Next generation, auto-sizing PaaS
Featuring
Standard stacks
Enscale runs your code on standard industry leading software stacks such as Apache Tomcat, Nginx, GlassFish, WildFly, TomEE, mod_php, PHP-FPM, Passenger, Puma, or Unicorn.
Combined with standard database server instances (dedicated instances exclusively for you) such as MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Neo4j, and OrientDB.
Run legacy software and off the shelf frameworks without any awkward hacks or expensive code refactoring.
Git integration
Pull your latest code changes right from any git or svn server; but if version control isn't your thing, you can simply deploy a zip archive or war file. Deployment your way - even via SSH or FTP/FTPS!
You're up and running in seconds thanks to our preconfigured servers, but you can edit all major config. files to optimise for your particular needs - php.ini, server.xml, my.cnf, httpd.conf, nginx.conf - even install your own custom modules.
Regular backups
4 backups per day - every 6 hours - less data loss and disruption to your business. Our rapid backup restoration gets you up and running more quickly too.
Easy to grow
Enscale constantly resizes your servers to always fit your usage perfectly like a glove. Unexpected traffic spikes are no longer a problem - your servers automatically grow to handle the extra load, and then shrink back down again to keep your costs low.
Zero-touch setup. It's completely automatic, and transparent to your application and your users. No delays, no fuss, no downtime.
Multiple service regions
Each environment you launch runs from our ISO27001 accredited (UK and Singapore), or SSAE-16 SOC2 audited (Arizona, USA) datacentres - choose the region for each separate Enscale environment from the dashboard. Each environment runs exclusively from the selected region (full data sovereignty control).
Each Enscale region is backed by the latest generation enterprise grade pure SSD hardware, ready to power your applications to success.
Comprehensive SLA
Every part of our service is backed by industry-leading SLA guarantees ensuring impeccable service quality - backups, support, uptime - it's all included in our SLAs.
Fair Pricing
How we charge
Our unique automatic vertical scaling feature means your server always fits your resource needs like a glove, saving up to 80% in resource costs vs. the competition.
How other providers charge
Most other providers sell servers by instance size - you're wasting money on resources you're not using, and you can never (safely) use 100% of the resources with instance size pricing; you always pay for extra headroom above your real usage.
Switch to Enscale PaaS to pay by usage, not server size
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What does it cost?
We charge everything by hourly resource usage (against a pre-paid balance - no surprise bills!), for 4 simple resources:
RAM & CPU consumption (cloudlets)
Graduated pricing, from just £1.90/cloudlet per month (£0.0026 per hour).
Disk usage
Your first 10GB (SSD) storage per environment is free. Any usage above that is charged at 5p/GB per month (0.0068p per hour).
The filesystem is persistent (not ephemeral) so everything you write there is safe and survives a reboot!
Network traffic
Internal traffic between servers within your environment is always free.
The first 2GB Internet traffic every hour (approx. 1.4TB/month) is also free! Any usage above that is charged at 5p - 10p per GB (depending on volume).
Public IP address
By default, each request is proxied via the Enscale shared resolver. For production hosting we recommend to use a public IP so traffic is routed to your environment without any potential bottleneck. Also required for custom SSL certificates.
Public IP is £2/month (£0.00274 per hour). Your public IP is static, so it remains the same even when restarting your environment.
Customer testimonials
I would just like to express my gratitude and say a big thank you for all your efforts on the transfer of our domains from UKFast. The transfer was very smooth and all issues were resolved during the process. The users have reported no errors and no loss of service so it is a success.
Bruce TomalinWeb Developer - Excel Publishing Ltd
The service Layershift offer is outstanding. I always receive quick and courteous replies and the solutions provided actually work. They can count on me as a guaranteed long-term customer. I've already started moving all the websites I host somewhere else to Layershift - I couldn't find any other hosting provider that could do things better.
They have taken server management to a higher level, I am very impressed!
Director - Shop247.com, Inc.
We've used Layershift for a few years now and they have proven to be a very fast and reliable hosting company.
We switched from an expensive dedicated server from another company to the Layershift Cloud VPS and it's fitted our needs perfectly with great reliability and excellent customer support.
I love the fact that you can directly email the support team for a quick response rather than having to set up tickets.
Developer - Arbtech Consulting Ltd
We have had several bad experiences with hosting companies over the years and have found time after time that the customer service was absolutely dreadful - not the case with Layershift!
Their team are super friendly and reply in record time to our questions or queries. All the support staff have displayed incredible attitudes, efficiency and dedication to providing excellent customer service.
Layershift repeatedly go above and beyond the duties...
Project Manager - Start Up Active
Layershift was recommended to us a few years ago when we were looking for fast, reliable servers and infrastructure and top rate support, and they have more than lived up to that reputation. Their engineers are knowledgeable, efficient and very helpful, and often go way beyond the call of duty to help us.
