clean --no-acl --no-owner \\\n  -h 127.0.0.1 -p <port> -U scalingo \\\n  -d filmreco_latest.dump

Finally, if you’re using PostgreSQL with pgvector like we are, you can enable pgvector directly from Scalingo’s database console:

CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS vector;

Now that our database is up and running, there’s just one last step before deploying the app on Scalingo: adding the environment variables.

Adding environment variables and deploying

First, retrieve your environment variables from Heroku:

heroku config

You can either add them from the dashboard under “Environment”, or you can set them using the following command:

scalingo --app my-app env-set NAME=Value

Now for the fun part: your first deployment. If you’ve already deployed earlier in the process, just restart your app. Otherwise, deploy it with the following commands:

git add .\ngit commit -m \"heroku to scalingo\"\ngit push scalingo main

As we mentioned earlier with buildpacks, Scalingo handles everything behind the scenes when you deploy an app: it detects the runtime, installs dependencies, runs your Procfile, and starts your web processes — just like Heroku.

And that’s it! A few seconds later, our demo app is live at: https://filmreco.osc-fr1.scalingo.io/.

You can verify it for your own app by clicking “Open the app” from the dashboard.

Scalingo: the best secure European alternative to Heroku

In just a few minutes, you’re done: your application is now running on Scalingo. Moving from Heroku to Scalingo is fast, familiar, and requires no code changes — you keep the same workflow, reflexes, and habits you already know.

What’s different? You’re now benefiting from a secure, reliable, certified European hosting platform. Scalingo is ISO 27001–certified and HDS–certified, and our infrastructure is hosted in France with 3DS Outscale, who also provides us with SecNumCloud-qualified infrastructure available for our osc-secnum-fr1 region.

In short: you get the same ease of use as Heroku, plus the guarantees of a sovereign European PaaS — without lock-in.

Try it for yourself today with our 30-day free trial included when you sign up.

Need a hand getting started? Our support team is ready to help you right from your dashboard through live chat Want to talk through your needs or pricing? Get in touch with our sales team.

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/heroku-alternative-europe-scalingo-migration", "title": "Heroku Alternative in Europe: Migrate to Scalingo in minutes", "summary": "You love Heroku for its ease of use and versatility — but now you’re looking for a European alternative that gives you more control, transparency, and data sovereignty. Welcome to Scalingo!", "date_modified": "2026-02-01T23:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "tutorials" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:131fa0f7c4e552c054874ced037aa538a2db89787e6fd419fe2dc50316ead99f", "content_html": "

We are pleased to announce the launch of the private beta for our highly anticipated Private Networks feature. Find out more below!

Private Networks: The Foundation of Your Security

Introduced a few months ago, Projects offer a new way to organize your applications and resources by service, product, customer, environment, or team.

Building on this foundation, Private Networks equips each project with a dedicated private network that connects your services and secures their communications. True to our mission to simplify developers’ daily workflows, we designed a ready-to-use solution that requires no complex configuration or networking expertise and comes at no additional cost.

Your projects and applications can rely on it from the earliest stages of development, without sacrificing security for agility.

How It Works

To enhance our infrastructure seamlessly, without impacting your workflows or application availability, Private Networks integrates smoothly into your existing setup.

An additional VXLAN-based network, secured with WireGuard, connects all applications and their containers, enabling private and secure mesh communications. For readers with a technical background, we’ll dive deeper into these mechanisms in an upcoming article.

The behavior of web processes remains unchanged. Internet traffic will continue to reach them through your domain name. They can then forward this traffic to any other container within their private network, including their own non-web processes and the processes of other applications in the same project.

For more details, please refer to our documentation.

Private DNS

Each container is assigned a private domain name following this format:

<container-number (optional)>.<container-type (optional)>.<application-id>.<private-network-id>.private-network.internal

This hostname resolves to the private IP address (or addresses) of your application’s containers and is accessible only within the project’s private network.

To simplify integration, we’ve also introduced new Runtime Environment Variables:

To inspect DNS records from a one-off container, you can use commands such as:

host <application-id>.<private-network-id>.private-network.internal

Example output:

<application-id>.<private-network-id>.private-network.internal has address 10.240.0.4

Benefits of Private Networks at Scalingo

Any Port, Any Protocol

Within a private network, there are no restrictions on HTTP or on the default port imposed by the PORT environment variable. Your processes, containers, and microservices can communicate using the ports and protocols they require.

Secure by Design

Private Networks enable the processes you choose to make private to communicate within an isolated environment. By publicly exposing only selected services, you reduce your attack surface and strengthen your overall security posture.

Service Discovery

A standardized DNS naming convention simplifies service-to-service communication. Containers can deterministically connect to other processes, saving valuable development and operational time.

Powerful Use Cases

Private Apps

Renaming a web process (for example, to backend or privateweb) limits its visibility to the project’s private network. This approach is particularly well suited for applications running behind a proxy (see the ModSecurity example below).

Note that renaming your web process comes with certain limitations. Features that rely on public routers are available only to publicly exposed processes, including operational metrics, autoscaling based on requests per minute per container, custom domains, and some routing options.

To make this choice simpler and reversible, we plan to introduce an option, similar to what is available for databases, that allows you to disable public exposure of a web process without renaming it.

Enhanced Security With ModSecurity

Many Scalingo customers already rely on authentication strategies such as header-based filtering to block unauthorised traffic.

With Private Networks, you can fully isolate your applications by exposing only your ModSecurity proxy to the public Internet, keeping sensitive services protected within your private network.

Simplified Microservices Architecture

Managing microservice architectures has long been challenging, particularly when it comes to service discovery and inter-service communication. Private Networks ensure that your Scalingo containers can securely discover and communicate with one another.

Efficient N-Tier Architectures

Previously, organizing and interconnecting multi-tier services was complex. With private DNS and project-level private networks, deploying n-tier architectures becomes straightforward: you gain scalability while exposing only the services that need public access.

Keycloak Clustering

Many applications benefit from unrestricted internal communication. We’ll soon publish a guide on deploying Keycloak in a cluster to achieve high availability.

If you have additional ideas or complementary use cases, feel free to contact us—we’d love to discuss them!

The Private Beta Phase

We are opening this feature to a select group of customers. To get early access, sign up for the beta and tell us about your use cases.

In the coming weeks, we’ll also share more technical details about how we built Private Networks at Scalingo.

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/private-networks-private-beta-is-now-available", "title": "Private Networks Private Beta Is Now Available: Secure Networking for Your Apps", "summary": "We are pleased to announce the launch of the private beta for our highly anticipated Private Networks feature.", "date_modified": "2026-01-21T23:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "product" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:80e94115685b18ffb11f21fbdcb744215bf10f6fd894138aba7484f5ed50b1f0", "content_html": "

Choosing a PaaS isn’t just about picking a technology. It’s about deciding how your applications will run, scale, and evolve over time.

With dozens of platforms claiming to be \"the best PaaS\", it’s tempting to focus on feature lists and comparison pages. (Although, we’ll admit it, we’re quite proud of how Scalingo tends to show up in those.)

The thing is, they rarely tell the full story. What really matters is how well a platform fits your applications, your team, and your growth plans. A good PaaS should make life easier, not introduce new constraints a few months down the line.

In this article, we take a practical look at how to choose the best PaaS for your business. Instead of repeating marketing promises, we focus on the criteria that actually matter in real-world conditions: operational fit, scalability, security, costs, support, and long-term flexibility.

Define what your business actually needs

Before diving into feature lists or pricing calculators, it’s worth taking a step back and grounding the discussion in your own context.

The same PaaS can feel perfectly suited in one situation and completely wrong in another. What works well for a small team launching a first product is rarely the right setup for a service already running in production with real traffic and real commitments.

In practice, priorities tend to shift quickly as a product matures. Early on, speed and simplicity usually matter most: getting an application online, iterating fast, and keeping operational overhead low. Later, other concerns take the lead, such as availability guarantees, data residency, compliance, or the ability to scale predictably under load.

Asking a few concrete questions early on can already help narrow down your options:

You don’t need to have every answer upfront. But being clear on what matters today, and on what is likely to matter next, makes it much easier to choose a PaaS that will support your growth rather than become something you have to work around later.

Make sure your stack is supported

Before going any further, it is worth checking a very practical point: does the PaaS support the technologies you already use?

Not all PaaS platforms support the same programming languages, frameworks, or runtimes. The level of support can also vary significantly. Some platforms are intentionally opinionated, while others aim to be more flexible.

If you have already chosen a language or framework, moving to a new PaaS should not force you to rethink that decision. It is worth verifying:



\"Supported



Beyond application runtimes, managed database services are just as important. Many teams rely on managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, OpenSearch and other managed databases to avoid running and maintaining these components themselves.

Here again, differences between PaaS offerings matter. Some platforms provide tightly integrated managed services, while others expect you to connect and operate them externally. A PaaS that supports your language but leaves you to manage your own databases may still create more operational work than expected.

At Scalingo, we try to make this easier by supporting many common languages, frameworks, and managed services. That said, the real takeaway applies to any PaaS: the best PaaS for your business should fit your stack, not force you to adapt your applications to it.

Choose the right level of operational responsibility

One common assumption when choosing a PaaS is that it removes operations entirely. In reality, a PaaS reduces operational work, but not always in the same way.

Some PaaS platforms take almost everything off your plate: infrastructure, scaling, runtime updates, and most day-to-day operational concerns. Others give you more control and flexibility, but expect your team to stay involved in platform-level decisions. Neither approach defines the best PaaS by itself. What matters is how well it matches your team.

A small product team without dedicated infrastructure expertise will usually benefit from strong defaults and minimal operational overhead. Teams with existing DevOps or SRE experience may be comfortable keeping more control, especially if they have specific networking, security, or deployment requirements.

The key question when choosing a PaaS is not “do we want ops or not?”, but how much operational responsibility do we want to keep?

More managed vs. more control

The right choice here is the one that removes the right amount of complexity for your team.

Developer experience in day-to-day operations

What often determines whether a PaaS holds up over time is how well it fits into your team’s daily workflow.

Once an application is in production, developer experience becomes very concrete. It shows up when deploying changes safely, understanding what is happening when something goes wrong, and fixing issues without unnecessary friction. These moments have a direct impact on delivery speed, reliability, and the overall operational load on the team.

When choosing a PaaS, a few aspects are especially revealing:

These are the things teams interact with every day. When they work well, they reduce friction, make workflows predictable, and help teams stay focused on building and shipping.

Beyond day-to-day workflows, it’s also worth paying attention to how the PaaS provider operates when things don’t go as planned.

Incidents happen on every platform. What matters is how they are handled: clear communication, transparency during the incident, and postmortems that help teams understand what happened and move forward with confidence.

Plan for growth, scalability, and reliability

Most applications don’t stay the same size for long. Traffic grows, usage patterns change, and what worked fine yesterday may not work tomorrow.

That’s why it’s important to understand how a PaaS handles growth in practice. When evaluating a platform, a few simple questions can help clarify how scaling is managed:

Scalability alone isn’t enough, though. As your application grows, reliability becomes just as critical. It’s worth looking at how the PaaS approaches availability, redundancy, and recovery:

The best PaaS make growth feel predictable. Scaling shouldn’t require a redesign or emergency fixes. It should be something the platform supports by design, even as your application and its usage evolve.

Do not treat security and compliance as an afterthought

Security and compliance are rarely what drive teams to choose a PaaS in the first place. In practice, they are far more often the reasons teams end up questioning that choice later on.

Rather than relying on high-level promises, it’s worth looking at how security is demonstrated and audited. Certifications provide a concrete signal of the controls, processes, and guarantees a platform has in place, especially when infrastructure and operations are involved.

As your business grows, expectations around security and compliance tend to increase. New customers, new markets, or new use cases can quickly turn optional requirements into mandatory ones. Choosing a PaaS that already operates within a certified framework can significantly reduce the effort required to meet those expectations later.

A note on certifications and regulated environments

Several certifications are particularly relevant when evaluating a PaaS:

In regulated environments, certified providers are not just a nice-to-have. They define what is realistically achievable without building and maintaining a significant compliance and security layer yourself.



