cloudno.de

What cloudno.de actually is

Cloudnode (cloudno.de) is a small German Platform-as-a-Service for JavaScript applications, run by Microlog GmbH from Borchen, Germany. It is one of the oldest names in Node.js hosting: the About page states the project started in 2011 with AppJet, a Jetty-based server, then moved to Nodester — the early open-source Node.js PaaS — which the team forked and extended with a data layer. That heritage shows in the product shape: you push code over Git, the platform provisions a virtual machine for the app, sets up the repository, wires up the data layer, and gives you a dashboard to start and stop the process, tail logs and edit environment variables. The vendor claims more than 3,000 Node.js applications hosted.

The data layer is the part we find most interesting. Rather than betting on one database, Cloudnode offers CouchDB, MongoDB and Redis out of the box, plus S3-compatible object storage, and it uses those pieces itself: per-app usage statistics are kept in Redis for long-term evaluation. There is also a mobile-backend option based on Parse Server, and a "Cloud Workspace" — a Linux shell environment with a toolchain for developing from anywhere. Custom domains and SSL are supported (a platform wildcard certificate or your own third-party certificate), and WebSockets work, including version 13 of the protocol. Payment is PayPal-only, and the terms of service are German-law with jurisdiction in Borchen.

Our read: this is a boutique PaaS built by a small engineering company that also does bespoke software and mapping work (Microlog's other business lines). It is not competing with Render or Railway on polish or velocity; it competes on price, simplicity and being reachable. Documentation lives on a Read the Docs site covering the API and workflow, and there is a community Slack channel linked from the site.

Pricing: what you really pay

Cloudnode's pricing page is brief. Three paid tiers are published: Plus at €2 per month (billed per year) for 3 apps of "medium" size with 300,000 requests per month and up to 500 MB of database; Pro at €19 per month for 5 "large" apps, 1 million requests per month, up to 1 GB of database and 30 GB of S3 object storage; Premium at €25 per month for 10 "large" apps, 2 million requests per month, up to 2.5 GB database and 50 GB of S3 storage. The page also states that further plans exist "from Free to Ultimate" — so there is a free entry point and a bigger tier whose price is not published on the page. The free plan is reported in community threads as covering a single app with a monthly request allowance; we could not verify its exact limits from a vendor page, so we treat those numbers as indicative only.

Two things stand out. First, €2 per month for three apps with a database quota is about as cheap as managed Node.js hosting gets — that is less than a single small VPS in most of /category/vps-providers, and it includes the platform layer. Second, the metering is request-based rather than CPU-based, which suits low-traffic apps and small APIs and becomes the constraint to watch as you grow: the request ceilings are where the tiers separate, not RAM or cores. We'd like the pricing page to spell out what "medium" and "large" mean in actual memory and CPU terms; as published, plan sizing is a label rather than a spec.

There are no contracts: the FAQ states you can cancel at any time and keep access until the end of the billing period. Payment is PayPal only, which is unusual in this market and a practical limitation for businesses that need card-based invoicing or procurement-friendly billing. Note also that the pricing page URL itself did not respond when we fetched it directly — the figures above come from the pricing table as served on the home page.

Performance & infrastructure

This is where our confidence drops, and honesty requires saying so. Cloudnode publishes almost nothing about the infrastructure under the platform: no data center locations, no CPU models, no network capacity figures, no status page history. The terms of service commit to "a minimum yearly average of 99.5%" availability up to the Internet transfer point, which is a modest figure by 2026 standards — most VPS providers put 99.9% or better in writing — and the same document openly describes traffic shaping: under load, throughput is shared among interconnected servers and sites, which is standard small-PaaS practice but worth reading before you commit.

What the product does give you is operational convenience. Apps get a subdomain automatically, provisioning is minutes, Git-based deployment is the workflow, and the panel exposes logs, environment variables and a Git repository GUI. The S3-compatible object storage bundled into the Pro and Premium tiers is a real differentiator at this price — most competitors charge separately for object storage or don't offer it. Monitoring is built in, with usage data collected per app.

What we cannot do is put performance numbers next to anything. We have not tested Cloudnode, and there are no recent independent benchmarks we would trust — the platform's public footprint (docs, community posts, third-party reviews) thins out noticeably after the mid-2010s. The terms of service are dated May 2013. The site is live and accepting signups, but if uptime history and modern compliance paperwork (SOC 2, ISO, a published DPA) are procurement requirements for you, expect to ask Microlog directly rather than find it on the website. In our view that gap matters more than the raw spec sheet for a production system.

Where it falls short

The obvious one: transparency. A PaaS that hides its infrastructure is a PaaS you cannot evaluate properly before buying — no regions, no hardware, no per-plan resource limits. For a European buyer, the absence of a stated data residency position is a problem; the company is German and German law applies, but where the bytes actually live is undocumented. Second: age and activity. This is a 2011-era product with 2013-era terms and a request-metered billing model from a one-product corner of a small agency. That can be perfectly fine — some of these platforms run reliably for years on a loyal user base — but it is the opposite of the momentum you get from a well-funded PaaS, and the blast radius of the company deciding to sunset the product lands entirely on you.

Third: the free tier and plan limits are loosely documented. "Medium" and "large" app sizes are not defined in public resource terms, free-plan limits aren't on the vendor site, and the "Ultimate" tier's price is unpublished. PayPal-only billing and email-based support (plus Slack) round it out: there is no phone number, no 24/7 hotline, no enterprise support tier. And if your app is not Node.js, this is not your platform — the workspace is a Linux box, but the deployment story is built around JavaScript apps pushed over Git.

Who should pick this

Our pick for individual developers, students and small teams running low-traffic Node.js apps, bots, APIs and Parse-based mobile backends who want a European provider and a bill that stays in single-digit euros. The Plus tier is a genuinely good deal for side projects with three small apps and a database. Hobbyists who want a free starting point and an upgrade path that doesn't force a migration are well served too.

We would not pick it for anything with contractual uptime requirements, regulated data, or a need for documented infrastructure — and we would not make it the primary host for revenue-critical services without a direct conversation with Microlog about current operations. For teams that outgrow request-metered tiers, a plain VPS or a container platform from a larger provider is the more predictable next step.

One more practical note for EU buyers: because the company is German and the contract is German-law, GDPR paperwork is at least governed by a familiar regime, even though the vendor does not state where data is processed — ask that question directly before signing up. We would also verify current response times with a pre-sales question; for a small provider, support quality is the product, and it is the first thing worth testing before you migrate anything.

Key takeaways

• German boutique PaaS (Microlog GmbH, Borchen), running since 2011 — started on AppJet, then a Nodester fork
• Git-push Node.js hosting with CouchDB, MongoDB, Redis and S3-compatible object storage included
• Very cheap: Plus at €2/month (billed yearly) for 3 apps; Pro €19/month; Premium €25/month; free plan exists but limits are unpublished
• 99.5% yearly-average availability commitment in the terms — below modern market standard
• Infrastructure, data residency and plan resource limits are undocumented; PayPal-only billing; terms last updated 2013

Sources

• https://cloudno.de
• https://www.cloudno.de/about/
• https://www.cloudno.de/terms/
• https://microlog.org/
• https://cloudnode.readthedocs.io/en/latest/api.html
• https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/fwhxe5/most_optimal_hosting_for_a_nodejs_small_webapp/