Blue-Green vs Canary Deployment Strategies

The way you switch from the old version of your application to the new version matters for user experience. A blue-green deployment runs two identical environments: one serves live traffic while the other receives the update. Once the new version passes testing, traffic is switched to point to the updated environment, making the switch instant. A canary release takes a different approach by deploying the new version to a small group of users first while most users continue on the old version. If problems appear, you roll back only the canary group; if everything works, you gradually expand the new version to everyone. Both strategies reduce risk compared to replacing everything at once.