\"Security



Understand costs and long-term flexibility

Pricing is often where choosing a PaaS becomes difficult.

Most platforms look affordable at first. Over time, costs change as usage grows, traffic increases, and managed services become critical. That is why choosing the best PaaS requires looking at total cost of ownership, not just initial pricing. Things to consider:

“ Running our platform on Scalingo's PaaS gives us an estimated ROI of over €80,000 per year. This is largely due to lower operational costs and built-in HDS compliance. ”
Heloa, Healthcare start-up

But cost is only part of the picture. Long-term flexibility is just as important, and it’s often harder to assess upfront.

In a PaaS context, vendor lock-in usually comes from deep technical and operational coupling: proprietary services, platform-specific APIs, or workflows that are difficult to reproduce elsewhere. Over time, these choices can shape your architecture and operating model more than you initially expect.

This is especially common with large cloud providers, where higher-level managed services can accelerate delivery, but also make it harder to reassess your options later. The more your application relies on these services, the more effort a move requires.

This doesn’t mean lock-in should be avoided at all costs. What matters is treating it as a strategic decision, not an accidental one.

A useful question to ask early on is simple: if we needed to move in the future, would it be painful but manageable, or effectively impossible?

Do not underestimate the importance of support

Support is easy to overlook until something breaks in production.

When choosing a PaaS, it’s worth looking beyond the existence of a support channel and understanding how support actually works in practice. Key questions include:

Support models vary widely across providers. Some rely on front-line support teams that escalate issues internally, others may outsource support entirely.

At Scalingo, support has always been handled, at least in part, by our own engineering team. Our engineers take turns handling support requests, which means the people who build the platform are also the ones helping users day to day. It’s an approach we care deeply about, and one that many of our users consistently tell us they value. It favors a real understanding of the platform and practical, context-aware answers over scripted responses.

For more complex or sensitive applications, it’s also worth evaluating higher levels of support that may be offered. These can include 24/7 availability, proactive monitoring, dedicated support teams, and stronger SLA commitments, which can be critical for workloads with strict availability or compliance requirements.

Validate your choice with a test or proof of concept

No matter how convincing a PaaS sounds on paper, the most reliable way to evaluate it is to test it in a real situation.

Most providers offer free credits or trial periods, which makes it possible to run a short proof of concept with a real application. If that’s not available, testing with a representative sample app can still be enough to surface meaningful differences.

This phase helps you see how the platform fits into your actual workflow: how easy it is to deploy, how it behaves under load, how observability works in practice, and how responsive support is when you need it.

A short, focused test often provides clarity very quickly. It’s one of the best ways to build confidence that a PaaS will hold up once it’s running in production.

Conclusion

Choosing a PaaS is a long-term decision that shapes how your applications are built, operated, and evolved.

Beyond features or positioning, what matters is alignment: with your team’s operating model, your technical constraints, and your growth trajectory. A platform that fits these dimensions well will quietly remove friction over time. One that doesn’t will eventually get in the way.

There is no universal “best” PaaS. But there is a right one for your context. Taking the time to evaluate it carefully is one of the most important infrastructure decisions you’ll make.

👉 Want to see how this translates in practice?

If you’re currently evaluating PaaS options, you can try Scalingo with a real application during a 30-day free trial. It’s a simple way to see whether our approach fits your team and your workloads. And if it turns out we’re not the right fit, we’re always happy to help point you toward alternatives.

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/how-to-choose-best-paas", "title": "How to choose the best PaaS (for your project)", "summary": "Choosing a PaaS isn’t just about picking a technology. It’s about deciding how your applications will run, scale, and evolve over time.\n", "date_modified": "2026-01-07T23:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "insights" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:1ad6e0c93c562efc730dc331ec2967d825d6270a89721ffd4dd86c3a671117e2", "content_html": "

What is a Stack?

Scalingo provides a curated and maintained operating system image known as a stack, usually built upon a popular Linux distribution such as Ubuntu.

Applications developed for Scalingo are meant for a specific stack, and the process of transforming the app's source code into an executable format that works with that stack is carried out by buildpacks.

What about scalingo-24?

At Scalingo we want to provide the most secure and up-to-date environment for our customers to focus exclusively on their business issues.

Our newer stack, scalingo-24 based on Ubuntu 24.04 (noble) is available from today on our platform. It is not yet the default one but it will be from the 8th of December 2025 for all new applications. Note that all buildpacks officially supported by Scalingo are compatible with this new stack.

If your applications are still on scalingo-22, don’t worry this stack will not be dropped yet. Being based on Ubuntu 22.04, Scalingo will support the stack scalingo-22 until the end of its official support in May 2027.

If you want to migrate your application using scalingo-22, we explain how to do so in the next section.

How to migrate an existing application to use scalingo-24

\"Scalingo

From the dashboard, you can see (and change!) the stack used by an application in your application's settings, in the \"General\" subsection.

\"Dialog

A guide to test the migration to a new Stack is available on our Scalingo documentation. Here is an excerpt of this page.

Create a review app containing a scalingo.json:

{\n  \"stack\": \"scalingo-24\"\n}

With such a file, the deployed review app uses the new scalingo-24 stack. Make sure your review app successfully deploys and works trouble-free. Eventually switch your main application to the scalingo-24 stack with:

scalingo --app my-app stacks-set scalingo-24

And redeploy your application:

git commit --allow-empty --message=\"Upgrading to scalingo-24\"\ngit push scalingo master

Your application is now using the latest Ubuntu long-term support version! 🙌

scalingo-24: stability and security improvement for developers

At Scalingo we are committed to providing you with the best platform possible. The release of the new stack named \"scalingo-24\" by Scalingo is therefore an important step for developers using the platform.

This latest stack provides to our users a curated and maintained operating system image that offers improved stability, performance, and security. It will enable developers to build and run their applications with confidence, knowing that they are using a reliable and well-supported environment.

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/new-stack-scalingo-24", "title": "New Stack available on Scalingo: scalingo-24", "summary": "At Scalingo we want to provide the most secure and up-to-date environment for our customers to focus exclusively on their business issues. That's why scalingo-24 based on Ubuntu 24.04 (noble) is available from today on our platform.", "date_modified": "2025-11-05T23:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "product" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:7c0acfee3a40e0262b84824af9805c415b1939da8b7c1a80e23e581a05041746", "content_html": "

We don’t mean to sound nostalgic… but search has come a long way since the days of crossing our fingers and hoping a LIKE '%keyword%' query would return something useful.

As users, we don’t want to type exact words anymore. We expect systems to simply understand what we mean. Whether it’s suggesting similar products, answering questions in plain language or finding related articles, apps now need to automatically 🪄 understand the context and intent around our requests.

That’s what pgvector brings to PostgreSQL. Simply put, it lets you store and compare embeddings, which are numerical representations of text, images, or other data that capture what they represent. And with embeddings your database can find things that are similar in meaning, not just identical in text.

On Scalingo, pgvector is already available on our managed PostgreSQL databases. There’s nothing extra to install or set up. Just enable the extension and start playing around.

In no time, you’ll be able to set up things like semantic search, smart recommendations, and automatic content classification, all without moving your data out of the database you already use and trust.

So, what does pgvector actually do?

In short, pgvector adds a new column type to your PostgreSQL database that stores an array of floating-point numbers (called vectors). One for each dimension in an embedding.

“ While Vector is the actual data type that pgvector adds and is literally a column of numbers, Embeddings are what those numbers mean. A numerical representation of your text, images, etc. ”

The number of dimensions in an embedding depends on the model you use: for example, 384 for Hugging Face’s all-MiniLM-L6-v2 (our personal favorite 🤗), or 1536 for OpenAI’s text embeddings.

And if you ever need more room, pgvector supports vectors with up to 16,000 dimensions, which is plenty for even the largest modern models.

More dimensions don’t always mean “better” results though: they reflect how much detail the model encodes about relationships between words or concepts. Smaller embeddings are often faster and lighter, while larger ones can capture more nuance when you need it.

\"Hugging

To handle these embeddings efficiently, pgvector, written in C, integrates directly into PostgreSQL’s engine. Because the math, such as cosine similarity and Euclidean distance, happens inside the database process, similarity searches stay fast and scalable, even on very large datasets.

--> While cosine similarity measures the angle between two vectors (great for comparing meaning), while Euclidean distance measures the straight-line distance between them (useful for spatial or numerical data). Both help your database understand which items are most alike, just from slightly different perspectives.

\"Diagram

You can choose the metric that best fits your use case: cosine similarity being often preferred for text embeddings, while Euclidean distance tends to work better for images or numerical features.

pgvector also supports indexing through IVFFlat, which groups vectors into clusters so queries only search within the most relevant ones. You can tune the number of clusters (called lists) to balance speed and accuracy. More lists generally mean faster results, at the cost of slightly higher memory use.

When pgvector makes sense (and when it doesn’t)

For most teams, especially those wanting to explore AI-powered features inside their established systems, pgvector is the perfect choice: fast enough for production, simple enough for teams to quickly adopt, and flexible enough to grow with you.

As pgvector is completely model-agnostic, you can enrich your PostgreSQL database with embeddings from Hugging Face, OpenAI, or your own model and start experimenting right away. No new infrastructure is required, and no extra services need to be maintained.

And because pgvector operates inside PostgreSQL, it’s also ideal for prototyping. You can move from an early proof-of-concept to a production-ready feature using the same database.

If, however, your workload is mostly about structured queries or exact lookups, pgvector won’t add much. Standard PostgreSQL indexing (like B-tree or GIN) already handles this perfectly.

“ 💡 While B-tree indexes are great for things like user IDs, dates, or prices, GIN indexes work best for arrays, JSON, or full-text search. ”

If you’re operating at massive scale, think billions of vectors or ultra-low-latency search,  PostgreSQL + pgvector will also eventually show its limits. In that case, you may want to turn to a specialized vector database such as European Weaviate 🇳🇱, designed specifically for distributed, in-memory similarity search and millisecond response times.

Combining pgvector with LLMs

If you’ve been playing with large language models (LLMs) lately (who hasn’t? 😛), you’ve probably come across Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG): the idea of giving a model extra context from your own data so its answers stay accurate and relevant, rather than relying entirely on what it learned during training.

pgvector gives PostgreSQL the missing piece for this kind of setup, adding similarity search inside your database.

While tools like LangChain or LlamaIndex manage the application logic (generating embeddings, orchestrating model calls, combining results…) pgvector handles the retrieval side within PostgreSQL. That means you can build a full RAG pipeline for many use-cases without introducing a separate vector-only service or moving your data out of your database.

—> Stay tuned! We’ve got some easy-to-follow tutorials and demos coming up soon to show you how to bring LLMs and pgvector together in real projects

What teams are building with pgvector on Scalingo

We’re excited to see more and more teams experimenting with pgvector on Scalingo: from small startups testing AI features to larger companies adding smarter search or recommendations to existing products.

If you’re looking for inspiration, here are a few ways teams are putting it to work:

“ If you’re already experimenting with pgvector on Scalingo, we’d love to hear about your project and how you’re using it. ”

pgvector on Scalingo: ready when you are!

As we said, pgvector is already available on managed PostgreSQL databases on Scalingo. No setup & no extra configuration is required. Just enable the extension, start experimenting, and see what your data can teach you.

Simply use the following SQL statement to enable the extension in your PostgreSQL database:

CREATE EXTENSION vector;

Read our full documentation on enabling extensions, here

Because everything runs on Scalingo, you naturally also get the benefits that come with it: automatic backups, monitoring, scaling, and European data hosting, so you can focus on building, not maintaining.

And, as always, our support team is there to support you every step of the way!

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/pgvector-ai-semantic-search-postgresql", "title": "pgvector on Scalingo: Add AI and Semantic Search to PostgreSQL", "summary": "In short, pgvector adds a new column type to your PostgreSQL database that stores an array of floating-point numbers (called vectors). One for each dimension in an embedding. \n", "date_modified": "2025-11-03T23:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "product" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:2e0b482188db864a05afc93c4bbca5711179a908fbb8cb6ac3ebff781e2e195f", "content_html": "

n8n offers a great hosted cloud (SaaS) version, but more and more teams are choosing to self-host for greater control, compliance, and customization.

