Aptible deserves credit for making compliance the product before that was fashionable: a PaaS where HIPAA readiness, encryption, and audit logging come standard, on infrastructure Aptible manages for you. For a digital-health startup that needs a BAA more than it needs infrastructure opinions, that focus is the appeal. Control Plane starts from the same seriousness about compliance and removes the trade: the certifications come with the platform, and the infrastructure stays under your control: your accounts, your regions, several clouds and your own hardware as one virtual cloud.
The core difference: compliant hosting vs a compliant platform you place anywhere
On Aptible, compliance and managed hosting are a package: your containers run on infrastructure Aptible operates, and the platform's controls (encryption, access logging, security scans) wrap them. The simplicity is real, and so are the boundaries: placement is Aptible's, the underlying cloud is AWS, in the regions Aptible operates, and always-on containers bill around the clock.
Control Plane treats compliance as a property of the platform, not of one vendor's hosting. The platform is PCI DSS Level 1, SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and GDPR compliant, and workloads can run on managed compute, inside your own AWS, GCP, or Azure accounts, or on your servers, with a tamper-proof audit trail from the first API call, mTLS between services, deny-by-default firewalls, and credential-free access to native cloud services through Universal Cloud Identity. Capacity AI right-sizes standard and serverless workloads, and idle workloads scale to zero.
Which one should you pick?
Choose Control Plane if...
- Regulated workloads must live in specific accounts, regions, or your own infrastructure.
- You need PCI DSS Level 1 as well as HIPAA and SOC 2.
- You want compliance without single-vendor hosting lock-in: several clouds under one layer.
- The compute bill matters: scale-to-zero and automatic right-sizing, billed on consumption.
Choose Aptible if...
- You want the shortest path to HIPAA-ready hosting with a BAA and no infrastructure decisions.
- A fully vendor-managed environment is a feature, not a constraint.
- Your stack is a straightforward web app plus database.
- Placement, multi-cloud, and PCI DSS Level 1 never enter the requirements.
Control Plane vs Aptible, side by side
| Dimension | Control Plane | Aptible |
|---|---|---|
| Where workloads run | Managed regions, your accounts, on-prem: your choice | Aptible-managed AWS stacks (14 regions); your own AWS in limited release |
| Compliance | PCI DSS Level 1, SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR | HIPAA, HITRUST, SOC 2 Type II, PCI DSS SP Level 2, GDPR (HITRUST and PCI on Enterprise) |
| Audit trail | Tamper-proof, from the first API call, across every substrate | Platform activity logging |
| Multi-cloud + on-prem | One layer, one identity and network model | Single vendor platform |
| Workload types | Containers, VMs, serverless, cron, stateful | Containers plus managed databases |
| Scaling | Autoscaling, scale-to-zero, Capacity AI right-sizing | Horizontal autoscaling (Production+), vertical autoscaling (Enterprise); always-on |
| Identity to cloud services | Universal Cloud Identity, no embedded credentials | Credentials you manage |
| Cost model | Consumption by the milli-core; flat per-core on your infra | Base fee ($499/mo on Production) plus per-GB-RAM-hour containers |
| Best for | Regulated workloads that need placement and cost control | Turnkey HIPAA hosting, hands off |
Which fits your scenario
Control Plane fits: a health-tech company whose hospital customers ask where the data lives. The answer needs to be a named region in the company's own cloud account, with HIPAA terms, SOC 2 evidence, and (because payments arrived) PCI DSS Level 1. Control Plane runs the workloads there, keeps the audit trail, and scales the quiet services to zero between visits.
Aptible fits: a seed-stage digital-health app that needs a BAA yesterday. One web app, one database, a compliance questionnaire between the founders and their first pilot. Fully managed compliant hosting with no infrastructure decisions is exactly the right amount of product.
Frequently asked questions
Is Control Plane an Aptible alternative?
For regulated workloads, yes, with a different shape of control. Aptible bundles compliance with hosting it manages; Control Plane provides the compliance posture on infrastructure you place: your accounts, several clouds, or your own servers, under one platform.
Does Control Plane support HIPAA workloads?
Yes. The platform supports HIPAA and GDPR alongside PCI DSS Level 1 and SOC 2 Type II, with encryption, RBAC, and a tamper-proof audit trail as platform features rather than add-ons.
Why does running in my own account matter for compliance?
Auditors and enterprise customers increasingly ask not just how data is protected but where it lives and who controls the account. Own-account placement answers residency and ownership questions a vendor-hosted platform cannot.
When is Aptible the better choice?
When speed to a BAA on fully managed infrastructure is the entire requirement and the stack is simple. If placement, PCI, multi-cloud, or compute costs at scale are in the picture, the trade tips the other way.