It's hugely reassuring to be able to leave our server management in such expert hands, and Layershift's consistently exceptional service means we can rely on...
Founder & CEO - Swagger & Swoon
Apart from the usual teething problems, it's all gone really well and we would like to say a big thank you to you and the tech support guys who are brilliant.
The servers seem to be much faster and it's very re-assuring to know you're on hand to help.
Quite brilliant - thank you so much for simplifying a process that looked complex and in fact was very easy. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction - not sure what I would do without your support.
Your support and service is the tops!
Founder - in-syte
We inherited our relationship with Layershift after buying out another company and have been amazed at the level of service we have received. The support provided during what was a very hectic period for us was nothing short of exceptional. Our queries have always been picked up promptly and dealt with diligently. Working with Layershift has been breath of fresh air compared to the many other providers we have worked with previously.
Tim JarrettMD - Jarrett & Lam Consulting
I have been a Layershift customer for over 6 years. During this time they've never let me down and I have come to learn that their fine staff are pretty darn smart. It's refreshing to communicate with a tech support staff that really understands computers.
Computers will always have issues, but in those rare instances their response has been quick and more importantly complete.
Owner - Walden Pond Design
I have used Layershift for our business hosting since 2008. I find their service reliable, their prices competitive and their support excellent.
I use a number of hosting services for various projects but have found none compare to the quality I receive from Layershift which is the reason I continue to use them day after day for my core business operations.
Director - Bludelta
Frequently asked questions
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Do you offer a free trial?
Yes, we offer a free 14-day trial to allow you to experience our innovative Enscale PaaS.
Just enter your email address above to get started (no credit card required!)
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What are the trial restrictions?
During your free trial, you can create the following:
- Up to 4 environments
- Up to 2 load balanced or HA web / application servers (e.g. Apache, Tomcat, GlassFish) per environment
- Maximum cloudlet scaling limit is capped at 8GB RAM & 25.6GHz CPU (64 cloudlets) per server
Public IP addresses, custom SSL, Docker, and our Elastic VPS feature are only available on paid accounts.
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What is an Enscale environment?
Enscale groups your servers into environments. This is just a collection of servers all devoted to serving the same application(s) or website(s); Enscale automatically configures links between these servers on your behalf (for example, if you have a load balancer, it's automatically configured to send traffic to the web servers within the same environment).
Each server within your Enscale environment is dedicated 100% to you - you don't share with any other customer - meaning that you always enjoy maximum performance, flexibility, and security.
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Can you help me to migrate my application to Enscale?
Our expert migration team can migrate any number of websites or web applications to your new Enscale PaaS account!
Simply contact our support team after signing up for our Enscale PaaS and they'll help you get started!
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Can I host multiple domains?
Enscale is intended for large single domain hosting inside each environment, however it is possible to host multiple domains by creating multiple separate environments, or inside a single environment by configuring virtual hosts in your web server configuration. Our friendly support team can help you to set this up.
If you are planning to host a large number of small domains on a single environment we recommend our Cloud VPS range as a more appropriate solution, which is designed to efficiently support multiple-domains on one server.
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Does Enscale offer email hosting?
We recommend that you integrate your scripts with a specialist transactional email provider for best deliverability and operability (mail related debugging). Whilst we can't recommend a specific third party service, existing customers are using services provided by the likes of Mailjet, Mailgun, and Sendgrid - all of these offer free tiers for low volume use, and if necessary your servers can be configured to use their services as an SMTP relay (no code changes required to your scripts).
If you still wish to send emails directly from your server (not recommended), sendmail is installed and available to use on all application server nodes (disabled on trial accounts for abuse reasons). You should also add a public IP (not available on trial accounts) to your node(s).
Inbound email functionality (i.e. mailboxes) is currently outside of the scope of our Enscale PaaS. You can point your MX records to an external email service such as Google Apps, Outlook.com
If you're looking for a fully integrated service with Web, Database, Email and DNS you may want to consider our Cloud VPS range as an alternative.
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What resources do I pay for with Enscale?
All Enscale costs are based on usage not allocation - meaning you pay for resources consumed, and not for requesting that resources are made available to you (how it works elsewhere).
There are only 4 resources you have to pay for on our Enscale PaaS:
- Cloudlets
- Disk space (first 10GB is free!)
- Traffic (first 2GB/hour - approx. 1.4TB/month - is free!)
- Public IP addresses
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What is a cloudlet?
A cloudlet is a composite billing unit comprised of 128MB RAM and 400 MHz CPU. Each Enscale server has multiple cloudlets assigned to it, e.g. 8 cloudlets would give you 1GB RAM and 3.2GHz CPU power.