Self-hosting an automation platform sounds simple at first. But once you start thinking about infrastructure, database configuration, scaling, and maintenance, things can quickly become more complex.

Scalingo helps simplify this process by providing a managed platform where you can deploy and run your own n8n instance on secure European cloud infrastructure.

In this guide, we’ll look at what n8n is, why teams choose to self-host it, and how you can deploy it on Scalingo.

⚠️ Note: The deployment template available for n8n on Scalingo is intended as a quick starting point. For a fully production-ready deployment, we recommend following the detailed setup guide in our documentation.

What is n8n? (and why we love It 🫶)

n8n is an open-source workflow automation tool that helps connect your apps, APIs, and services without having to wire everything together with custom code. It’s a bit like sketching out how your tools should talk to each other, then watching them actually do it.

With n8n, you build workflows visually. Each node represents an action, like pulling data from an API, cleaning it up, or sending it somewhere else. When you link a few of those together, you’ve got an automation that quietly takes care of the repetitive stuff for you.

Some workflows are simple “if-this-then-that” setups, while others can run complex multi-step processes that save hours every week.

This is an example of a simple workflow (source : n8n):

\"\"

What we really like about self-hosted n8n is how flexible and open it is. It’s not a closed-off SaaS where you hit limits or need to upgrade just to try something new. You can host it yourself, extend it, and even write your own nodes to connect with private APIs.

And because it’s open source (which, let’s be honest, is kind of our thing 😛), you stay in control of your data and your infrastructure.

--> “n8n” is short for “nodemation,” a blend of “node” and “automation.”

Why self-host n8n?

The hosted version of n8n is great for getting started. It’s quick, simple, and everything just works. But once you need full customization or more control over your data, self-hosting starts to make sense.

Running your own instance means everything stays under your control. Your data lives on your infrastructure, and you decide how it’s stored and managed. That’s why we use n8n internally at Scalingo. It reflects our values of openness, transparency, and reliability in a market where trust really matters. Plus, while competitor Zapier is still a user favorite (and an excellent tool!), n8n is proudly European 🇩🇪.

Of course, self-hosting also gives you the flexibility to build the way you want. Need to connect to a private API or experiment with a custom node? You can. n8n will simply adapt to your workflow.

As a bonus, when you run it on Scalingo, you keep this flexibility without the setup work. Your instance runs on European infrastructure, it’s easy to maintain, and built to evolve with your needs.

Deploying n8n on Scalingo

Now that we’ve looked at why self-hosting can be a good choice, let’s see how to set up your own n8n instance on Scalingo.

Because n8n requires a database and specific environment configuration, deploying it typically involves a few infrastructure decisions. We recommend following our step-by-step deployment guide, which will walk you through the full setup process.

This guide explains how to:

Using the Scalingo n8n deployment repository

To simplify the deployment process, we also maintain a repository called n8n-scalingo on GitHub.

This repository provides a ready-to-deploy project that can be used as a starting point when creating your application.

You can use it with:

The repository helps bootstrap an n8n deployment on the platform, but depending on your use case you may still need to adjust configuration such as container size, database plan, or environment variables.

Why Scalingo + n8n is the perfect match

n8n and Scalingo share a simple goal: giving developers more freedom with less friction. Both give you the openness and flexibility to build, test, and ship ideas quickly, without getting stuck on infrastructure.

With n8n, you decide what to automate. With Scalingo, you decide how and where it runs. Together, we create an environment where you stay in control of your data and workflows while the platform quietly handles the technical side.

For developers, that combination means spending less time managing systems and more time building useful automations. It’s a practical, transparent setup designed around how teams actually work.

Get started today

We love seeing what people build with n8n on Scalingo, from clever internal automations to full-blown integrations. Why not join in too?

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/deploy-n8n-one-click-scalingo", "title": "How to deploy n8n on Scalingo (quick start + production setup)", "summary": "Self-host your n8n instance on Scalingo's PaaS, that’s fully secure, managed, and running on our certified European cloud infrastructure.", "date_modified": "2025-10-28T23:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "tutorials" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:6b35162835d627cf34339a98b4fadb191b7013dda76528e50e7a26850b168b3e", "content_html": "

At the heart of cloud computing, the different “as-a-service” models are designed to deliver on-demand experiences that adapt to each organization’s needs, both in terms of functionality and team expertise. Yet, as the cloud ecosystem keeps expanding, it’s becoming harder to navigate the growing number of offerings. New models such as CaaS (Containers-as-a-Service) and FaaS (Functions-as-a-Service) are continually enriching the landscape.

Despite this diversity, the foundation of cloud computing still rests on three main service models: PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service), SaaS (Software-as-a-Service), and IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service). These are the pillars we’ll focus on today.

\"Diagram

What is IaaS? Definition

IaaS, short for Infrastructure-as-a-Service, is the ideal option for companies that want to maintain maximum control over their cloud usage while still benefiting from the flexibility and scalability of cloud computing.

With IaaS, the cloud provider manages and maintains the physical infrastructure and data centers, delivering core infrastructure services such as storage, networking, and virtualization on demand through the cloud.

On the other hand, the customer is responsible for managing the operating system, middleware, runtimes, applications, and data.

This approach gives organizations deep control over their hosting environment, but it also requires internal teams to have the necessary technical skills and time to manage it effectively.

\"IaaS

Responsibilities of the Cloud Provider:

Responsibilities of the Customer :

Benefits of IaaS

Limitations of IaaS

Who is IaaS for?

IaaS is best suited for companies that need advanced customization options to tailor their hosting environment closely to their specific requirements. However, it does require having the internal expertise to configure and maintain the service to ensure it runs smoothly.

IaaS is therefore particularly well-suited for:

What is PaaS? Definition

PaaS, short for Platform-as-a-Service, is the ideal solution for companies or developers who want to bring their services online as quickly as possible. In this model, the cloud provider handles most of the underlying management, including hardware, virtualization, operating systems, runtimes, storage, servers, and backups.

The user, on the other hand, is responsible for defining the necessary resources for their application and developing the code that will run on the platform.

PaaS offers a complete environment specifically designed to help developers deploy their code in an optimized setting. Instead of managing the infrastructure, teams can focus entirely on maintaining their applications and data.

\"PaaS

Responsibilities of the Cloud Provider:

Responsibilities of the Customer:

Benefits of PaaS

Limitations of PaaS

Who is PaaS for?

The main advantage of PaaS lies in its ease of use and speed of deployment. It is therefore an ideal choice for companies looking to quickly bring their applications and updates into production, or for those that prefer to focus on high-value tasks rather than managing infrastructure. For organizations with unusual technology stacks or subject to strict regulatory requirements, it’s worth conducting some research before choosing a PaaS solution.

PaaS is particularly well-suited for:

What is SaaS? Definition

SaaS, short for Software-as-a-Service, refers to ready-to-use applications or services that are typically accessible through a web browser. SaaS solutions are often used alongside on-premise or cloud systems to provide additional functionality, such as accounting, HR, or project management tools. The SaaS model is also widely adopted in e-commerce, with many platforms making it easy to create and manage online stores while handling all the underlying technical aspects.

With SaaS, there’s no need to install software on every employee’s computer or manage updates: the provider takes care of everything. Users are only responsible for the data they add and manage within the application.

\"SaaS

Benefits of SaaS

Limitations of SaaS

Who is SaaS for?

SaaS is suitable for any company looking to quickly start using a specific service and make it accessible to all teams, even those without technical expertise. Whether we realize it or not, most of us use SaaS applications every day, such as email, instant messaging, and other online tools.

Getting Started with PaaS on Scalingo

Convinced by what you’ve learned about PaaS? Try Scalingo, our secure, certified European PaaS that respects your data privacy and is already trusted by thousands of developers.

No server management is required: simply log in to the platform, connect your GitHub, GitLab, or Git repository, and push your code to get your application online in seconds. Check out our demo video to learn more, or get started today with 30 days free when you sign-up.

For more details about our plans, visit our pricing page or reach out to our sales team.

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/saas-paas-iaas-basics", "title": "Understanding the Basics of the Cloud : Saas, PaaS and IaaS", "summary": "Despite this diversity, the foundation of cloud computing still rests on three main service models: PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service), SaaS (Software-as-a-Service), and IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service). These are the pillars we’ll focus on today.", "date_modified": "2025-10-15T22:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "insights" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:aa09b2b1dc2c7d1a73a0bdb733e9a13024df8157ae26df1c9a927ef1534dee69", "content_html": "

To collaborate effectively without risking the stability or security of your applications and data, we’re introducing a new role designed to give your technical teams more freedom while safeguarding sensitive settings and customer data.

Better Tools for Better Collaboration

At Scalingo, simplicity has always been one of our core values: including when it comes to how teams collaborate on application development. As your team grows or your project begins handling sensitive data (such as HDS-compliant health information), it’s essential that each collaborator has access rights tailored to their role.

Upto now, inviting someone to collaborate on an application granted them almost the same level of access as the application owner, including deployment, configuration, log access, and the ability to manage other users, secrets, and data.

For many teams, this setup has proven effective, with the combination of repository-level isolation and deployment platform security offering a level of control that fits their needs. The Collaborator role made it easy to onboard trusted contributors quickly, giving them full access to the application environment and its data.

In more structured organizations, many of you have told us that this level of access can prove unsuitable, or simply too broad, for certain types of users.

A Role Designed for Contributors

Our new Limited Collaborator role is primarily intended for developers, contributors, or external contractors who need to work on your applications without being able to change configuration settings, deploy unvalidated code, or access databases.

It’s particularly well suited if:

Limited Collaborators can work on an application by accessing its configuration in read-only mode, monitoring deployments, re-deploying the default branch, and viewing recent logs and metrics. However, they cannot access environment variables, change configuration, interact with databases, or manage other collaborators.

Check the documentation to see the full list of permissions associated with each role.

When to use it?

This role is designed to be the default option whenever you invite a new collaborator to your applications.

\"Dialog

This role ensures a minimal level of initial access, which can be adjusted at any time - either during the invitation process or later on- based on the user’s role and level of responsibility.

Some privileges require special attention and should only be granted to trusted, qualified, and appropriately authorized users.

Start by Reviewing Access for Your Current Collaborators

The introduction of this new role is the perfect opportunity to review access rights across your team and ensure that each collaborator’s role still aligns with their current responsibilities. In fact, France’s national cybersecurity agency (ANSSI) recommends conducting regular reviews of user permissions as part of secure IT system administration.

Some access levels may need to be reduced if they’re too broad, and you may also identify outdated accounts or permissions that should be revoked.

\"Dashboard

For more advanced use cases, the Scalingo API allows you to integrate access verification into your internal processes.

Our Recommendations for Securing Access to Your Applications

We’ve also published a team-based access management guide that brings together our best practices for making the most of Scalingo’s existing access control and security features. This guide will help you configure your applications and choose the right roles based on your team’s structure or your organization’s setup.

From startups to product teams to multi-project agencies, these best practices can help every kind of organization find the right balance between collaboration and security.

A New Step Toward More Granular Access Management

This update is the result of user research driven by a need many of you have shared with us: the ability to delegate tasks and streamline workflows, without unnecessarily exposing your data.

This new role was designed to integrate naturally with your existing workflows and team practices. We hope it will help make collaboration on your apps smoother, while keeping your data secure.

This is just the first step in a broader effort to give you more granular and flexible control over access management. It lays the groundwork for the future of IAM at Scalingo, something we are actively shaping with your feedback.

Learn more

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/limited-collaborator-launch", "title": "New User Role on Scalingo : collaborate together without exposing your data ", "summary": "To collaborate effectively without risking the stability or security of your applications and data, we’re introducing a new role designed to give your technical teams more freedom while safeguarding sensitive settings and customer data.", "date_modified": "2025-08-27T22:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "product" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:6ff9b4609868340986d101c285c80d3051af27ae83a9f2ffe21801416abdaec9", "content_html": "

At Scalingo, we see multi-cloud gaining ground every day. More and more enterprises are bringing us into their cloud architecture as a second provider, typically alongside some of the biggest US hyperscalers.

