The Complete Guide to Managed Redis Hosting

If you‘re building latency-sensitive web apps, Redis can supercharge performance as an in-memory data store serving over 100K requests per second. However, running stable, secure Redis deployments requires expertise that‘s hard to justify internally. This is where managed Redis cloud services come in.

By handling time-consuming tasks like provisioning, scaling, patching, backups and monitoring, managed Redis hosts allow your team to focus on development instead of operations.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the top 8 managed Redis providers and how they compare across core capabilities:

Overview of Managed Redis Hosting Benefits

Before diving into the options, let‘s recap the key reasons teams choose managed Redis hosting:

  • No ops overhead – Skip specialized Redis DBA hire and divert those resources to building apps. Let the provider handle admin tasks.
  • Performance at scale – Leverage expertise of Redis hosting providers to optimize, tune and scale environments way beyond what you could on your own.
  • High availability – Get resilience with cross-region replication, automated failover and clustered architectures standard.
  • Security – Managed hosts offer hardened environments with encryption, IAM controls, VPCs, firewalls and more.
  • Reliability – With automated backups, recovery guarantees and uptime SLAs over 99.9%, managed Redis minimizes risk.

Now let‘s explore leading solutions…

1. AWS ElastiCache

As a fully-managed cloud service, Amazon ElastiCache automates time-consuming administration tasks for Redis deployments while providing sub-millisecond latency and high throughput capacity.

Key capabilities:

  • Seamless scaling up to 3.55TB in memory capacity
  • Multi-AZ for high availability and automatic failover
  • Backups and restore capabilities
  • Security through VPC, IAM policies, SSL encryption
  • Monitoring integrated with CloudWatch

Use cases: Optimized for AWS cloud infrastructure workloads. Near universal compatibility.

Prerequisites: AWS account required. Management via CloudFormation templates.

Performance: Up to 10 Gbps+ throughput tested. Sub-millisecond reads/writes.

Uptime SLA: No exact number guaranteed but instances have operated at over 99.9% availability historically thanks to multi-AZ redundancy.

Support: Available 24/7 from AWS with option for 1-on-one Technical Support via Enterprise Support plans.

Pricing: Pay per hour based on instance type and memory capacity, starts at $0.017 per hour.

As a seamless extension of AWS‘s platform, ElastiCache is a smart choice if you are already hosting applications using EC2, Lambda or other services, allowing you to easily integrate Redis caching with the rest of your cloud infrastructure.

2. Redis Labs

With expertise from the developers of open-source Redis, Redis Labs offers the most comprehensive managed Redis via all major cloud providers including AWS, GCP and Azure. It provides an enterprise-ready hosting solution trusted by over 2,600+ customers.

Key capabilities:

  • Clustering and replication for 99.999% uptime SLA
  • Advanced security protecting against attacks
  • Automated failover with multi-zone replication
  • Module support for added functionality like search, graphs etc.
  • Real-time monitoring and alerting

Use cases: Mission-critical apps needing scalability, security and high resiliency.

Prerequisites: Account with cloud platform like AWS required.

Performance: Over 500k ops/sec tested. Sub-millisecond latency.

Uptime SLA: 99.999% guaranteed as committed in SLA.

Support: 24/7 expert support with < 60 min response times.

Pricing: Subscription model based on memory bandwidth usage, starts at $0.09/GB

If you require enterprise-scale Redis with no compromises on performance, resilience or security policy controls, Redis Labs is the leading managed hosting provider used by over 30% of the Fortune 500.

3. ScaleGrid

ScaleGrid is a fully managed database hosting platform focused specifically on Redis and other NoSQL databases like MongoDB. With auto-scaling, monitoring, and backups, it simplifies running large Redis clusters.

Key capabilities:

  • Automated provisioning of Redis clusters
  • Persistence and replication configurations
  • Advanced monitoring and analytics dashboard
  • Automatic failover and backups
  • Security through SSL, firewalls, IAM roles
  • Integrations with AWS, on-premise or hybrid

Use cases: Cloud native apps needing Redis platform expertise. AWS/GCP optimized.

Prerequisites: Works standalone or integrated with AWS/GCP cloud account.

Performance: Over 100k ops/sec based on Rockset benchmark tests.

Uptime SLA: 99.95% guaranteed uptime.

Support: 24/7 expert support with mins response time.

Pricing: Starts at $29 per month with annual billing.

For teams that want a straightforward, purpose-built Redis hosting solution without the complexity, ScaleGrid is a cost-effective fully-managed platform with DevOps integrations.

4. DigitalOcean Managed Databases

DigitalOcean recently launched Managed Databases, combining simplicity and transparency with essentials like high availability, monitoring, automated scaling and more for Redis environments.