The number of cloudlets assigned to your servers at any one time varies based on the resource demands of your application.
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How do I know my cloudlet usage?
You can view real-time cloudlet consumption in the dashboard alongside your environment, and each individual server within it.
The dashboard also shows real-time graphs of CPU, RAM, network, and disk space consumption for each server within your Enscale environments.
You'll be surprised how little resources you actually use to run your application.
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How much does a cloudlet cost?
Our cloudlet pricing includes an automatic volume discount. When configuring your environment, you have the opportunity to set 2 separate cloudlet limits for each server:
1. Reserved Cloudlets
You commit to pay for these cloudlets (unless your environment is stopped) irrespective of your actual usage. Reserved Cloudlets have bigger discounts:
Reserved Cloudlets Cost per Reserved Cloudlet Per Hour Per Month* Discount 1 - 7 £0.0055 £3.96 15% RAM: 128MB - 896MB
CPU: 400MHz - 2.8GHz8 - 15 £0.0049 £3.53 25% RAM: 1GB - 1.8GB
CPU: 3.2GHz - 6GHz16+ £0.0046 £3.28 30% RAM: 2GB+
CPU: 6.4GHz+128+ £0.0026 £1.90 60% RAM: 16GiB+
CPU: 51.2GHz+2. Dynamic Cloudlets
These cloudlets are automatically added and removed from your servers in real-time based on your resource demands, up to your maximum scaling limit.
You only pay for Dynamic Cloudlets based on your real usage.
Dynamic Cloudlets Cost per Dynamic Cloudlet Per Hour Per Month* Discount 1 - 7 £0.0065 £4.68 - RAM: 128MB - 896MB
CPU: 400MHz - 2.8GHz8 - 15 £0.0059 £4.21 10% RAM: 1GB - 1.8GB
CPU: 3.2GHz - 6GHz16+ £0.0052 £3.74 20% RAM: 2GB+
CPU: 6.4GHz+* 30 day (720 hour) month
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How many cloudlets do I need?
That's exactly the point - you can't know this in advance. That's why buying resource allocations is a bad idea, and why it's much better to pay for your actual resource usage instead - by using our Enscale PaaS (so you don't need to predict the future!).
The best way to see how much resources your application actually needs is to try it on our platform. You can do it right now using our free 14 day trial.
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How do I control my budget?
You can set a maximum scaling limit for each server in your environment. This limits the maximum amount of resources your application can use (but it may run slowly or crash if there's not enough - just like any other server), and hence also limits your costs.
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How much does disk space cost?
We include 10GB disk space free per environment. Additional disk space costs just 5p/month per GB.
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How much does external / internet traffic cost?
We include 2GB internet traffic free every hour (around 1.4TB per month). Additional traffic costs just 5-10p/month per GB, depending on volume.
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How much does internal traffic cost?
All internal data transfer between servers in our Enscale PaaS is free of charge when using your private IP addresses.
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How much are public IP addresses?
£2/month per IP (you can optionally add 1 public IP per server - you usually only need 1 public IP per environment; e.g. on your load balancer or web server).
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Can I deploy applications using git or svn?
Yes! Enscale has full integration with git and svn, including support for git submodules and automated deployment (you can define the deployment schedule).
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Can I upload and deploy applications via the dashboard?
Yes! You can upload applications manually via the deployment manager in your Enscale Dashboard. These files can be in zip, war or ear format and can be deployed to any new and existing environments you have.
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Can I manage my servers using FTP / FTP-SSL (FTPS)?
Yes, you can connect to Enscale using FTP / FTP-SSL (FTPS), but this feature is only available on paid accounts with the public IP feature enabled.
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Can I access the servers via SSH?
Yes! Learn how.
The Enscale dashboard also provides you with full access to edit major service configuration files (e.g. server.xml, php.ini, my.cnf, httpd.conf) right from your browser.
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Which control panel do you offer?
Enscale includes a highly innovative control panel which allows you to create an environment, and deploy your own multiple server infrastructure in just a few clicks. There's no control panel with the same features already out there, so this is bespoke.
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Which Java application servers and JDK versions do you support?
We support Java (Tomcat, Jetty) and JavaEE (TomEE, Glassfish, WildFly) with JDK 6, JDK 7, and JDK 8.
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Which PHP application servers and versions do you support?
We support Apache (mod_php) and Nginx (PHP-FPM) with PHP versions 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, and PHP 7
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What database servers do you support?
We support both SQL (MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL (MongoDB, CouchDB, Cassandra, Redis) database servers. We also support graph databases such as Neo4j, and OrientDB.
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Do you support load-balancing?
Yes, you can enable and deploy a fully configurable Nginx load-balancer easily via the dashboard in just two clicks!
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Do you support caching?