It usually starts small: a side project, an app run by a subsidiary, a regional business unit’s platform, or a lower-stakes service within a global enterprise. Safe places to experiment without touching critical operations. But these trials grow quickly and become strategic programs, accounting for an ever larger share of deployments.

The driver is clear: avoiding single-vendor dependence. Tech lock-in, regulatory pressure, geopolitics, major outages...the risks are real.

That’s why diversifying cloud partners is no longer theoretical. It’s a concrete choice many large companies make to stay in control and reduce exposure, while giving a welcome boost (🙌) to the European tech ecosystem.

“ Multi-cloud is a strategy where an organization runs a given set of workloads across multiple cloud providers - typically public clouds - to optimize performance, cost, resilience, and compliance while reducing the risk of vendor lock-in. ”

The case for multi-cloud

Relying on a single provider once felt safe: a familiar stack, trained teams, one point of contact. On paper, it looks tidy.

In practice, needs evolve. Prices shift, regulations tighten, latency or data-residency requirements appear, outages happen, and that dependence turns from convenience into constraint.

Multi-cloud helps avoid the trap. You place each workload or project where it makes the most sense, optimizing for performance, cost, and data locality, so you can tap each provider’s strengths without getting boxed into a single ecosystem. By favoring open standards and portable architectures, you keep the option to move when you need to.

The result is control: more room to negotiate and adapt, stronger continuity under stress, and the freedom to move fast without surrendering sovereignty over your architecture and data.

Backing French Tech and the European ecosystem 🇪🇺

Choosing cloud providers is no longer just a technical call; it’s become a strategic and even ethical one. Working with European providers, alongside, or where it makes sense, instead of the US hyperscalers, sends a clear signal to customers and partners: a concrete commitment to technological sovereignty, data protection, and long-term autonomy.

Most European cloud providers now deliver high-performance, competitive alternatives. Integrating them into a multi-cloud strategy not only diversifies your architecture but also reinforces the broader ecosystem: every workload entrusted to local players fuels innovation, nurtures competition, and helps Europe stand as a credible counterweight in a market otherwise dominated by a few global giants. Now that’s future-proofing!

Anticipating regulatory change

Rules governing data are also tightening. GDPR set the baseline, and French national schemes such as HDS (for health data hosting) and SecNumCloud (the French cybersecurity label for trusted cloud services) already impose strict requirements on providers.

At the European level, initiatives like Gaia-X and the proposed EUCS (European Union Cybersecurity Certification Scheme for Cloud Services) aim to extend these principles across borders, reinforcing digital sovereignty and reducing exposure to extraterritorial laws like the U.S. CLOUD Act.

For large enterprises, non-compliance can carry penalties of up to €20 million or 4% of worldwide annual turnover, consequences that are hard to ignore.

European providers typically offer greater transparency around data handling and data residency, which helps limit exposure to foreign legal reach. By diversifying cloud partners, large enterprises can shield themselves from these constraints and plan for future regulatory shifts with confidence.

“ 👉 Scalingo already meets most of these high standards: we are HDS-certified, hold ISO 27001 for information security, and rely on a SecNumCloud-qualified IaaS socle through our partner Outscale. ”

Testing and learning through secondary projects

Satellite or subsidiary-led projects are ideal proving grounds to experiment without putting critical operations at risk. They let teams trial different configurations, understand each provider’s nuances, and codify best practices before any broader rollout.

A small pilot, such as an internal app or a lower-stakes service, can serve as a sandbox to verify compatibility with European solutions, validate cost controls, and strengthen redundancy. This staged approach limits the risks of big-bang migrations and lays solid foundations for more ambitious deployments.

Ready to get started?

Every company’s journey to multi-cloud looks a little different. Maybe it starts with a single app, maybe with a compliance need, maybe with the desire to back European tech. What matters is making the first move with confidence.

If you’re wondering how a European partner can fit into your cloud strategy, let’s talk. We’d be glad to share what we’ve seen work for other companies and help you shape your own path.

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/multi-cloud-enterprise", "title": "Multi-Cloud: The Next Big Move for Enterprises?", "summary": "Multi-cloud is no longer just a buzzword for large enterprises. From reducing vendor lock-in to meeting growing sovereignty and compliance requirements, companies are increasingly turning to European cloud providers alongside hyperscalers. Here’s why the shift is accelerating and how organizations are approaching it in practice.", "date_modified": "2025-08-20T22:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "insights" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:66e1220aa82045fc020f8a043b9bf128599a006b96f06a755a0568ddd02ec2f6", "content_html": "

At Scalingo, we have chosen to add OpenSearch® to our managed databases offering. Supporting this open source alternative to Elasticsearch® will allow us to make regular updates, with fewer licensing constraints and thus, offer a more modern product, suitable for current usages : semantic search, AI, analysis…

To meet these needs, our OpenSearch® plan includes several essential plugins by default. Let’s talk about these plugins and their use.

OpenSearch® plugins for advanced search and indexing

The first use case we think about when we talk about OpenSearch®, is advanced search and indexing of documents. OpenSearch® allows for the indexing of large volumes of data, structured or not, to enable advanced researches, in full-text and with filters. It’s a common use case for e-commerce applications, documentation and knowledge databases for SaaS applications.

If you opt to use Scalingo for OpenSearch®, several useful plugins are included by default in our offering, to provide ways to build a smart search engine and use it efficiently :

OpenSearch® plugins for logs analysis and monitoring

Another common use case for OpenSearch® is log centralisation, analysis and monitoring. With its powerful search engine, OpenSearch® Dashboards (ready to deploy on Scalingo) and some plugins, you can use this service to improve the observability of your infrastructure or also diagnose or optimise your applications.

Here are the plugins included in our Scalingo offering to enable logs analysis and monitoring :

OpenSearch® plugins for alerting and anomaly detection

As already highlighted by the previous use case, OpenSearch® can be used for alerting purposes and precise anomaly detection. You can configure OpenSearch® to make it continuously analyse your data, in order to detect abnormal variations in your logs, metrics or key indicators and configure actions to be performed or alerts to be sent when the criteria specified in your rules are fulfilled. In case of critical events happening on your apps, you will be automatically alerted, allowing you to quickly take action on the root cause of the problem.

The Scalingo for OpenSearch® offering includes several plugins to answer these needs :

OpenSearch® plugins for AI and RAG

With its vector search capabilities, allowing for data comparison using semantic proximity, OpenSearch® is a suitable database for advanced use cases in generative AI and RAG. Perfect for designing enhanced assistants, intelligent conversational interfaces or tools for contextual search, Scalingo for OpenSearch® enables AI integration in your apps, while ensuring security, sovereignty and control of your data, with several plugins that can be used for this purpose :

As we just described, OpenSearch® is a versatile service : search, AI, alerting, it can be used in numerous use cases, depending of the needs of your organisation and of your applications. It adds improvements for your users, with a more intuitive semantic search for example, but also internally, with systems capable of quickly detecting anomalies. There are many plugins for OpenSearch®, but those highlighted above are already available in Scalingo for OpenSearch®, our new fully managed database service for OpenSearch®, allowing you to use the service in a secured and sovereign environnement, without having to worry about infrastructure management. Select an OpenSearch® plan on our dedicated page, and start using OpenSearch® in just a few minutes !

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/opensearch-plugins-key-plugins-and-their-use-cases", "title": "OpenSearch® plugins : key plugins and their use cases", "summary": "Our OpenSearch® plan includes several essential plugins by default. Let’s talk about these plugins and their use. ", "date_modified": "2025-08-13T22:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "product", "insights" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:9be6470269e6639bbd0d96df9001f8a07e2f91a0f2919ea8d1c36798500374e5", "content_html": "

To deliver projects that truly meet client expectations, web agencies need reliable partners and tools that offer both flexibility and speed. That’s where Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions like Scalingo shine. With rapid deployment, intuitive interfaces, transparent pricing, and many other essential features, PaaS platforms are powerful allies for agencies that prioritize efficiency without compromising performance. Here’s why.

PaaS Delivers Flexibility

Web agencies handle a wide range of projects: from simple brochure websites to complex business applications. Meeting this variety of demands requires flexibility, from development through to deployment. The hosting solution must adapt without adding technical overhead.

PaaS platforms are designed with adaptability in mind. They typically support a wide array of programming languages and frameworks, allowing developers to choose the best technology for each project. At Scalingo, for example, we use a buildpack system that offers even greater flexibility. Users can implement open-source or custom buildpacks to expand the platform’s capabilities beyond what we officially support.

\"Customer

Another key advantage is the ability to scale resources dynamically. Whether you’re hosting a lightweight website or a resource-heavy app, PaaS makes it easy to adjust container counts and allocated resources to match demand. This ensures high application performance with just a few clicks. Scalingo’s autoscaler goes a step further by monitoring your app’s metrics and automatically adjusting resources during traffic spikes, keeping everything running smoothly without manual intervention.

PaaS Reduces DevOps Workload

Saving time is a major benefit of using a PaaS. With integrated services like GitHub and GitLab, deploying an application takes just minutes, regardless of the tech stack. One of our web agency users, 9troisquarts, shared that switching from VPS to Scalingo cut their setup time from over two days to just around ten minutes.

With PaaS, you don’t need to worry about infrastructure management, everything is handled by the platform. According to Robin from the agency Dernier Cri, who shared his feedback, using Scalingo eliminated the need to hire one or two extra system administrators. And when issues arise, responsive support is available via chat or email.

\"Comparison

PaaS is Often More Cost-Effective Than Traditional Hosting

PaaS pricing models reflect their flexibility. Usage is billed by the minute, based on the number of containers and resources in use. This transparent model ensures that clients only pay for what they need, making it easier for agencies to forecast project budgets.

Moreover, the simplicity of PaaS reduces hidden costs. With no time wasted on server maintenance or unexpected DevOps challenges, agencies can achieve significant savings, benefiting both themselves and their clients.

One of our clients, Heloa, estimated the annual savings they achieved by switching to Scalingo. They compared the cost of using our PaaS with what it would take to manage infrastructure themselves, including staffing, maintenance, and hardware. The difference? Savings of up to €90,000 per year, as illustrated in the comparison below:

\"Economic

PaaS Platforms Offer Essential Features

PaaS solutions don’t just host your applications, they come with a range of tools designed to simplify teamwork and communication between your developers and clients.

At Scalingo, we offer Review Apps, which allow internal teams to preview each other’s work in a production-like environment. These temporary environments make collaboration easier and more efficient.

They also serve a critical role in client communication: for every change or update, you can generate a Review App and share it with your client for validation, before anything goes live. This reduces surprises, increases transparency, and helps secure client approvals earlier in the process.

\"Automatic

PaaS not only saves time and adds flexibility, it introduces new, smarter ways to work together, without requiring custom workflows or infrastructure.

For web agencies handing off projects to their clients, Scalingo also supports smooth project transitions, ensuring clients can easily take ownership of the project once it's delivered.

Scalingo: A Secure, French PaaS Tailored for Web Agencies

As we’ve shown, PaaS brings multiple benefits for web agencies: time savings, adaptability, cost transparency, and improved collaboration. But for many projects, especially sensitive ones, data security is equally critical.

That’s why Scalingo offers 100% French hosting, built on a SecNumCloud-compliant infrastructure and certified ISO 27001 and HDS. You get all the ease of a PaaS platform, combined with strong European data protection. This makes Scalingo an ideal solution for sectors like healthcare, government, or any project with stringent security requirements.

Ready to Simplify Your Deployments?

Try Scalingo for free or get in touch to discuss your needs with us. Let’s build better, faster, and safer together.

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/why-paas-is-the-best-ally-for-web-agencies", "title": "Why PaaS Is the Best Choice for Web Agencies", "summary": "To deliver projects that truly meet client expectations, web agencies need reliable partners and tools that offer both flexibility and speed. That’s where Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions like Scalingo shine.", "date_modified": "2025-08-06T22:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "insights" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:4c1077ea8c9df0d8150d960ab76db7a49936dceac73c48388f460667dea5cf69", "content_html": "

Hosting health data is not something you can improvise. These are highly sensitive records, governed by strict legal and technical requirements.

