Runnable Sandboxes: Full-stack environments for every GitHub branch

1) You don't have to re-configure your environment variables and 3rd party APIs for each branch on Runnable. Every branch runs in the same sandboxed environment with the same env variables and 3rd party services. With the help of an HTTP proxy and a dynamic DNS server, we can route traffic to the right set of containers for the branch you want to test.

2) Runnable is built on Docker, which means all your configuration files and the way your containers are run is non-proprietary

3) You can connect arbitrary branches with each other for testing. So if you have a feature branch on a web server, and a feature branch on an api server - both can be connected easily through our web interface. This allows for cross-branch testing. Underneath the hood, we swap the IP address to connect the right containers together.

4) Our environments spin up much quicker than Heroku's. We build and run on the same machines so there are no network transfers and we can utilize build cache better.

5) Databases clone instantaneously with Runable, versus waiting minutes (depending on size). This because our build system applies Copy-on-Write to database containers

6) You can run end-to-end integration tests as your code is being pushed to a branch. Heroku only creates an environment when you're done coding and a pull request is open

Anyway, this is true we currently focus on the PHP market. Though you can already deploy nodejs applications (or a mix as we support complex multi-app clusters).

The platform itself is totally abstract so we will probably add in the near future many other run-times.

The main difference I think it would be interesting to point out is that Platform.sh is a production system... not a staging thing.

What we clone into staging is production .. with all the data.. however complex it is. And we do it really fast.

And we run production in a multi-datacenter / scalable / highly-available setup.

BTW we are hiring like crazy so if you want to work on your pet language having our features... contact me :) We are a fully distributed company... so u can be anywhere the world.

You don't have to run production on Runnable. We are complimentary to your existing prod system. Most of our customers run on AWS.

> Developers can pull individual components or services locally and connect to the rest of the stack on Runnable.

This sounds great, I wonder how this is done.

I am currently evaluating docker-cloud for the same purpose since all of our infrastructure is Dockerized. Can you comment on the differences?