Exoscale sells European cloud building blocks your engineers assemble. Pilae delivers the open-source apps already operated — deployed, backed up, restore-tested every month and changed only with your approval.
- What they sell
- Compute, GPUs, managed Kubernetes (SKS), DBaaS, object and block storage
- Their zones
- Geneva, Zurich, Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna (two), Sofia, Zagreb
- Their certifications
- ISO 27001 and BSI C5, as stated on their site
- Their support
- Best effort included; 24/7 with 30-minute response on the Enterprise plan
- What we sell
- Operated open-source or source-available apps, on your premises or in Pilae Cloud
- Migration included
- Yes, at a fixed price agreed before it starts
What each one actually covers
Thirteen things an open-source estate needs done. Their column is filled in from www.exoscale.com.
| Capability | Exoscale | Pilae |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy | ||
| One-click deploy from a curated cataloguePick the app, name the users, and it is sized, provisioned and running. | Partly | Yes |
| Migration onto the platform, run for youYour data out of the system it is in today, rehearsed before it is cut over. | No | Yes |
| SSO and identity wired into each appKeycloak, Entra ID, Google Workspace or Okta, configured on the app itself. | No | Yes |
| Keep it current | ||
| Updates applied for you, not just announcedThe release is read, staged and applied. You are not the one doing it. | Partly | Yes |
| Per-app CVE and advisory trackingThe advisory, the affected version and the fix version, per app you run. | No | Yes |
| Changes land in a window you approvedYour timezone, your hours, agreed before anything is touched. | Partly | Yes |
| Staged and checked before productionThe upgrade runs somewhere safe first, and the checks have to pass. | No | Yes |
| Prove it | ||
| Restore drills, not just backupsThe backup is restored on a schedule, because an untested backup is a hope. | Partly | Yes |
| A record of every restoreWho restored what, from which file, into which service, and whether it worked. | No | Yes |
| A change log an auditor can readEvery action, the person who took it, the outcome, inside your perimeter. | Partly | Yes |
| See it | ||
| Monitoring and alerting on the appsNot just the host: the application, its checks, and someone who answers. | Partly | Yes |
| Logs and metrics exported to your stackOpenTelemetry, or straight into the SIEM your security team already runs. | Partly | Yes |
| Run it | ||
| An agent that operates the estate with youAsk for a change in words; it plans it, shows you, and waits for approval. | No | Yes |
Pilae vs Exoscale, in words
A tick says whether something is covered. These say how.
| What is being compared | Exoscale | Pilae |
|---|---|---|
| What you are buying | Infrastructure services, billed by use, that your team assembles and runs. | The applications on top, operated by Pilae engineers, on a plan quoted on request. |
| Who operates the app | You do. Exoscale runs the platform and the managed databases underneath. | Pilae does — deployment, updates, backups, monitoring and incident response on the app itself. |
| When an update lands | DBaaS maintenance runs in a weekly window you set. Everything you deploy updates when you update it. | The Pilae Agent plans each change, waits for your approval, applies it in your window and records it. |
| Identity | IAM for access to the Exoscale platform. SSO on each app you deploy is yours to configure. | Each app wired to your directory, through Keycloak or Entra ID, as part of onboarding. |
| Proving a backup works | Automated backups on DBaaS. Restoring and testing the rest is your procedure. | Daily encrypted offsite backups, and a restore test every month, recorded in the console. |
| What your auditor reads | An audit trail of API changes to your Exoscale resources, kept 30 days or exported to your bucket. | A record of every change to each app — what, who approved it, when, and the outcome — in the console. |
| Where it runs | Eight zones in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria and Croatia. | Your premises, or any of 12 Pilae Cloud regions, six of them in Switzerland and the EU, hybrid or air-gapped. |
You ask for the change. The agent does the work.
Pilae Agent runs inside your perimeter and proposes each change as a plan you read before it runs. Nothing lands without your approval, and every action goes into the same change log as ours.
“Give the finance team their own Metabase, for eleven people”
Provisions it, sizes it from the headcount, wires sign-on to your directory, and hands back a URL.
“Keep every backup of this estate in Switzerland”
Checks where each app writes its backups today, repoints the ones that do not stay in the country, and restores from the new location to prove it.
Building blocks, or the finished service
Exoscale is a good European cloud. It offers instances, GPUs, managed Kubernetes, managed databases and object storage across eight zones, including Geneva and Zurich, with support plans up to 24/7. For a team of engineers building its own product, that is a sound foundation.
It is still a foundation. An open-source app on Exoscale is an app your team deploys, upgrades, backs up and wakes up for. The platform being managed does not change who operates what runs on it.
Pilae sells the layer above. You choose the apps; Pilae deploys them, keeps them current, backs them up, tests the restores and answers the alerts.
What your contract includes
The apps, operated. Open-source or source-available apps from the catalogue — for example Nextcloud, n8n, Keycloak or Open WebUI — each under its own published licence.
Changes with approval. The Pilae Agent plans each change, waits for your approval, applies it in your window and records it in the console.
Backups you can prove. Daily, encrypted, stored offsite in the country you choose, with a restore test every month. See backups.
Watched around the clock. 60-second probes, machine metrics, and alerts that reach Pilae engineers at any hour. See monitoring.
Where you need it. Your own premises, Pilae Cloud, hybrid or air-gapped, with apps reachable only on a private network.
Moving from Exoscale
A migration is a service, not a support article. This is the sequence we run, and it is in the fixed price.
Separate your code from adopted software
Your own services can stay on Exoscale. The open-source apps you adopted are what Pilae takes on.
Inventory the adopted apps
Versions, data, integrations, and who last upgraded each one.
Stand them up beside the old ones
On your premises or in Pilae Cloud, wired to your directory, with nothing switched off yet.
Move the data with a rehearsal
Once to learn the timings, once for real, with the old instance live until every check passes.
Then we operate it
Monitoring, backups, monthly restore tests and approved changes in your window, all recorded.
Exoscale still fits when
- You have engineers who want European instances, Kubernetes and managed databases to build on themselves.
- You need a zone in Austria, Bulgaria or Croatia, or the BSI C5 attestation Exoscale states.
- Your workload is your own code, and your team already owns its releases.
Everywhere else, Pilae
The moment the estate has to stay patched, stay proven and stay auditable without someone in your building doing it by hand, the comparison stops being close.