Yes, we support both Memcached (application cache and session replication), and the Nginx load-balancer can be enabled as a reverse proxy server with caching capabilities.
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Can I run scheduled tasks?
Yes, we have full support for cron. You can easily edit your crontab using the Enscale Dashboard, or via SSH.
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Can I edit the server configuration files?
You have full access to edit configuration files for all of your application servers. Our support team will be glad to advise you if you need any assistance with tuning these files.
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What if I want to use software not supported by Enscale?
You can add an Elastic VPS to your Enscale environment (paid accounts only). This provides a plain, CentOS Enterprise Linux server with full root SSH access for you to install and run any software you need. Elastic VPS resource usage is charged in exactly the same way (cloudlets) as the other Enscale PaaS servers.
Please note that the Elastic VPS is a completely self-managed server and it is your responsibility to maintain and secure the server.
The concept behind the Enscale PaaS is to free you from the headaches of server administration, so if there is a critical feature or function missing we would love to hear from you so we can consider adding this functionality to Enscale in the future.
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Can I use SSL certificates with Enscale?
Yes, you can install your own SSL certificate on Enscale. We recommend buying an SSL certificate from Layershift for Enscale as we can install and manage this for you free of charge. Alternatively, you can buy an SSL certificate from your preferred vendor and install this yourself via our Enscale dashboard.
You will need to enable a public IP address on your load-balancer or web/application server to use an SSL certificate.
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Can I share access to my environment with my developer?
Yes! You can share selected environments with your colleagues or a third-party developer, and optionally give them permission to create new environments on your account.
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Is the platform fully managed?
Yes, we fully manage your Enscale infrastructure in accordance with our competitor-busting SLA. We give you direct access to configuration files for your application servers (e.g. php.ini, my.cnf, etc.), so you can customise your configuration at any time whilst we manage the platform behind the scenes to ensure maximum platform reliability.
Our support team are available 24x7x365 to assist you if you need any advice tuning your configuration files.
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Do you backup my data?
Backups are included free of charge and without storage limits. We take backups 4 times per day and keep a copy of your backups for 14 days giving you 56 individual restore points.
All backups are stored on our secure private backup network which is completely isolated from customers' services. Our backup system provides regular system snapshots using a highly sophisticated incremental backup mechanism. This minimises the amount of load placed on your system during the backup process such that there is no noticeable impact to server performance.
Restores are available free of charge 24x7x365 via our support team who will manage the process for you to ensure the fastest and most successful recovery.
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How is Enscale billed?
By default all Enscale PaaS accounts are prepaid, so you avoid the risk of any surprise bills. Simply purchase account credits in £10 blocks or more. Usage charges are debited from your account balance on an hourly basis (in arrears).
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What payment options do you provide / accept?
We accept all major international debit and credit cards including Visa, Mastercard, American Express and JCB. Additionally, we accept payments via PayPal (verified accounts only) and via bank transfer (payment of £100+).
You can optionally configure Enscale to automatically refill your account balance using your credit card or PayPal payment agreement whenever your balance drops below a configurable threshold.
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Is there a minimum contract period?
We have no minimum contract period. We are confident you will be completely satisfied with us, so we have no lock-in of any kind! Your prepaid account credit can be used for Enscale services without any obligation to make any further payment.
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Do you offer domain registration services?
Yes, we support registration / transfer of all major domain extensions. Full information is available on the domain names page of our website.
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Do you sell SSL certificates and Trust Logos?
Yes, we offer a wide range of SSL certificates and can offer bundled or separate Trust Logos through our partnerships with GeoTrust, Comodo and Symantec. For more information please see this page.
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How long have you been in the industry?
We have been providing high-quality managed hosting services since 2001 through globally reaching services in the UK, USA and Singapore.
Our team of virtualisation and hosting industry professionals have a strong focus on end-to-end excellence in all aspects of the company, from infrastructure through to our renowned technical support service and customer experience, delivering exceptionally high customer satisfaction.
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How satisfied are your customers?
We invite all customers to rate every response from our technical support, billing and SSL certificate teams; our average rating for 2012 was 97.3%, 2013 it was 97.4%, and 2014 was 97.3% - our customers consistently love us! For transparency, we publish our independently-verified, real-time support rating on our testimonials page with a selection of customer testimonials.
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Where are your offices?
Our Global Headquarters are located in Manchester, UK. Our datacentres are located in Europe (Manchester, UK), North America (Arizona and Chicago, USA) and Asia (Singapore) and we have a Technology Centre in CEE (Cluj-Napoca, Romania). Our friendly staff are available to help you around the clock!
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Where is Enscale hosted?
The Enscale PaaS offers you the choice of 4 datacentre regions:
- Manchester, UK
- Arizona, USA
- Chicago, USA
- Singapore
Please let us know where you'd like to see our service next!