title: Web Server vs. Socket Server for android app
body: <p>After a lot of research i am more confused then before on what kind of server to use for an android app.</p>
  
  <p>My question in a nutshell is: which kind of server is easier to use and deploy.
  I want to create an android application that communicates with a server to find other clients, the server uses GCM to notify other clients that one client wants to communicate and is used to exchange the address of the clients. Afterwards the clients should be able to communicate directly to one another.</p>
  
  <p>What i found out is that from the android point of view either would be fine, both is likewise possible and neither produces more work then the other.</p>
  
  <p>On the server side it looks like web service would be better to use, because it is easier to find a server provider. I might be wrong here but it looks like most large server providers don't like to give you enough access to run a jar file.
  Google and amazon offer servers that can host web services, i am not sure if a socket server would be possible there, so if anyone can give me some tips on good and affordable server providers i would also like to have some insight there.</p>