There was a time when email users had to keep their email stored on their local computers. Outlook was one such service provider where it used PST files, and Eudora used box files. POP3 protocol was designed to allow users to connect to a mail server and download the messages.

What this means is--the email was stored on one machine; the computer. So if you were accessing a different computer even if in the same house, you would not be able to access or see your mail store. 

With cloud-based email services like Gmail, everything changed. Most of us now use a cloud-based email service and might never have experienced the pain of accessing emails only from one particular system. This is what we call a SaaS model. Be it an email service like Gmail, CRM like Salesforce, accounting like Quickbooks online, to-do list management like Todoist, or big ERP systems like those offered by SAP, cloud-based SaaS services have been a boon to the mobile industry. 

Similarly, developing websites and apps on a cloud-based IDE has worked like a breeze for PHP development.

Amazon AWS: Amazon AWS has got a lot more going under its hood apart from simply hosting. There are cloud servers, messaging gateway, payment service, CDN etc.  You can easily set up your own PHP development environment to test the applications locally before deploying it.

PHPFog: Even though PHPFog has been developed on top of Amazon’s AWS platform that helps developers manage scaling, deploying etc in a seamless and easy manner. PHPFog offers 100MB of free hosting, 15 GB of bandwidth with undisclosed RAM and CPU for six months. No card is required in order to start in the initial stages. Also it has become pretty easy to deploy any Zend-Framework or Drupal or Joomla or WordPress based application in the cloud since they have inserted pre-configured containers. 

The source code deployment is completely managed using git and git hooks in PHPFog hence it makes it imperative for you to know Git. One also needs to know how to manage multiple SSH key pair in the machine to get started with PHPFog.

PHPCloud: Last checked, PHPCloud was in its infant stage and members were allowed on invitation based only. However, getting an invitation works like a breeze and hardly takes a day or two. PHPCloud is today backed by Zend  and built on top of Zend Application Fabric platform. After successfully testing the application in PHPcloud, one can keep it either there or deploy it to other cloud providers like Amazon EC2, Rackspace or Rightscale.

Heroku:- Heroku, a notable cloud platform provider for Ruby developers, recently joined hands with Facebook and started providing free container where they develop Facebook applications using PHP on top of their already existing platform.

When it comes to cloud-based IDE for developers, Heroku is one of the most reliable platforms. It also boasts of  thousands of add-ons. The core container is free for PHP Developers.

Conclusion
PHP as a programming language today sits on the pedestal of success. Across the globe, it has gathered a huge amount of fan-fare. Most of the online stores today have been built with PHP. The demand for a good PHP development company is imperative today. Hire PHP programmer and start building your own website right away.