Differences between SaaS and self-managed solutions

Xperience offers two approaches to development and deployment of your projects – self-managed solutions and SaaS, which allows you to deploy, host, and manage Xperience by Kentico projects in the cloud storage. While the features of the product remain the same, there are minor differences between the two approaches, especially in the deployment process.

	SaaS	Self-managed
Installation	SaaS		Create a project – use the `--cloud` parameter. This will ensure you have the necessary additional configurations for the SaaS service: The Kentico.Integrations.Cloud NuGet package AppInsights and SendGrid startup configurations A PowerShell script and CD configuration for generating a deployment package StorageInitializationModule.cs file with a sample storage initialization module (for mapping of files to Azure Blob storage) Create the project database `--hash-string-salt` – set the parameter to the hash salt value found in Xperience Portal	Create the project database `--hash-string-salt`– skip the parameter
Licenses	Tiered licenses offered for both the product and Xperience Portal. Access to various deployment environments, capacities, and performance based on the purchased tier. License keys For applications deployed in all SaaS environments – automatically handled by Xperience Portal For local development – generated in Xperience Portal		Tiered license offered for the product License keys – Generated via https://client.kentico.com/licenses
Configure new projects	Necessary to include the `UseKenticoCloud` component in the project’s middleware pipeline Use the `.IsQa()` and `.IsUat()` extension methods to include environment-specific configuration or code Call `AddXperienceCloudApplicationInsights` when building the web application Configure cache headers for Cloudflare CDN
Deployment	Deployment in SaaS Cannot be deployed without the administration Create a deployment package Upload a deployment package to Xperience Portal (manually or via API)		Self-managed deployment Can be deployed without the administration Platform-specific process For self-managed cloud deployments, important to manually map certain project folders to shared cloud-based storage
Azure Blob storage	Necessary project folders are mapped by default	Need to add mapping for certain project folders manually
Website channel management	Website channels must be added and managed in Xperience Portal (in addition to the administration UI of the Xperience application itself)	Website channels must have unique channel domains
Headless channel management	Headless channels are NOT managed in Xperience Portal The GraphQL API endpoint is available on the system and default channel domains of any SaaS deployment that is publicly available. Keep this in mind when designing your project’s security.
Email configuration	SendGrid integration is the only email sending option for SaaS – Managed SendGrid integration	SendGrid integration – Self-managed SendGrid integration Other available options – External SMTP servers or custom email clients
Email channel management	Email channels must be added and managed in Xperience Portal (in addition to the administration UI of the Xperience application itself)	Sending and service domains of email channels can be configured programmatically
Auto-scaling	No configuration necessary When the load increases to peak levels in the production environment, the system temporarily adds one additional instance to ensure load balancing. One auto-scaling instance is available for all license tiers. Additional instances can be purchased as a part of a custom service plan.	Self-managed cloud hosting using third-party providers Self-managed on-premise hosting using multiple application instances and a shared database
Update Xperience by Kentico projects	After updating locally you need to create a new deployment package
Use Xperience by Kentico API externally	Not available for SaaS Supported for locally used external tools, such as tools used for data import or migration