What is the difference between cloud native and cloud-based?

Cloud-native apps are built from the ground up to maximize the benefits of cloud computing. They’re multi-tenant, which means they can support multiple clients from a single instance of the app.

This enables the software provider to benefit from true “scale economies” in labor and computing resources, enabling them to sell their product at a very competitive price.

Cloud-based apps are legacy applications designed to run on the physical server of the purchasing company and modified to operate in the cloud.

For legacy software providers, this is standard procedure. This is much less expensive and time-consuming than rewriting an entire application from the ground up for the cloud.