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Catalyst by Zoho VS Serverless

Compare Catalyst by Zoho VS Serverless and see what are their differences

Catalyst by Zoho logo Catalyst by Zoho

Catalyst is a full-stack cloud-based serverless development platform. It helps developers quickly build and deploy applications and microservices at scale. Start building for free and pay when you deploy to production.

Serverless logo Serverless

Toolkit for building serverless applications
  • Catalyst by Zoho Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-05

Catalyst is a full-stack cloud-based serverless development tool that provides backend functionalities to build microservices and applications in various platforms. Catalyst adapts a BaaS (Backend as a Service) model and provides pre-written, universal, server-side components from a unified interface as programmable elements. Catalyst allows developers to focus more on designing the user experience of the serverless applications, instead of investing time and effort into setting up and maintaining the server-side components. You can deploy applications and microservices at scale, while we take care of everything else—drastically reducing your development cycle and operational costs.

What can you build with Catalyst?
Catalyst provides three major components: - Backend as a Service - Function as a Service - WebClient Hosting - AL/ML Solutions - Chatbots - Headless Browsers

These pre-built services coupled with other Catalyst tools like, push notifications and emails, authentication, Advanced AI solutions and more provide a complete serverless suite for app development.

By leveraging these pre-built services you can build several microservices and reduce the time to launch. Here are some common use cases:

  • Build fully customized web and mobile applications
  • Build REST APIs that can serve as the integration for various applications, on both web and mobile
  • Build data processing pipelines that run in the background as a microservice for things like data migration and data analysis
  • Serverless Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-06

Catalyst by Zoho features and specs

  • Event functions
  • HTTP functions
  • User Authentication
  • API Gateway
  • Automated ML
  • Web Client Hosting
  • Circuits
  • Data store
  • File store
  • Cache
  • Cron functions
    Yes

Serverless features and specs

  • Scalability
    Serverless architectures can automatically scale up or down based on the traffic, without the need for manual intervention.
  • Cost Efficiency
    You only pay for what you use. There are no expenses for idle times because billing is based on the actual amount of resources consumed by your application.
  • Reduced Maintenance
    No need to manage, patch, update, or monitor servers. This allows focus on writing code and deploying features.
  • Speed of Development
    Serverless platforms provide built-in integration with other services, which makes it quicker to develop and deploy applications.
  • High Availability
    Serverless platforms typically offer high availability and fault tolerance out of the box, reducing the risk of downtime.

Possible disadvantages of Serverless

  • Cold Start Latency
    Serverless functions can suffer from higher latency during initial invocation or when they haven’t been used for a while.
  • Limited Execution Time
    Most serverless platforms impose a maximum execution time limit on functions, which may not be suitable for long-running applications.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Serverless architectures often rely on the specific features and services of a cloud provider, which can make it difficult to switch providers.
  • Complexity in Debugging
    Debugging and monitoring serverless applications can be more challenging compared to traditional architectures, due to their distributed and ephemeral nature.
  • Security Concerns
    Sharing resources on a serverless platform can introduce security vulnerabilities that must be managed vigilantly.

Analysis of Serverless

Overall verdict

  • Serverless is a good choice for developers who want to focus more on writing code rather than managing servers. It is well-suited for scenarios where scalability, cost-efficiency, and rapid deployment are critical. However, it might not be the best option for applications with high execution duration or complex dependencies that require low-latency network access or specialized hardware.

Why this product is good

  • Serverless (provided by serverless.com) is a popular framework for building applications that leverage serverless architecture, which eliminates the need for server management and minimizes overhead. It allows developers to deploy functions without worrying about the underlying infrastructure, scaling automatically according to demand. This streamlines the deployment process, reduces operational costs, and accelerates development timelines.

Recommended for

  • Startups and small businesses looking to minimize infrastructure costs.
  • Developers focusing on microservices and event-driven architectures.
  • Teams needing rapid prototyping and development cycles.
  • Applications with variable workloads and unpredictable traffic patterns.

Catalyst by Zoho videos

Catalyst - Zoho's Serverless Platform

Serverless videos

Thoughts on Zero V3, Instant Page and Serverless 1.37!

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Catalyst by Zoho and Serverless)
Developer Tools
11 11%
89% 89
Cloud Computing
100 100%
0% 0
Open Source
0 0%
100% 100
Cloud Hosting
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Serverless seems to be a lot more popular than Catalyst by Zoho. While we know about 39 links to Serverless, we've tracked only 3 mentions of Catalyst by Zoho. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Catalyst by Zoho mentions (3)

  • Looking for a Heroku alternative? Try the Catalyst Free Trial today!
    If you are looking for free resources to move your demo projects, look no further. Catalyst by Zoho could be the one-stop solution for all your application development needs. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Looking for a Heroku Alternative? Check out Catalyst Free Trial
    Are you still wondering why Catalyst by Zoho is your go-to solution when you have multiple other Heroku alternatives? Here are my favorite reasons:. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Join the Serverless Masterclass webinar to learn about 2022's key web app development trends
    Catalyst by Zoho is hosting a series of Serverless Masterclass webinars that explore the latest trends, digitization and the benefits of switching from server to serverless. Source: about 3 years ago

Serverless mentions (39)

  • Show HN: Winglang – a new Cloud-Oriented programming language
    GP may have been referring to Serverless Framework (http://serverless.com//). - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Invocation error - can't find any results helping me to solve this issue
    I deployed a lambda and http api gateway using a serverless.com (sls) template as a start. I get the following error when it processes a specific request:. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Deploying Lambdas from Zipped Code on S3 vs Image Repository
    Have you tried serverless.com ? It lets you have infrastructure as code. Source: over 2 years ago
  • [p] I built an open source platform to deploy computationally intensive Python functions as serverless jobs, with no timeouts
    - With Lambda, you manage creating and building the container yourself, as well as updating the Lambda function code. There are tools out there such as sst or serverless.com which help streamline this. Source: over 2 years ago
  • AWS Lambda, a good host for a rest API?
    If you'd like to use Lambda, usually you need to engineer FOR it, from day one, you don't (often) get to choose some other framework and shoehorn it into Lambda and Serverless. There's some great frameworks to help deploy code into Lambda easily and create REST endpoints for things, one such frameworks is serverless.com that helps easily deploy to it, but it lacks a framework for doing REST that also supports... Source: over 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Catalyst by Zoho and Serverless, you can also consider the following products

AWS Lambda - Automatic, event-driven compute service

Nimbella - Simple serverless cloud for developers

Firebase - Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications for mobile and web.

Webiny - The Enterprise CMS platform that you can host on your cloud

Up by apex - Deploy serverless apps and APIs in seconds to AWS Lambda

Netlify Build Plugins - Optimize your site & boost developer workflow at every build