In France, this responsibility has a name: the HDS certification (Hébergement de Données de Santé, or Health Data Hosting). It ensures that technical service providers meet the highest standards of security, traceability, and regulatory compliance.

In this article, we’ll walk you through what HDS certification is, who it applies to, why it matters, and how Scalingo has made the commitment to cover every regulatory scope defined by law, offering a reliable, sovereign, and fully compliant solution for healthcare organizations.

What is HDS (Health Data Hosting)?

HDS is a mandatory French certification that governs how personal health data can be legally hosted and managed.

Introduced by the French Agence du Numérique en Santé (ANS), it applies to all technical providers including cloud platforms, hosting companies, and managed service providers who store or process this type of sensitive data. (We’ll define exactly what qualifies as health data in a moment.)

The HDS framework ensures that providers like Scalingo adhere to the highest levels of security and confidentiality, on par with standards seen in critical sectors like banking or national defense.

How does the HDS certification process work?

We won’t dive into every step of the HDS certification process here since it could fill an article of its own. But here’s what you need to know: obtaining HDS certification means meeting exceptionally high standards, particularly in areas such as:

And no, it doesn’t happen overnight.

Getting certified takes months of preparation, including audits by an independent organization accredited by the COFRAC, extensive documentation, detailed process updates, and most importantly, company-wide involvement that extends far beyond the security or infrastructure teams.

Here’s a visual summary of the key points:

\"Diagram

As you can see, it’s not just a box to tick or a certificate to showcase on your website. It’s a deep, structural commitment that reshapes how hosting, maintenance, and even client relationships are approached in a field as sensitive as healthcare.

“ 📌 Good to know: The HDS certification is valid for three years and includes annual surveillance audits. At Scalingo, we are currently in the renewal process to continue providing compliant, reliable, and fully sovereign hosting. ”

Why is HDS Certification So Important?

Health data is among the most sensitive information that exists. It directly concerns a person’s physical and mental well-being, and can sometimes reveal delicate social or family situations.

Now imagine the risks if that information were to circulate in a digital system without adequate protection.

If health data falls into the wrong hands, the consequences can be severe:

It’s precisely to reduce these risks that the HDS (Health Data Hosting) certification was created.

“ ⚠️ Important: HDS certification does not guarantee that an incident will never happen. What it does ensure is that the infrastructure is well-prepared, actively monitored, and ready to respond quickly. Most importantly, it confirms that the provider follows industry best practices, all of which are audited and certified. ”

What Counts as “Health Data”? What Does the Law Say?

The reference definition of “health data” comes from the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL):

“Health data is any personal information related to the physical or mental health of an individual, past, present, or future. This includes, for example, diagnoses, test results, prescriptions, or even indirect data such as heart rate measured by a connected device, if it can be used to infer a person’s state of health.”

“ 📌 In short: as soon as an application processes identifiable medical information, it falls under the category of health data, along with all the legal obligations that come with it. ”

Examples of information commonly considered health data include:

“ 📌 Key point: data is considered personal only if it is linked to or can be used to identify someone, either directly or indirectly. To qualify as health data, it must also reveal information, even indirectly, about a person’s physical or mental health. ”

What Is an HDS “Scope of Certification”?

Now that we’ve defined what qualifies as health data, another key question comes up: who is allowed to host it, and under what conditions?

This is exactly where HDS certification becomes relevant, especially when it comes to its different scopes.

A common misconception is that all HDS certifications are the same. In practice, an HDS certification refers to a set of clearly defined scopes, not a universal stamp of approval. It is a modular system that reflects the specific role a provider plays in handling health data.

👉 In simple terms, HDS certification can cover up to six distinct activities. Some companies are certified for just one, others for several. Very few cover all of them.

Here are the six official HDS hosting scopes:

\"Diagram

1. Physical facility hosting

This scope ensures that the buildings housing the servers (such as data centers) comply with strict standards. These include controlled access, fire safety systems, backup power supply, and other physical safeguards.

2. Physical infrastructure hosting

This covers the actual hardware — servers, storage arrays, network equipment. The goal is to ensure that these components are installed, maintained, and monitored under optimal security and operational conditions.

3. Application platform hosting

This involves everything that allows applications to run properly. It includes operating systems, databases, middleware, and other foundational software layers.

4. Virtual infrastructure hosting

This scope covers virtual environments such as virtual machines or containers. They must be properly isolated, secured, and continuously monitored, just like the rest of the infrastructure.

5. Managed services for information systems

This refers to the daily operations that keep an information system stable, secure, and compliant. It includes monitoring, patch management, incident handling, and operational maintenance.

6. Offsite health data backup

The final scope, but by no means the least important, concerns backups. These must be stored at a separate location with the same level of security and traceability as the primary data.

These six scopes are defined by the Agence du Numérique en Santé (ANS) and outlined in the official HDS Certification Framework.

Scalingo: A Fully HDS-Certified PaaS

So what about Scalingo? We made the deliberate and ambitious choice to obtain certification across all six HDS scopes. This means our PaaS platform is fully compliant, from physical infrastructure to software operations and data backup.

This level of coverage is still rare in the French cloud ecosystem, and it allows us to support our healthcare clients with a turnkey solution. No need to manage multiple vendors or navigate regulatory complexity alone.

Beyond the certification itself, it reflects a deeper commitment and philosophy we believe in.

“ 💬 Hosting health data is not just about ticking boxes. It is about taking long-term, collective responsibility. ”

At Scalingo, this commitment is reflected in a company-wide effort. From InfoSec and engineering to support and product teams, everyone is involved. And that’s what makes the certification meaningful. It’s not just a document, it’s something that lives in our everyday practices.

“ 🛡️ Today, this trusted framework enables us to host dozens of sensitive healthcare applications, both in France and internationally, across a wide range of use cases including telemedicine, care coordination, clinical trials, patient journeys, and preventive care. ”

👉 Learn more about Scalingo hosting for the health sector

FAQ on Health Data Hosting (HDS)

Still have questions? Here are the answers to the most common concerns our users have about HDS hosting and what it involves.

1. Can health data be hosted on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud?

Yes, but under some conditions.

In theory, AWS, Google Cloud, and other American hyperscalers can host health data in France, provided that their services are certified for the relevant HDS scopes. Some of their offerings have indeed received this certification, which is a positive step.

👉 However, caution is needed:

2. What is the difference between ISO 27001 and HDS?

The ISO 27001 standard and the HDS certification share a common goal: ensuring a high level of information security. However, they serve slightly different purposes:

ISO 27001 is an international standard that defines best practices for securing information systems, across all industries. It is based on principles such as risk assessment, access management, and security governance.

HDS (Health Data Hosting) is a mandatory French certification required for hosting health data. It builds upon ISO 27001 but includes additional requirements specific to the healthcare sector, such as data sovereignty, enhanced traceability, and guaranteed service availability.

💡 At Scalingo, we are certified for both, to ensure secure, compliant, and sovereign health data hosting.

3. Which companies are required to be HDS certified?

Any company that hosts personal health data on behalf of third parties must be HDS certified.

This includes:

📌 Important: If you process health data only for your own internal needs (for example, a hospital hosting its own data on its own servers), HDS certification is not mandatory, but very strict security requirements still apply.

4. Is HDS certification enough to be GDPR compliant?

Not really.

HDS certification is complementary to, but does not replace, compliance with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

👉 To be GDPR compliant, a company must meet a set of legal obligations related to the protection of personal data, including:

On its side, the HDS certification focuses exclusively on the hosting of health data, with strict requirements around security, traceability, availability, and data sovereignty.

“ 🔐 At Scalingo, we provide hosting that is HDS certified and GDPR compliant. However, it is up to our clients to ensure that the rest of their application fully meets GDPR obligations (privacy policy, consent management, and more). ”

5. Are HDS and HIPAA the same thing?

At first glance, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and HDS certification appear to share the same goal: protecting sensitive health data. And in spirit, that’s true: both aim to ensure the confidentiality, security, and reliability of medical information.

However, in practice, the approaches are somewhat different.

HIPAA is a United States regulation that applies to the entire American healthcare system. It defines strict rules on data privacy, as well as broader patient rights and mandatory security measures.

Being HIPAA-compliant is therefore not sufficient to legally host health data in France. Likewise, HDS certification does not guarantee HIPAA compliance in the United States.

💡 At Scalingo, we support both French and international organizations, and we’re here to help you navigate between these frameworks based on your specific regulatory requirements.

6. Is HDS certification dependent on using a SecNumCloud region?

No. HDS certification does not require hosting in a cloud region certified under SecNumCloud.

HDS is a certification specific to the healthcare sector. It governs how health data must be hosted and ensures a high level of security, confidentiality, and GDPR compliance. However, it does not mandate the use of a SecNumCloud-certified provider.

SecNumCloud, on the other hand, is a separate high-security label issued by ANSSI (France’s National Cybersecurity Agency). It applies to cloud service providers across all sectors and is designed to ensure maximum data sovereignty, particularly in the face of extraterritorial laws such as the US Cloud Act.

In summary:

7. What is a “Healthcare Professional Point of Contact”?

As part of HDS certification requirements, Scalingo must designate a healthcare professional point of contact for each client. This contact plays a critical role. They must be able to identify a licensed healthcare professional who is authorized to act when needed — for example, to approve access to health data or respond to a security incident.

Additionally, Scalingo must be able to provide this list to the relevant authority without delay, especially in the event that HDS certification is suspended or withdrawn. This is a requirement outlined in the official HDS framework (version 1.1.1f, requirement 4.5.4).

Launching a Healthcare Project? Let’s Talk.

Not sure about your HDS requirements? Looking for a GDPR-compliant cloud partner, certified in health data hosting, based in France, and deeply familiar with the needs of the healthcare sector?

👉 Get in touch with our team — we’d be happy to discuss your project.

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/health-data-hosting", "title": "Health data hosting : Understanding the HDS Certification", "summary": "HDS ? What is HDS? We explain everything in this article!", "date_modified": "2025-07-28T22:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "product", "insights" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:553e747ca29e941f4d5207b6858e7736e91af1bd1eae870280ca61d42efd0202", "content_html": "

If you’ve spent any time on our site, you’ve definitely seen us mention the word PaaS - after all, Scalingo is a Platform as a Service. But what exactly is a PaaS? What does it do, and how is it different from things like IaaS or SaaS?

If you’ve been asking yourself those questions, you’re in the right place. In this guide, we’ll walk you through:

Whether you’re a student, developer, CTO, architect, or just curious about cloud platforms, this article will give you a clear and comprehensive overview of everything you need to know.

Ready to dive into the world of PaaS? Let’s get started!

PaaS definition: What is a PaaS?

A PaaS, or Platform as a Service, is a cloud computing model that abstracts away the complexity of infrastructure management to streamline the development, deployment, and scaling of web applications.

With a PaaS, developers don’t need to provision servers, configure runtimes, or handle system maintenance. The platform manages all of that for you, automatically. This ZeroOps (or NoOps) approach shifts operational responsibility to the platform itself, enabling teams to focus entirely on writing code, delivering features, and accelerating release cycles.

The Full PaaS Experience

In this article, we're focusing on public PaaS, which is built on top of cloud infrastructure. That means:

But a PaaS isn’t just cloud infrastructure like an IaaS, and it’s not simply a turnkey app like a SaaS either. It’s a full-fledged platform that brings together:

In short, a PaaS goes far beyond raw infrastructure or pre-built software. It provides a complete environment to host, deploy, and scale your applications—without the heavy lifting.

\"Scalingo

PaaS vs IaaS vs SaaS: What’s the Difference?

At first glance, the distinctions between the main cloud service models - IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and even CaaS - can seem a bit blurry, especially if you’re not deeply technical. But in reality, each model serves a specific purpose. The right choice depends on how much control you need, the internal resources you have, and the nature of your project

IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service

IaaS provides the basic building blocks of cloud computing—virtualized servers, storage, and networking. It gives you raw infrastructure, usually hosted in the cloud, with full control over how it’s configured and used.

