AppFog has raised $10.0M in total across 2 funding rounds.
AppFog's investors include Founders' Co-op, Ignition Partners, Madrona Ventures, Felicis Ventures, First Round Capital, Practical Venture Capital, Shasta Ventures, Sherpalo Ventures, SV Angel, Uncork Capital, Y Combinator, Mark Goines.
# AppFog: Platform-as-a-Service Pioneer
AppFog was a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) company that provided developers with tools to build, deploy, and manage applications in the cloud.[1][2] The company offered both public cloud services and private, on-premise deployment options, allowing enterprises and individual developers to leverage cloud infrastructure without managing underlying servers.[1] AppFog competed in a crowded PaaS market alongside established players like Heroku, Engine Yard, Cloud Foundry, and OpenShift, positioning itself as a flexible solution that could integrate into existing enterprise data centers.[1]
Originally founded as PHPFog before rebranding in early 2011, AppFog raised $8 million in funding and expanded its platform capabilities through strategic acquisitions.[1] The company gained recognition for supporting multiple programming languages and frameworks, with particular strength in the Node.js ecosystem after acquiring Nodester in 2012.[1][3] AppFog's trajectory reflected the broader consolidation trend in the PaaS market during the early 2010s, ultimately being acquired by CenturyLink in June 2013.[1][2]
AppFog was founded by Lucas Carlson, a professional developer with deep technical expertise.[2] The company began as PHPFog, initially targeting PHP developers before expanding its scope.[1] In early 2011, following an $8 million funding round, the company rebranded to AppFog to reflect its broader platform ambitions.[1]
A pivotal moment came in August 2012 when AppFog acquired Nodester, the leading platform-as-a-service for Node.js developers.[3] This acquisition signaled the company's strategic shift toward supporting the rapidly growing Node.js community and demonstrated its commitment to remaining relevant as developer preferences evolved.[1] By the time of its acquisition by CenturyLink in 2013, AppFog had established itself as a meaningful player in the enterprise PaaS space, particularly among development teams seeking flexible deployment options.
AppFog emerged during a critical inflection point in cloud computing—when enterprises were transitioning from traditional infrastructure to cloud-native development but remained cautious about full public cloud adoption.[1] The company rode the wave of platform abstraction, where developers increasingly demanded tools that freed them from infrastructure management while maintaining control and flexibility.
The PaaS market itself was consolidating rapidly, with numerous players competing for developer mindshare.[1] AppFog's hybrid approach—supporting both public and private deployment—reflected enterprise hesitation about vendor lock-in and data sovereignty concerns that were prevalent in the early 2010s. By acquiring Nodester, AppFog also positioned itself at the intersection of two major trends: the rise of Node.js as a server-side JavaScript platform and the growing demand for polyglot development environments.
For Savvis (CenturyLink's cloud subsidiary), acquiring AppFog represented a strategic move to extend beyond pure infrastructure services and move "higher up the stack" toward developer-facing tools.[1] This reflected the broader industry recognition that competitive advantage in cloud computing was shifting from raw compute capacity to developer experience and application-level services.
AppFog's acquisition by CenturyLink in 2013 marked the end of its independent journey, but it represented a validation of the PaaS market's importance to enterprise cloud strategy.[1][2] The company's emphasis on flexibility—supporting multiple languages, deployment models, and the emerging Node.js ecosystem—proved prescient, as these became industry standards.
However, AppFog's fate also illustrates a broader pattern: smaller, specialized PaaS players struggled to compete against well-capitalized competitors like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Heroku.[1] The consolidation of AppFog into Savvis reflected the reality that standalone PaaS companies needed either massive scale, deep enterprise relationships, or integration into larger cloud ecosystems to survive. Today, the lessons AppFog embodied—developer experience, deployment flexibility, and support for emerging technologies—remain central to how cloud platforms compete, even as the specific products have evolved or disappeared.
AppFog has raised $10.0M across 2 funding rounds. Most recently, it raised $8.0M Series B in August 2011.
| Date | Round | Lead Investors | Other Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 1, 2011 | $8.0M Series B | Founders' Co-op, Ignition Partners, Madrona Ventures | |
| Dec 1, 2010 | $2.0M Series A | Felicis Ventures, First Round Capital, Founders' Co-op, Ignition Partners, Madrona Ventures, Practical Venture Capital, Shasta Ventures, Sherpalo Ventures, SV Angel, Uncork Capital, Y Combinator, Mark Goines |