Cloud Services - overview
CKEditor Cloud Services is a cloud platform for editing and real-time collaboration services.
The information in the guides applies to the cloud version as well as the On-Premises version.
More information about the On-Premises version can be found in the On-Premises section.
# Cloud vs. On-Premises
CKEditor Cloud Services is available in two variants.
The first of them is Software as a Service (SaaS). In this variant, CKSource takes care of all the needed infrastructure, adjusts the servers to the current needs, ensures data safety as well as performs and restores backups in the case of any losses. After completing the purchase, the customer can log into the CKEditor Ecosystem customer dashboard where they can find all the credentials needed to get up and running with CKEditor Cloud Services. The SaaS environment runs on the AWS infrastructure, which allows us to keep the availability on a high level. You can read more about server security on the security page.
The other approach is On-Premises, where CKSource provides only the software. It is the customer that is responsible for the installation, provision and maintenance of the servers. In addition, the customer needs to monitor the servers, scale the application in response to the increased usage, as well as take care of creating and restoring backups. Before running CKEditor Cloud Services for the first time, the customer needs to prepare the whole environment, which requires additional work by developers.
# Updates
New features and fixes are applied to SaaS immediately after being tested, while the On-Premises Docker images are released periodically every 6 weeks and the On-Premises installation has to be updated manually.
# Support and monitoring
Irrespective of the chosen CKEditor Cloud Services variant, CKSource customers are always provided with top-quality assistance. Thanks to the robust monitoring system, the CKSource team is able to swiftly debug SaaS application problems. Support for On-Premises is also provided but, due to the infrastructure being managed on the customer’s end, it requires closer cooperation between CKSource and the client team.
To read more about how the CKEditor Team monitors the application, check out our security notes.
# Real-time collaboration
CKEditor Cloud Services offers a fast and highly scalable service for real-time collaboration, compatible with rich text editors built on top of CKEditor 5 Framework. It is capable of handling real-time collaboration on text documents and tracking users connected to the document. It also serves as a storage for comments added to the document.
Apart from having a supporting backend to transmit operations, resolve conflicts and apply changes between users connected to the same document, some features are needed on the client side to offer a full real-time collaboration experience:
- Showing multiple cursors and selection coming from other users.
- Showing users connecting to and disconnecting from the document.
- Offering the UI for managing comments and markers in the document.
CKEditor Ecosystem offers two solutions for implementing real-time collaborative editing:
- CKEditor 5 Collaboration Features — A collection of plugins that can be integrated with any CKEditor 5 build to provide a fully flexible and customizable experience.
- Letters — A ready-to-use real-time collaborative editor with all the essential features.
# CKEditor 5 Real-time collaboration features
CKEditor 5 Real-time collaboration features let you customize any CKEditor 5 build to include real-time collaborative editing, commenting and track changes features and tailor them to your needs.
Real-time collaboration consists of four features delivered as separate plugins that can be used with any CKEditor 5 build:
- Real-time collaborative editing – Allows for editing the same document by multiple users simultaneously. It also automatically solves all conflicts if users make changes at the same time.
- Real-time collaborative comments – Makes it possible to add comments to any part of content in the editor.
- Real-time collaborative track changes – Changes to the content are saved as suggestions that can be accepted or discarded later.
- Users selection and presence list – Shows the selection of other users and lets you view the list of users currently editing the content in the editor.
All of the above features are customizable. This makes implementing real-time collaborative editing within your application a highly customizable out-of-the-box experience.
For an in-depth introduction to CKEditor 5 Collaboration Features refer to the Collaboration overview.
# Letters
Letters is a ready-to-use, distraction-free real-time collaborative editor built on top of CKEditor 5 Framework. It offers a complete editing experience, with a beautiful UI, carefully selected editing features, real-time collaboration and comments — all available out of the box, ready to integrate with your application.
For an in-depth introduction to Letters features refer to the Letters overview.
# Export features
CKEditor Cloud Services offers a fast and highly scalable service enabling the user to export documents either to a Microsoft Word document or to PDF document. Both of these are available as a service, making it possible to feed the data straight into the Cloud Services server for more advanced use or as convinient WYSIWYG editor plugins for the ease of use in less demanding cases.
# Export to PDF
The Export to PDF converter provides an API for converting HTML documents to PDF files. The service generates a file and returns it to the user so they can save it in the .pdf format on their disk. This allows you to easily turn your content into the storable final PDF format file collection. Available both as a service endpoint (a premium feature) and as a plugin (needs to be added to the editor build separately).
# Export to Word
The Export to Word converter provides an API for converting HTML documents to Microsoft Word .docx files. The service generates a Word file and returns it to the user so they can save it in the .docx format on their disk. This allows you to easily export your content to the Microsoft Word format. Available both as a service endpoint (a premium feature) and as a plugin (needs to be added to the editor build separately).
# Easy Image
Easy Image is a service that takes care of image uploads. It reduces the effort required on your part to build a complete modern editing solution with support for embedding images.
Easy Image guarantees that all images inserted into your content are responsive. With a single image upload, several optimized versions of the image are created after upload by CKEditor Cloud Services, for different sizes of displays. All this is transparent to the end user who uploaded the image. Rescaled and optimized images are delivered through a blazing-fast CDN.
It works with both CKEditor 4 and CKEditor 5 WYSIWYG editors, as well as Letters.
Refer to the documentation for details.
# Security
CKEditor Cloud Services is a Software as a Service solution that processes large amounts of customer data. The safety of the data is a key part of our offering. More information about security can be found in the dedicated system security section.
# Cloud Services status page
We keep the Cloud Services status page accessible for everyone. You can check the current status of our services there, as well as the uptime and details about planned maintenances or previous incidents. You can also subscribe to be notified whenever CKEditor Cloud Services creates, updates, or resolves an incident.
# Next steps
If you are interested in Easy Image, check Quick start for a short instruction on how to start using Easy Image.
If you are interested in CKEditor 5 Collaboration Features, check Collaboration overview for information how to enable real-time collaborative editing in your CKEditor 5 build.
If you need to save your documents in portable file formats, check out the Export to PDF or Export to Word features.
If you are looking for a ready-to-use editing solution that includes both real-time collaboration and Easy Image, check Letters.