Everything above that layer—like the operating system, runtime environments, databases, and security—is your responsibility. It’s a highly flexible model, but it requires strong in-house expertise in system administration and DevOps to manage effectively.

PaaS – Platform as a Service

PaaS goes a step further by providing not just the infrastructure, but also the deployment and runtime environment for your applications. This model, often referred to as ZeroOps or NoOps, offloads routine operational tasks like server management, updates, and backups. Developers just need to push their code—the platform handles the rest.

It’s a powerful middle ground between flexibility and simplicity, allowing teams to move faster while reducing the operational burden.

Some PaaS platforms, including Scalingo, also offer DBaaS (Database as a Service) features. That means you can provision and manage databases in just a few clicks, without worrying about setup, availability, or maintenance. The result is a fully integrated environment designed to support developers throughout the entire application lifecycle.

SaaS – Software as a Service

SaaS is all about delivering fully functional software to end users. It’s a turnkey solution, typically accessible through a web browser, with no installation or infrastructure to manage. Some of the most well-known French SaaS companies include Aircall, Mirakl, PayFit, Sendinblue (Brevo), 360Learning, and Pennylane — each playing a major role in fields like cloud telephony, HR, e-commerce, EdTech, and financial management.

Everything is handled by the provider: updates, hosting, security, and maintenance. This model is perfect for end users who just need a tool that works, without having to think about any of the underlying tech.

CaaS – Container as a Service

CaaS is a cloud service model that allows developers to manage, run, and orchestrate containerized applications at scale. It sits one layer above IaaS, abstracting away the complexity of the underlying infrastructure while providing powerful tools for container lifecycle management.

CaaS platforms typically rely on orchestrators like Kubernetes, making it easier to deploy, scale, and monitor containers without having to manually manage servers. Compared to PaaS, CaaS offers greater flexibility and control over the runtime environment—but it also requires deeper technical expertise to handle container orchestration and infrastructure configuration.

\"Diagram

Core Components of a PaaS

A Platform as a Service (PaaS) is much more than just a place to host your applications. It provides a complete environment for development, deployment, and operations—designed to make developers’ lives easier while ensuring performance, reliability, and scalability.

Here’s what a PaaS like Scalingo typically offers:

\"Review\"Metrics

A Concrete Example

Picture this: a developer has a brilliant idea, spends the week building it out, and now wants to get their application online.

Without a PaaS, things get complicated fast. They’d need to spin up and configure a server, install the operating system, handle networking, set up the database, and package the app—whether as a container or something else. And that’s just the beginning. There’s also ongoing maintenance, security updates, monitoring... Every deployment becomes a technical maze filled with manual steps and potential pitfalls.

Now imagine the same developer using a PaaS. They can deploy their app in minutes, monitor performance in real time, manage databases with just a few clicks, and enable features like autoscaling—without ever touching a server.

In short, a PaaS strips away the infrastructure headaches, so developers can focus entirely on their code and product. The result? Faster, more reliable deployments with less friction—no matter the size or stage of your company.

So Why Isn’t Every Company Using a PaaS?

If Platform as a Service offers so many advantages, it’s fair to ask: why hasn’t every company made the switch?

The truth is, several factors can slow down or complicate PaaS adoption:

Regulatory or Industry-Specific Constraints

Some organizations—especially in highly regulated sectors like finance, healthcare, or defense—face strict requirements around data hosting, encryption, and geographic location. While many modern PaaS providers (like Scalingo) meet high compliance standards—such as ISO 27001, HDS, or France’s SecNumCloud baseline—some companies still choose to maintain full control over their infrastructure, at least temporarily. This helps ensure regulatory compliance and can also provide additional reassurance to clients and stakeholders.

Very High Customization Needs

Some highly specific projects require fine-grained system-level configurations, access to specialized hardware, or deep low-level performance optimizations. In these cases, the abstractions provided by a PaaS can feel limiting. Teams may prefer an IaaS or on-premise approach that gives them complete control over the technical environment and the freedom to tailor it exactly to their needs.

Budget Concerns… Often Misunderstood

Ironically, even though a PaaS often reduces overall costs—by cutting down on maintenance and lowering internal resource needs—it can sometimes appear more expensive than à la carte IaaS solutions.

This perception usually comes from a flawed comparison: looking at the raw price of a basic server versus the cost of an all-in-one platform. But once you factor in the time saved, built-in backups, native scalability, technical support, and reduced operational overhead, PaaS often proves to be the more cost-effective option in the long run.

Still, some IT departments or finance teams may fixate on the “sticker price” without considering the broader value.

A Strong In-House Tech Culture

Some engineering teams prefer to build and manage their entire infrastructure in-house—out of passion, conviction, habit, or simply because they have the skills to do so. These are often experienced teams capable of crafting a custom stack, tailored precisely to their needs.

In certain contexts, this approach makes perfect sense. It offers full control and deep visibility across every layer of the system.

But as the company grows—more projects, evolving teams, increasing scalability demands—this model can become heavy and difficult to sustain. That’s often when a PaaS becomes a serious alternative: less friction, more focus on the product.

Fear of Vendor Lock-In

One of the most common concerns around PaaS adoption is the fear of becoming too dependent on a single provider. And it’s not an unfounded fear—some major cloud players like AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure offer powerful but proprietary services that can be difficult to migrate away from once they’re tightly integrated into your applications. Custom APIs, platform-specific configurations, and proprietary databases can create a strong dependency on a single ecosystem. As a result, moving off those platforms can be complex, time-consuming, and expensive.

Fortunately, not all PaaS providers take this approach. At Scalingo, we’ve made openness and transparency a core part of our philosophy. We rely on standardized technologies—like buildpacks—that make it easy to move your applications elsewhere if needed. You also retain full ownership of your data, with simple tools to export it at any time.

“ \"Our goal is simple: to provide a reliable, sovereign service—without locking you in. If you ever decide to move on, we’ll make sure it’s easy. Because we believe loyalty shouldn’t come from constraints, but from the quality of the service we deliver.” ”

Common Misconceptions About PaaS

PaaS is still surrounded by a few persistent misconceptions that can slow down adoption. Let’s take a moment to clear up some of the most common ones.

“PaaS is just for beginners”

While it’s true that PaaS simplifies infrastructure management, and is great for starting out, that doesn’t mean it’s only for junior developers. Quite the opposite - PaaS is designed to help experienced developers move faster by freeing them from repetitive operational tasks. That way, they can focus on what really matters: architecture, features, user experience, and delivering value.

“PaaS isn’t secure”

It's true that some less transparent PaaS providers may raise concerns—but a serious PaaS puts security at the core of its architecture.

At Scalingo, that means strict certifications (ISO 27001, HDS, SecNumCloud compliance), data centers located in France, automated backups, continuous monitoring (with MCO options), and a clear commitment to data sovereignty and privacy.

The result? A level of security that often exceeds what most companies could realistically implement on their own.

“PaaS is technically limited”

Modern PaaS is anything but limited. You get access to a wide range of languages, frameworks, databases, observability tools, fine-grained configuration options, autoscaling, CI/CD workflows, add-ons, and more.

At Scalingo, you can even create your own custom buildpacks to support highly specific use cases—giving you full flexibility without giving up the benefits of the platform.

What Types of Companies Can Benefit from PaaS?

PaaS is a great fit for a wide range of organizations. In fact, Scalingo is used by all kinds of teams—digital agencies, scale-ups, public institutions, government services, and tech teams within large enterprises.

What they all have in common is the need to move quickly and efficiently, without compromising on security, reliability, or peace of mind.

Startups & Scale-Ups: When Every Hour Counts

When launching a product, every sprint, every deployment matters. Teams are often small, resources are limited—but the goals are big. In that context, wasting time managing servers or maintaining infrastructure quickly becomes a drag on momentum.

A PaaS lets you hit the ground running without getting bogged down in ops. With simplified deployments, built-in scalability, and ready-to-use tools, your team can stay focused on building and shipping.

And despite the misconception that PaaS is only good for prototyping, it actually provides a robust architecture built to scale—so you can grow fast without having to re-architect everything down the line.

SMEs: Looking for Balance

Growing small and mid-sized businesses often find themselves straddling two worlds: the need for agility, and the need to build long-term technical stability. They have to move fast, but also lay a solid foundation.

A PaaS helps them stay focused on delivering value without getting lost in technical complexity. There’s no need for a dedicated infrastructure team or constant tech stack decisions for each new project—the platform handles the operational load, absorbs traffic spikes, and adapts to the pace of the business, whether it’s scaling up or settling in.

Public Sector: Balancing Efficiency and Compliance

In local governments, public institutions, and state agencies, the challenges are often well defined: small IT teams, high security requirements, and strict regulatory pressure.

A sovereign PaaS provides a secure, France-hosted environment that complies with key standards (ISO 27001, HDS, SecNumCloud), while remaining easy to use and operate. The result? Projects move faster without compromising on compliance—and teams gain real autonomy, without needing advanced DevOps expertise.

Web Agencies & IT Services: Delivering Faster & Standardizing Smarter

When you’re juggling multiple projects for different clients, every deployment can turn into a potential bottleneck. A PaaS helps bring consistency to your workflows—without sacrificing flexibility.

With automated deployments, multi-app management, on-demand add-ons, and built-in scalability, you save time without the overhead of custom infrastructure for every project. It’s a way to streamline and standardize delivery while keeping control over complexity—and your margins.

What About Large Enterprises?

In large organizations, infrastructure is usually well established—but agility often takes a hit due to complex processes, long validation cycles, and internal dependencies. A PaaS can empower project teams with greater autonomy. Whether it’s for a quick MVP, an internal tool, a test environment, or a project led by a subsidiary, a PaaS helps teams move faster—prototyping, testing, and deploying without waiting on infrastructure tickets.

And the best part? It all happens within the company’s existing security and compliance framework.

In Summary

Whether you’re a startup or a large enterprise, if your priority is agility, speed, and simplicity a PaaS could be the right solution for you.

How to Deploy an App on a PaaS Like Scalingo

So how does deploying an app on a PaaS like Scalingo actually work?

No complex setup, no servers to configure. In just a few minutes, your app is live and running.

It only takes 3 simple steps:

Scalingo takes care of the rest

Build, deployment, hosting, monitoring—it’s all automated. You can track your app’s performance in real time through a clean, powerful dashboard. No installs. No complex scripts. Just code, deploy, and go.

🎥 Want to see it in action? Check out our short demo video:

\"Video

Our technical documentation is also there to guide you step by step. It's kept up to date by our own engineers, and designed to support you every step of the way.

Ready to Give It a Try?

Scalingo offers a 30-day free trial—no strings attached—so tech teams can deploy their first apps and experience a PaaS in real-world conditions.

It’s a great way to see the platform in action and decide for yourself.

And if you run into any questions or roadblocks along the way, our 100% human support team—made up of engineers, based in France—is here to help. Fast, technical, and always ready to listen.

See you soon on Scalingo.

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/paas-guide-complet", "title": "What is PaaS? A beginner's guide to Platform as a Service", "summary": "Curious about PaaS and how it fits into the cloud ecosystem? This in-depth guide breaks down Platform as a Service, how it compares to IaaS and SaaS, and why it might be the right choice for your next project.", "date_modified": "2025-06-29T06:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "insights" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:5e0f4436ede9ff3c47bfefea516670a6a2a67b2f72f8f27a8c3f27f47f6fa8ae", "content_html": "

We're excited to announce that Scalingo for OpenSearch® now includes the k-NN feature, bringing full support for vector-based search. This marks an important step forward in our commitment to making powerful AI and semantic search capabilities accessible, secure, and easy to use, all on a fully managed platform hosted in France.

Why vector search matters

Traditional search engines rely on keywords and exact matches. Vector search changes the game by allowing you to search by meaning, not just text. By representing content and queries as numerical vectors, it's now possible to find the most relevant results even if they don't contain the exact words your users typed.

This opens up a wide range of use cases:

The k-NN plugin explained

The k-NN plugin (short for k-nearest neighbors) is what makes this possible. It allows OpenSearch® to store and search vector embeddings (meaning numerical representations of content) created by models like OpenAI’s all-MiniLM, or Hugging Face’s text-embedding-3-small.