Key capabilities:

  • Instant provisioning with simplified setup
  • Automated scaling, failover and daily backups
  • Granular access controls and VPC support
  • Performance metrics and utilization reporting
  • Alerting for critical events via email/SMS

Use cases: Redis workloads on DigitalOcean. Streamlined simplicity.

Prerequisites: DigitalOcean account required.

Performance: Up to 18.7M requests/sec tested. <10 ms reads/writes.

Uptime SLA: 99.9% uptime guaranteed.

Support: 24/7 ticket, email and chat support.

Pricing: Charged hourly based on memory, starts at $15/month.

For Redis caching on DigitalOcean, the Managed Databases service provides a turnkey solution without the DevOps overhead.

5. Compose (IBM Cloud)

Compose by IBM provides fully-managed, enterprise-ready Redis on IBM Cloud, AWS, or GCP with security, high availability configurations and expert support all included.

Key capabilities:

  • Automated provisioning, scaling, backups
  • Dashboard monitoring and alerting
  • TLS/SSL encryption and isolated VPCs
  • Global redundancy across regions/clouds
  • Tuning, optimization and 24/7 expert support

Use cases: Enterprise Redis workloads needing IBM-grade security, resilience. Integration with other IBM data platform offerings.

Prerequisites: Cloud account with IBM/AWS/GCP required.

Performance: Over 100k ops/sec based on YCSB cloud database benchmark.

Uptime SLA: 99.95% monthly uptime guaranteed.

Support: 24/7 support with < 15 minute response time.

Pricing: Starts at $20 per month billed hourly.

As a robust Redis platform trusted by enterprises, Compose offers fully automated deployments, security configurations fine-tuned for compliance, and high availability safeguards to minimize disruption.

6. Aiven for Redis

Aiven provides fully-managed Redis through 11+ public cloud data centers globally. With extensive automation, it enables multi-cloud Redis deployments with built-in high availability.

Key capabilities:

  • Fully-managed deployments on GCP, AWS, Azure etc.
  • Automatic scaling, failover and daily backups
  • Integrated monitoring, alerting dashboards
  • Client libraries for Java, Python, JS, Go
  • Hardened security including SSL

Use cases: Multi-cloud capable Redis hosting. Global scale.

Prerequisites: Cloud account with platform like GCP required.

Performance: Up to 99k ops/sec based on Redis benchmark tests.

Uptime SLA: 100% uptime SLA guarantee contractually assured.

Support: 24/7 team available for troubleshooting.

Pricing: Starts at $75 per month based on usage.

Aiven allows you to standardize on Redis, migrating seamlessly across cloud platforms as needed while they handle provisioning, scaling, security policy enforcement and more.

7. Kamatera Cloud

Kamatera Cloud offers a fully-managed Redis service on its high-performance cloud platform, automating tasks like provisioning, scaling, backups and more.

Key capabilities:

  • Server instances with up to 4 AMD EPYC 7702P cores
  • Configurable RAM from 2GB to 64GB
  • Backups and point-in-time restore
  • Role-based access control and private networks
  • Persistence, replication and clustering

Use cases: Cost-effective fully-managed Redis

Prerequisites: Kamatera Cloud platform account

Performance: Over 100k ops/sec tested

Uptime SLA: 99.95% uptime guaranteed

Support: 24/7 expert-level support

Pricing: Starts at $4 per month with hourly billing

For budget-friendly yet fully-managed Redis with security, backups and monitoring included, Kamatera Cloud is very affordable while still providing automation to offload management.

8. Tencent Cloud TRedis

Based in China, Tencent Cloud offers fully-managed Redis with high resiliency, durability, and hardened security. With self-healing replication, cloning, O&M and monitoring, it eases management.

Key capabilities:

  • Auto scaling from 1GB to 1000GB memory
  • Data persistence with replication groups
  • Monitoring, alerting, slow log analytics
  • Integrated management platform
  • Security via VPC, access control and more

Use cases: Development teams based in China/Asia. Budget balancing functionality + cost.

Prerequisites: Tencent Cloud account required

Performance: Up to 100k ops tested

Uptime SLA: 99.95% uptime guaranteed contractually

Support: Technical support, documentation available

Pricing: Starts around $30 per month billed hourly

Tencent Cloud cost-effectively balances functionality with managed capabilities to simplify Redis hosting and scaling for regional China/Asia apps.


Key Takeaways on Managed Redis Hosting

While the leading managed Redis providers have similarities, considering the differences across integrations, use cases pricing models and features enables you to find the right fit for your application workloads. Requiring no upfront CapEx spend and engineered for high scalability, security and resilience, they provide turnkey data caching layers to boost performance.

By leveraging these purpose-built managed Redis cloud services instead of doing it yourself, you can focus on rapid innovation that moves the needles for customers rather than backend plumbing. The time and money saved allows stretching development resources further than otherwise possible.