5 Reliable MEAN Stack Hosting Platforms

The MEAN stack has become a popular open source technology for building dynamic web applications. MEAN stands for MongoDB, Express, AngularJS, and Node.js – four components that provide a simple yet powerful framework for full-stack JavaScript development.

If you‘re looking to host a MEAN stack application, choosing the right hosting platform is crucial. You need an infrastructure that is optimized for the MEAN stack and provides the performance, reliability, and scalability your app needs.

In this guide, we‘ll explore the top 5 MEAN stack hosting providers that offer robust and developer-friendly platforms for your MEAN apps.

Overview of the MEAN Stack

Before diving into the hosting options, let‘s briefly go over what the MEAN stack entails and why it has become a favorite for web development.

The MEAN stack allows you to build the entire application – front end, back end, database – using JavaScript and JSON across the stack. This brings simplicity, flexibility, and integration advantages compared to mixing different languages and frameworks.

Each component of the MEAN stack has a specific role:

MongoDB: A popular open source NoSQL database that stores data in flexible JSON documents. It is scalable, high performance and provides indexes, replication, etc.
Express: A minimal and flexible web application framework for Node.js. It simplifies development and provides robust features for building web apps and APIs.
AngularJS: A JavaScript MVC framework maintained by Google that handles front-end development. It simplifies building dynamic client-side apps using HTML and JavaScript.
Node.js: An asynchronous event-driven JavaScript runtime environment that runs on the server. It allows JavaScript to be used for server-side scripting and building fast network applications.

Together, these components enable developers to build high-performance web applications using JavaScript end-to-end. The MEAN stack is ideal for data-intensive real-time applications like social platforms, forums, online games etc.

Benefits of using the MEAN stack include:

Full JavaScript – simpler and unified codebase using one language
Real-time interaction – fast data syncing with MongoDB
Reusability – modular components and code sharing
Active community – open source tools with great documentation
Scalability – handle increasing traffic with horizontal scaling

Now let‘s look at some of the top MEAN stack hosting providers that can turbocharge your application.

MEAN Stack Hosting Platforms

1. MongoDB Atlas

MongoDB Atlas is a popular fully-managed cloud database service for modern applications. It is highly optimized for hosting MongoDB databases that power MEAN stack applications.

Some key advantages of Atlas for MEAN stack projects:

Built-in integration and tooling for MongoDB
Automated cluster monitoring, backups, security, etc.
Easy horizontal scaling with no downtime
Global cloud infrastructure across 70+ regions
Performance metrics and visual graphing of database queries
Secure network architecture and encryption
Integrated with all major cloud providers

Atlas streamlines MEAN stack development by handling time-consuming admin tasks like optimization, upgrades, scaling. You get a MongoDB as a service capable of handling workloads of any size.

Pricing is per GB of storage used starting at $0.005/GB. Various tiers are offered from free to enterprise-grade production support. Their pricing calculator helps estimate costs.

"We were able to launch our MVP so quickly thanks to MongoDB Atlas handling all our backend work like provisioning infrastructure and replication, securing and scaling clusters." – Robert Keel, CTO, Fizzle.co

2. Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure is a major cloud platform that offers fully managed MEAN stack hosting solutions.

Key features for MEAN stack deployments include:

Global datacenter regions across the world
Auto-scaling of MongoDB clusters to meet demand
Built-in CI/CD pipelines for smooth deployments
Single-click MEAN template deployment options
Monitoring tools for performance management
DDoS protection and enterprise-grade security
Integrations with Visual Studio, GitHub, Docker, and other platforms

Azure takes care of infrastructure, clustering, replication, and more so developers can focus solely on the application logic. You can start with a simple prototype on Azure and scale to full production.

Pricing is based on the underlying VMs, storage, and Azure services consumed. They offer a free trial to test drive Azure.

"We could deploy our MEAN application on Azure within minutes with no infrastructure headaches. It has more than met our performance and scalability expectations." – Mark Liu, Founder, Codeleaf

3. AWS

Amazon Web Services provides fully managed MEAN stack hosting solutions on its elastic cloud infrastructure.

Key benefits of AWS for MEAN applications include:

Global edge locations for low-latency deployments
Auto-scaling groups to handle traffic spikes
Managed load balancing and distributed caching
High availability across multiple data centers
Built-in security compliance and DDoS mitigation
Streamlined deployment pipelines with CodeDeploy
Monitoring and logging tools included

You can get started easily with a pre-built MEAN environment using AWS Elastic Beanstalk. It takes care of capacity provisioning, load balancing, scaling and application health monitoring.