With it, OpenSearch® can return results based on semantic similarity, not just string matching.

It's fast, scalable, and well suited for Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) applications where relevance and context really matter.

What this means on Scalingo

By embedding the k-NN plugin, OpenSearch® for Scalingo now becomes a vector database, in addition to its already powerful search and observability features.

That means you can now:

All this while benefiting from what Scalingo already offers:

Example : Leverage your internal knowledge base with AI-powered search

Your team likely has a large collection of internal documents: technical specs, onboarding guides, process docs, and meeting notes. Traditionally, finding the right information means searching by keywords, and often scrolling through outdated or loosely relevant results. If, like us, you use Notion as your internal wiki and documentation hub, you understand the struggle…

With vector-based search and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), you can take your searching to the next level. How? Leverage the open source ecosystem to generate and index your vectors, and use OpenSearch® to power your semantic search in four steps :

  1. Document ingesting : begin by preparing your documents (any kind of data you wish to embed) for semantic search. This typically involves chunking the content and generating vector embeddings using a model such as all-MiniLM by OpenAI or text-embedding-3-small from Hugging Face. Tools like LangChain, LlamaIndex, or a custom script can be used to orchestrate this process.

  2. Vector indexing : the generated embeddings must then be sent to an OpenSearch® instance hosted on Scalingo. The k-NN plugin within OpenSearch® will store them in a dedicated vector index, optimized for high-performance nearest neighbor searches.

  3. Contextual querying : when a user query is submitted via a large language model (LLM) such as ChatGPT or Mistral AI, it is also converted into a query embedding and sent to OpenSearch using vector similarity search techniques.

  4. Response generation: The retrieved documents are provided as \"context\" to a large language model (LLM). The model then generates a grounded, accurate response based on the indexed content.


\"Diagram

The result? An AI assistant that rarely hallucinates, stays up to date with your internal knowledge, and can answer user questions in natural language, all powered by OpenSearch, right on Scalingo.

Get started today

Vector-based search is available right now to all OpenSearch users on Scalingo. Whether you're building a smarter internal search tool or exploring AI-powered assistants, this feature unlocks a new range of possibilities.

To get started, check out our documentation on OpenSearch extensions, or reach out to our team if you need any help.

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/rag-ai-knn-plugin-opensearch", "title": "RAG-ready search on Scalingo: k-NN plugin now available for OpenSearch®", "summary": "Introducing RAG", "date_modified": "2025-06-11T22:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "product" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:ed75bd8bd1c5ae876ede605623e8612771a7df79c6259855716185018ec066a6", "content_html": "

We’re excited to announce the launch of Scalingo for OpenSearch®, a fully managed, open-source service for real-time search, log analysis, and data exploration. Whether you want to build a search engine, centralize logs across your apps, or monitor system health with custom dashboards, OpenSearch® does the heavy work, while Scalingo keeps it out of your way.

In just a few clicks, you’ll be able to deploy a production-ready OpenSearch® cluster, along with a full set of plugins for search, analytics and observability. You’ll also be able to add the OpenSearch® Dashboards app to visualize and explore your data in real time.

If you've been looking for the best open-source alternative to Elasticsearch®, free from licensing headaches and infrastructure burden, this is for you.

OpenSearch® vs Elasticsearch®: Why we're making the switch

For years, Elasticsearch® was the go-to engine for search and log analytics, and at Scalingo, it has played an important role in helping our users build fast, data-driven applications. But in 2021, Elastic®, the company behind Elasticsearch®, introduced a more restrictive license (SSPL), making it harder for cloud providers like us to offer a fully managed version in a way that aligns with our values.

As a platform committed to openness, developer freedom, and simplicity, this was a turning point. We wanted to keep offering a powerful, flexible search solution...without the licensing limitations.

That’s why we decided to support OpenSearch®, a fully open-source Elasticsearch® alternative, backed by a growing community and licensed under Apache 2.0.

Originally forked from the last open version of Elasticsearch® (7.10), OpenSearch® has kept the core features developers rely on, like full-text search, real-time analytics, and dashboards, while continuing to evolve with new capabilities: alerting, anomaly detection and more.

As part of this shift, we’ll be gradually phasing out our managed Elasticsearch® offering, and focusing on delivering the best possible experience with OpenSearch®.

For Scalingo, it’s a natural evolution and one we believe will better serve our users, and the open ecosystem, in the long run.

Common use cases for OpenSearch®

What’s great about OpenSearch® is that it’s much more than just a search engine, it’s a versatile platform that powers a wide range of use cases across industries. These are some of the most common ways developers are using OpenSearch® today:

Search & indexing

Whether you're building an e-commerce store requiring fast product search, a SaaS app with complex filtering, or a knowledge base for your support center, OpenSearch® makes it easy to ingest, index, and query large volumes of data. Its powerful full-text search capabilities make it ideal for building fast & simple search experiences!

Log analysis & observability

Centralize logs from your applications, services, and databases to gain real-time visibility into your systems. With integrations like Scalingo’s own log drain, Logstash and others, OpenSearch® helps you collect, parse, and analyze logs efficiently. Paired with OpenSearch® Dashboards, it gives developers, DevOps, and SREs a clear view of system health and performance, making it easier to troubleshoot issues and improve observability.

Alerting & anomaly detection

OpenSearch® also makes it easy to detect unusual behavior across logs, metrics, and business indicators, both automatically and in real time. Its built-in alerting and anomaly detection features let you monitor key signals, trigger actions, and get notified when something goes wrong, from traffic spikes to failed login attempts.

Going one step further : RAG-ready search with the k-NN plugin

Scalingo for OpenSearch® comes with the k-NN plugin pre-installed, adding support for vector-based search, which is essential for AI-powered use cases like semantic search and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG).

With vector search, you’re no longer limited to keywords or exact matches. You can search by meaning, using vector representations of content and queries to surface results based on semantic similarity, even when the wording is different.

This makes OpenSearch® a solid foundation for building smarter, more intuitive search experiences where context matters. Whether you’re working on internal tools, documentation search, or integrating with frameworks like LangChain or LlamaIndex, the k-NN plugin lets you combine full-text search with semantic relevance in a single, unified system.

And since it’s available on Scalingo, you don’t have to worry about setup, infrastructure, or compliance. Everything is fully managed, secure, and hosted in France, so you can focus on building smarter search experiences, without added complexity.

\"Diagram

Benefits of OpenSearch® on Scalingo

Choosing Scalingo for OpenSearch® means you get all the power of this modern search and analytics engine without the operational overhead. We've made it simple to deploy, scale, and integrate OpenSearch® into your existing workflows, so you can focus on building, not managing infrastructure. Key features & benefits include:

\"OpenSearch

Get started

Whether you're starting a new project or thinking of migrating an existing one, getting up and running with OpenSearch® for Scalingo is quick and straightforward. Our documentation will guide you every step of the way:

Need a hand? Our support team is here to help if you have any questions or hit a bump along the way. And as always, your feedback is more than welcome. We’re continuously improving based on what you share with us. Let us know what you think!

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/introducing-opensearch-for-scalingo-database", "title": "Introducing OpenSearch® for Scalingo : Fully managed, Open-Source search and analytics", "summary": "Discover Scalingo for OpenSearch®, a fully managed, open-source search and analytics service built for developers. From powerful full-text search to real-time log analysis and AI-ready vector search, OpenSearch® helps build smarter, more observable apps with zero infrastructure hassle. Secure, scalable, and hosted in France, it’s the modern alternative to Elasticsearch®.", "date_modified": "2025-06-05T22:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "product" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:1774e3de754633793b141f3941324a40b45fe784a1b06245b631a603b11fac67", "content_html": "

As our platform continues to evolve, so does our understanding of the people who use it. Over the past year, we’ve been building our UX research process, treating it as an essential part of ensuring new features serve users and contribute to a cohesive experience.

When I first started leading research at Scalingo, I had a pretty simple assumption: “If a dev built it, another dev will get it, right?” Turns out, not always. And because running research on a technical subject can be a bit overwhelming, especially coming from a non-tech background, it’s important for us to collaborate closely with \"technical people\" to understand the full scope and limitations of our platform.

Our users are a diverse group. They work on different kinds of projects, at different scales, and in different ways. They may come from varied backgrounds, but they all manage critical infrastructure and sensitive data. And for that reason, every interaction matters. Our goal is to build a platform that feels cohesive and instills confidence, no matter the user’s level of technical expertise.

1. Getting clear on why we do research

Our research work is grounded in the desire to understand the people we build for. By listening to users’ voices, experiences, and perspectives, research becomes a powerful medium for internal learning, helping us reflect and realign on product decisions.

We use research as both an exploration phase for new projects and a way to check in on how existing features are performing. Are they intuitive? Are they doing what we hoped? If something creates friction or stress, how can we ease it? These questions help us prioritize clarity and usability and, ideally, increase feature adoption.

When we explore large projects, like databases or organizations, that will inevitably impact user flows, we need to go deep and uncover actionable insights.

2. How we started

We started investing more intentionally in user research when we began tackling bigger, more foundational projects. One of the first was the redesign of the database dashboard.

It hadn't been updated since 2016, and we knew it needed a fresh look. But instead of jumping into design, we paused. We talked to executives and developers to take the temperature (what was working, what wasn’t) and gathered expectations for the future dashboard.

Because our developer colleagues are also Scalingo users, we spent time with them to observe their workflows in the product, understand the languages they use, and gain insights into database environments and technologies. This helped us align with internal sentiment from the start, build a solid research protocol, and enter user research with confidence.

To gather quantitative data, we launched a survey directly through our platform to understand how people use the dashboard, their level of satisfaction, and the challenges or feedback they had.

The survey also served as an opportunity to recruit and begin building our user research panel, as the final set of questions asked respondents if they were open to 1:1 conversations about their database usage.

We conducted the interviews remotely, which gave us the flexibility to speak with users from different regions and backgrounds within a short time frame. This helped us gather diverse perspectives without being limited by geography.

On the other side of the research, we uncovered some interesting insights: the dashboard was typically consulted only a few times per month, mostly to monitor database health, investigate performance issues, or check for upcoming upgrades and maintenance. In our recommendations, we emphasized the importance of allowing users to quickly grasp the most essential information at a glance. We introduced clear focal points and intuitive pathways to relevant documentation, aiming to deepen users’ understanding of monitoring features and reduce pressure on the support team.

3. Turning insights into ideas

One of the most valuable lessons we've learned is that research has far more impact when it's integrated into collaborative iteration.

That’s why we’ve started introducing ideation and co-creation workshops as an extension of our research process. These workshops usually take place at the end of the discovery phase and the beginning of the design phase, when the product team aligns on the main findings and uses them as problem statements for ideation sessions.

These sessions are ideal for two reasons:

  1. Sharing insights helps make the user experience feel tangible and builds empathy. Even though I always prepare a company-wide readout, I’ve found people are more engaged in smaller groups, which often leads to richer conversations.

  2. Facilitating cross-team dialogue helps surface diverse ideas and creates space to discuss the problem statement openly, without considering feasibility too early.


\"Screenshot

Take IAM and organization management, for example : a complex, ongoing challenge. After gathering initial insights from user interviews, we uncovered that most users:

We brought in developers, engineers, sales, and security colleagues to ideate in a Crazy 8s format around the problem statement: “How might we offer a more practical and secure user management solution, reducing dependency on third-party accounts and facilitating access control?” Everyone brought different knowledge and blind spots, but together we got closer to viable, user-centric solutions. We then voted on the most valuable ideas before moving into design.

This workshop was key to defining the new collaborators page on the dashboard and shaping future iterations. We were able to list the key elements that should be visible and actionable to an app owner, such as centralized control of all collaborators, their MFA and invitation status, and the ability to revoke all access for security and practical reasons.

\"Screenshot

These workshops gave us space to ideate openly and explore possible directions around a shared goal.

Co-creation has also become a powerful tool within our product team, especially when we want to explore multiple solutions. Whether it's mapping a user journey, sketching a concept, or simply generating ideas, these sessions help us expand the possibilities before narrowing in on the right path.

