Hi Robert,
the Community Cloud Edition allows you to build and test, for free, any applications that you are modeling, giving you access to a temporary cloud space. This temporary space is cleared every two hours.
If you want to enjoy the convenience of a local development environment, the ability to work on a team, to create and reuse your components and styles and modeling applications without having to install them, you can purchase the Professional Cloud Edition.
For more details I suggest you to refer to the "COMMON QUESTIONS" section available here:
http://www.webratio.com/site/content/en/pricing
The first deploy on Cloud can take several minutes because the free space must be created.
Referring to the database connection you have to use MySQL as dbms. You can perform the export of your data from your local database and update the remote database by executing sql scripts. For more details: http://www.webratio.com/learn/learningobject/webratio-cloud-dashboard-user-guide-v-72.