AWS offers a pay-as-you-go model based on actual resources consumed. They provide an estimated cost calculator for planning.

"With AWS we could launch our MEAN app globally in minutes. We easily handle traffic spikes thanks to the auto-scaling and reduced latency." – Sam Han, CTO, Leesa.com

4. MEAN.JS

MEAN.JS is an open source full stack JavaScript platform built on top of the MEAN stack. It accelerates MEAN development by providing a structured framework and boilerplate code.

Advantages of using MEAN.JS include:

Standards-based architecture following proven patterns
Modular design allowing customizable components
Built-in user management and access control
Pre-configured for popular add-ons like databases
Easy deployment to various cloud platforms
Active community support for the framework

MEAN.JS allows you to focus on building features instead of wiring up the foundations each time. It comes with a cluster-ready production starter kit.

You can host MEAN.JS applications on any major cloud provider like AWS, Azure or Google Cloud. There are no costs for the framework itself.

"We used MEAN.JS to kickstart development and found it much faster than coding from scratch. The documentation and community really helped customize it to our needs." – Julia Thompson, CTO, Leap Club

5. Heroku

Heroku is a popular PaaS for hosting web apps. It has first-class support and optimized tools for MEAN application development.

Notable Heroku features for MEAN stacks include:

Automated and instant deployments from Git
Seamless scaling of dynos to meet demand
Add-ons like MongoDB Atlas with one click
Easy collaboration for teams with access control
Smooth delivery pipelines for continuous integration
Monitoring tools for tracking performance metrics
High availability and redundancy across data centers
SSL encryption set up by default

Heroku simplifies MEAN deployments so developers can focus on creating value for the application. The platform is designed for handling production workloads from prototype to enterprise scale.

Pricing is based on the compute resources consumed starting at free for limited use. Add-ons for databases and other services are priced separately.

"We went from concept to live MEAN app in days with Heroku‘s amazing workflows. Scaling has been effortless as our traffic has grown." – Steve Moyer, CTO, Lepto Sports

Choosing the Right MEAN Stack Host

When selecting a hosting platform for your MEAN application, here are some key factors to evaluate:

Performance – Ensure the infrastructure provides fast I/O, SSD storage, dedicated compute for optimal speed.

Scalability – Look for horizontal scaling to support sudden spikes in traffic and demand.

Reliability – Check for redundancy across data centers, failover systems, uptime history.

Security – Verify security measures like encryption, firewalls, VPNS, role-based access, etc.

Ease of use – Opt for simplified deployment flows, collaborative workflows, automation.

Support – Pick a provider with multiple support channels like live chat, phone, tickets.

Cost – Compare monthly costs across varying usage levels to find the best value.

Location – If targeting specific regions, ensure the host has datacenters nearby.

The best MEAN stack hosting provider balances these technical and business considerations for powering your application.

Optimizing Your MEAN Deployment

Once you have your MEAN stack app deployed and running, here are some tips for optimizing and securing it:

Load test early and often to catch bottlenecks before launch
Enable front-end and back-end caching to improve performance
Use CDNs to distribute assets and reduce server load
Monitor server metrics like CPU usage, memory, etc. and scale when needed
Make sure to index commonly queried fields in MongoDB
Follow security best practices like using HelmetJS middleware
Use environment variables instead of hardcoded secrets
Enable HTTPS everywhere using SSL certificates
Restrict database access to only authorized application servers
Implement rate limiting to prevent brute force attacks
Regularly update components to patch any vulnerabilities

Investing in continuous performance tuning and security hardening will ensure your MEAN app thrives at any scale.

Conclusion

The MEAN stack provides a robust JavaScript-based framework for crafting high-performance web apps. Finding a hosting platform tailored for MEAN stack deployments allows you to focus on writing great code rather than infrastructure management.

Atlas MongoDB, Microsoft Azure, AWS, MEAN.JS, and Heroku are leading solutions for MEAN hosting. Each offers advanced MEAN optimizations at global scale. Consider factors like performance requirements, reliability, ease of use, pricing, and scalability when picking your MEAN stack host.

By selecting the right hosting provider and following security best practices, you can build and launch your next big idea faster using the MEAN stack. The flexible and full JavaScript approach accelerated by today‘s managed cloud platforms allows small teams to rapidly deliver powerful web applications.