Wrapping up

Research at Scalingo is an ongoing process. We're continuously learning, adjusting, and looking for better ways to understand and support the people who use our platform. Every project brings new questions and new opportunities to improve the methodology and tools we use.

If you're a Scalingo user and would like to share your thoughts, or join our user research panel, feel free to reach out to us at team-product@scalingo.com. We'd love to hear from you!

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/how-ux-research-helps-shape-our-platform", "title": "From insights to action: How UX research helps shape our platform", "summary": "Over the past year, we’ve been building our UX research process, treating it as an essential part of ensuring new features serve users and contribute to a cohesive experience.", "date_modified": "2025-04-28T22:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "product", "insights" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:cafe318384dfee28d4764be0c5035487fee742051339f9deb6b18a89214bc38f", "content_html": "

At Scalingo, we’ve always made it a priority to offer high-quality support to our users. Our team is dedicated to helping developers and businesses keep their projects running smoothly, with expert assistance available whenever it's needed. This commitment is one of the key reasons our customers choose Scalingo - and continue to trust us over time.

Today, we're evolving our support by introducing new, optional paid support plans. These new plans are designed to meet the needs of users who require faster response times and greater availability. Importantly, our existing support remains free and available to all users - this isn’t changing. Instead, these new offers are here to provide enhanced options for those with more demanding needs.

Why are we launching new support plans?

Until now, Scalingo has offered the same level of support to all users, regardless of size - whether you're an independent developer, a startup, or a large company. This approach ensured total transparency and equal access for everyone.

However, as our platform and user base have grown, so have the expectations and needs of our customers. Some projects now require faster response times - especially when hosting applications that are critical to business operations. Our standard support, while effective, is only available during business hours (9 AM to 6 PM, Monday to Friday).

To better address a variety of needs, we’re launching two new paid support plans, in addition to our existing free offering. These plans provide more flexibility and responsiveness, depending on the criticality of your applications.

And of course, our \"Maintenance in Operational Conditions\" (MCO) offer - designed for the most critical applications that require advanced supervision - remains available too.

✅ No worries if you’re happy with what you have—our Basic support stays free and unchanged for all existing users.

A closer look at our new support plans

\"New

Our support is now available in four different plans:

The basic plan is the one you already know: support is available for free, directly from your dashboard, via chat and email. It is open to all our users from 9am to 6pm, Monday to Friday. We aim to respond to your requests within 24 hours, whenever possible. These are our current commitments, and they remain unchanged with these new options.

The Starter plan is designed for non-critical production applications. It includes all the benefits of the Basic plan, with the addition of a priority line during incidents, available during business days, as well as a guaranteed 1-hour response time during working hours.

ℹ️ Who is it for? This plan was created for companies that run production applications which are not critical, but where downtime could still have a direct impact on their activity. With this level of support, you ensure faster intervention in case of issues with the platform. We recommend this plan for startups or for companies developing internal applications that are important for day-to-day operations but not vital to business continuity.

The Business plan goes further, to meet the needs of clients hosting applications that require high availability. It offers a guaranteed response time of 30 minutes during business hours and 1 hour outside business hours. The priority line is available 24/7 for incident resolution. This plan also includes access to important documents such as hosting certificates, generic PAS (Platform Architecture Summary), and detailed architecture diagrams to give better insight into the technical setup. An annual review meeting is also included, offering clients strategic follow-up and privileged access to our technical experts.

ℹ️ Who is it for? This plan is intended for companies that require a very high level of support, where interruption to their applications could have serious business or reputational consequences. It is especially suited for applications that must remain accessible at all times, including evenings, weekends, and public holidays.

Finally, we continue to offer MCO (Maintenance in Operational Conditions) Supervision and Support. This is reserved for the most critical applications, where maximum reliability and constant monitoring are essential. It goes beyond regular support: it includes active supervision of production applications, network, and third-party services, with a dedicated team and setup ensuring optimal operation of your applications on our platform. This offer is available upon request, by contacting our sales team.

👉 To see whether one of these advanced support plans could be a good fit for you and to compare pricing, we invite you to visit our dedicated page.

Our Commitment to All Users

Delivering excellent service has always been one of our core values, and these new support plans have been designed to enhance our customer support without compromising what already exists.

No matter which plan you choose, support will continue to be provided by experts who know our platform inside and out, and who are ready to help you succeed with your projects.

All users also continue to enjoy unlimited access to our full documentation, along with tutorials and guides to help you make the most of our platform.

Find the Support Plan That Fits Your Needs

You can subscribe to any of our new support plans today by following the instructions on our dedicated page or by filling out the form available in your dashboard.

We also understand that any change may bring up questions. If you haven’t found all the answers you’re looking for in this article, feel free to reach out to our sales team or support via the chat available in your dashboard — they’ll be happy to help with any questions you may have.

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/introducing-new-support-plans-at-scalingo", "title": "Introducing New Support Plans at Scalingo", "summary": "Today, we're evolving our support by introducing new, optional paid support plans. These new plans are designed to meet the needs of users who require faster response times and greater availability.", "date_modified": "2025-03-25T23:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "product", "news" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:9d968529e462fcc572f519fce7e71b24d1958a74fc42a12042a4df2f1ff15be3", "content_html": "

No more stress during traffic spikes - Scalingo now offers an improved version of its built-in autoscaling!

Managing fluctuations in application load is a balancing act between performance, cost, and peace of mind. Recently, Scalingo introduced enhancements to its autoscaling feature, making it even more accessible: a simplified interface, faster adjustment logic, and updated documentation.

With these improvements, our autoscaling functionality continues to adapt to your needs while optimizing resource management.

What is autoscaling and why does it matter?

Imagine an e-commerce application during a big sales event - a sudden surge in traffic can quickly overwhelm your resources and degrade user experience. Autoscaling automatically adjusts available resources to match your application's actual demand.

Key benefits of autoscaling:

At Scalingo, autoscaling works in real-time by analyzing your application's metrics and dynamically adjusting the number of containers to match the load.

What's new at Scalingo?

We've recently introduced several improvements to make autoscaling even more intuitive and efficient:

\"\"

Technology built for high traffic spikes

Our improved algorithm ensures efficient scaling by adding or removing multiple containers simultaneously, preventing slow or insufficient adjustments. This guarantees a rapid response to sudden traffic surges while keeping costs under control.

With these enhancements, you can stay focused on growing your business without worrying about infrastructure scaling.

How to enable autoscaling on Scalingo

  1. Log in to your Scalingo dashboard.

  2. Configure your preferred metrics (RPM per container, CPU, RAM, etc.).

  3. Let our autoscaler take care of the rest, adjusting resources in real-time.

For technical details, check out our updated documentation.

\"Scalingo

Why choose Scalingo's autoscaling?

With Scalingo, you get a reliable and intuitive solution to handle fluctuating workloads. Whether you're a startup or an established enterprise, our autoscaling adapts effortlessly to your needs while optimizing costs.

Ready to eliminate the stress of traffic spikes?

Try Scalingo's autoscaling today!

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/enhanced-autoscaling-at-scalingo-simpler-and-more-efficient-than-ever", "title": "Enhanced Autoscaling at Scalingo: Simpler and More Efficient Than Ever", "summary": "No more stress during traffic spikes - Scalingo now offers an improved version of its built-in autoscaling!", "date_modified": "2025-02-17T23:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "product" ] }, { "id": "urn:sha256:440fbf7f3ce360ead60840b4817e24a5f0545b6ed5efd11c9298ca2baddefd46", "content_html": "

At Scalingo, we’re excited to announce that PostgreSQL 16 is now available on our platform! This latest version brings a host of improvements, so we encourage you to upgrade your instances to enhance security, reliability, and the overall performance of your applications.

In addition to regularly updating existing extensions as PostgreSQL evolves, we continuously assess and add new extensions to meet your needs and emerging use cases. Following the introduction of pgvector with PostgreSQL 15 to support AI-driven projects, we’re now thrilled to bring PostgreSQL Anonymizer with PostgreSQL 16—further strengthening our commitment to data security and privacy.

Highlights of PostgreSQL 16

Enhanced Performance for Queries and Data Handling

PostgreSQL 16 introduces several optimizations that make it faster and more efficient than ever:

Better Developer Experience

PostgreSQL 16 expands the toolkit for developers with:

Expanded Logical Replication Capabilities

Logical replication now supports row filters and column lists, giving more granular control over what data is replicated. This is particularly useful for microservice architectures where specific services only need a subset of the data.

While these features aren’t directly available to you just yet, the advancements in PostgreSQL 16 mark a significant step toward integrating them at the core of the database. This makes them more reliable, better integrated, and built to last.

These developments will soon allow us to offer replicated databases within our managed service, ensuring greater resilience and a top-tier user experience.

Privacy First: Anonymize Your Data with PostgreSQL Anonymizer

PostgreSQL Anonymizer is an extension designed to uphold the principles of Privacy by Design. It helps protect personal (or sensitive) data and provides the necessary tools to ensure compliance with regulations such as the GDPR.

By offering this extension, Scalingo reaffirms its commitment to providing modern tools that simplify compliance management and strengthen security at every stage of our customers' application lifecycle.

To learn more about PostgreSQL Anonymizer and the Privacy by Design approach, we invite you to read this article on the Dalibo blog. You’ll also find two additional articles detailing the generation of dummy data (especially useful at the start of a project) and anonymized exports (ideal for data analysis while ensuring compliance).

With the recent release of version 2.0, we took the opportunity to integrate it directly, providing you with a fully up-to-date experience!

How to Enable It?

The prerequisite is to have created one or more read-only users within your database. You can do this through your database dashboard:

\"PostgreSQL

Then, please contact our support team to request the activation of the PostgreSQL Anonymizer extension for the relevant users.

Extension Versions

With PostgreSQL 16, our database service now supports the latest versions of key extensions:

You can find the complete list of supported extensions and their respective versions in our documentation.

Should You Upgrade to PostgreSQL 16?

PostgreSQL 16 builds on the strengths of the previous version and can be installed with confidence. Upgrading allows you to take advantage of its enhancements in security and user experience, without negatively impacting your current performance.

That said, while the process is reliable, we still recommend reviewing our best practices before applying major upgrades. On the other hand, minor updates should always be applied promptly, as they often contain critical security and bug fixes.

For most workloads, this update ensures optimal stability. We recommend keeping your current resource allocation, as no additional costs are expected.

One-Click Upgrade

Upgrading to PostgreSQL 16 couldn’t be easier. Simply click the Major Upgrade button from your add-on dashboard.

With the recent revamp of our dedicated database dashboard, we’ve made every effort to simplify both minor and major updates.

\"Postgresql

The upgrade process has been designed to minimize downtime, typically lasting only a few minutes, whether you're on a Starter or Business plan.

To answer any questions you may have and guide you through the update, we've created a dedicated section in our documentation that provides a detailed explanation of the major upgrade process. Explore it here: Understanding the Major Upgrade Process.

\"PosgreSQL

As always, if you have any questions or need assistance during the upgrade process, our team is here to help. Reach out to us directly from your dashboard, and we’ll be happy to assist you.

PostgreSQL at the Core of Your Applications

With this latest version, PostgreSQL continues to uphold its reputation for performance, reliability, and innovation. And with the addition of the PostgreSQL Anonymizer extension, Scalingo reaffirms its commitment to providing modern tools tailored to your needs, ensuring the security of your applications.

Curious to explore Scalingo and try our services? Unlock the full potential of PostgreSQL on a managed platform that simplifies application deployment. Try Scalingo today and take advantage of our free trial!

", "url": "https://scalingo.com/blog/postgresql-16-is-now-available-on-scalingo", "title": "PostgreSQL 16 is now available on Scalingo", "summary": "Scalingo now supports PostgreSQL 16! This new version brings significant performance enhancements, improved logical replication, and better developer tools. Plus, we’re introducing PostgreSQL Anonymizer, reinforcing our commitment to data security and privacy. Upgrade your database in just one click and take advantage of the latest features today!", "date_modified": "2025-02-03T09:00:00.000Z", "tags": [ "product" ] } ] }