Top 15+ Heroku Alternatives

Heroku has occupied an essential role in the cloud computing world for years. It successfully provides support to administer and deploy applications as a PaaS platform.

However, developers want to find Heroku alternatives due to a few discrepancies. So, this article will present one of the best Heroku alternatives with their core features.

PaaS Overview

Platform as a Service (PaaS) is basically a cloud infrastructure that provides third-party software and hardware resources to businesses and developers. Indeed, enterprises utilize PaaS platforms to build, deploy, administer, update and test applications.

In this regard, PaaS vendors are responsible for infrastructural support, including servers, storage, development tools, database management, networking and middleware. The use of PaaS providers doesn’t only reduce the development time, but it is also affordable compared to conventional means of app deployment and hosting.

Heroku Overview

Heroku is a Platform as a Server (PaaS) provider that started providing services in 2007.

Although businesses rely on Heroku to create, administer and deploy extensible and advanced applications but its container-based cloud services are more prominent. Hereof, Heroku facilitates the developers with ‘Dynos’ to run and deploy different kinds of applications.

The Best Heroku Alternatives

Here are 15 of the best Heroku alternatives with their significant features:

1. Back4App

Back4App is one of the most valuable alternatives to Heroku if you want great server-side support.

This is basically a low-code app development platform that confers real-time database, cloud functions, SDKs and APIs functionalities to build the backend of applications.

This cloud platform also provides a Free plan just like Heroku to support startups and newbies. However, the charges of its monthly plan start from $15 when you pay annually and $25 when you pay monthly.

Features

Real-Time Database — This Heroku alternative enables businesses to query and gather real-time relational data of their applications. In this regard, companies typically utilize the ‘Live Queries’ function of Back4App and get live data updates.

APIs & SDKs — It is seamless to create and deploy the backend of your application with SDKs, GraphQL and REST APIs of Back4App. Programmers can get robust support for more than 7 scripting languages to fetch data through these SDKs or APIs.

Authentication — Smooth and hassle-free user management is another appealing advantage of using Back4App. Hereof, it doesn’t provide a vast login or sign-up support through various social media platforms, but you can also control the user permissions.

Community Support — Back4App also owns reliable community support like Heroku. You will find several resources and questions related to Back4App on GitHub, Stack Overflow, Parse & YouTube.

2. DigitalOcean App Platform

If you are in search of a cheap Heroku-like service, then you must consider using the DigitalOcean App Platform.

App Platform is a PaaS product of DigitalOcean that enables developers to deploy app scripts without taking care of infrastructure. With this fully-managed PaaS provider, it is also very simple to build, host and deploy APIs, Web apps and sites.

By the same token, this Heroku alternative provides a free plan with the name of Starter with various properties. Luckily, its paid plans are cheaper than Heroku. Yes, the monthly cost of its Basic and Professional plans commences from $5 and $12, respectively.

Features

Language Support — App Platform offers newfangled support to various languages and frameworks. Indeed, you can get seamless App Platform backing for your Django, Node.js, Python, PHP, Java and Go applications.

Fast Deployment — Deployment of different types of applications is rapid with the App Platform. Developers can simply use GitLab or GitHub repositories to set up the script. Later, you can conduct redeployment through push upgrades.

Highly Secure & Scalable — DigitalOcean App Platform provides a very secure environment to businesses and developers. Hereof, it doesn’t only offer SSL certificates but also grants automated patching for operating systems and protection from DDoS attacks. By the same token, App Platform provides both horizontal and vertical scaling to extend resources.

Insights — Development teams can also overview and deeply analyze the insights of applications by using the App Platform’s dashboard.

3. Render

Render is a free hosting service like Heroku that confers automated deployments, private networks and CDN to run, manage and host applications.

Moreover, businesses can also host Docker containers, static sites, Cron jobs, web servers and numerous databases by using this Heroku alternative.

On the contrary, if we talk about pricing, then it is free for web services, static sites and databases. However, its monthly fee for Cron jobs begins from $1.

Features

Instant Deployment — Render is a fast alternative to Heroku. It needs only 3 steps to deploy an application with Render. You just need to choose a service type and then deploy. Later you can update the app through Git Push automatically.

Predictable & Fewer Fees — The pricing of the Render is less and easy to estimate. According to Render users, they have reduced their deployment bill to 80% by using this platform as a Heroku alternative.

Scalable — It is also very smooth to extend memory and CPU consumption with Render. This PaaS platform provides two types of scaling in this regard. Yes, these are manual and autoscaling. Development teams should select a particular scaling type according to the need of their project.

4. Elastic Beanstalk

Elastic Beanstalk is basically a web app deployment service that AWS introduced in 2011.

Undoubtedly, the powerful backing of Amazon Web Services, autoscaling, S3 buckets, load balancers and EC2 instances make it a good Heroku alternative.

Although, like Heroku, Elastic Beanstalk is also free to start, but you probably need to request a pricing quote for a proper and long-term project.

Features

Numerous Deployment Options — This PaaS platform grants several deployment choices to developers. Indeed, you can set up your script using Visual Studio, AWS Management Console, Eclipse and Elastic Beanstalk CLI with excellent safety and speed.

Scalability — Elastic Beanstalk is a scalable alternative to Heroku, and it doesn’t matter how much your app will grow in the upcoming days. It provides multiple availability zones, auto-scaling and load balancing properties to extend resources within a few clicks.

Easy Customization — It is also very flexible to customize your application with this product of AWS. In this regard, Elastic Beanstalk allows you to open the hood and gives you rapid access to all infrastructural sources of your app.

Insights — As we know, Elastic Beanstalk comes with the robust backing of AWS, so it is seamless to monitor the app’s health. Hereof, this platform offers around 40+ metric collection tools. Similarly, it is also connected with Amazon X-Ray and CloudWatch to give you more accurate performance updates.

5. Engine Yard

Engine Yard is another credible name in our list of best Heroku alternatives that started its journey in 2006. This California-headquartered PaaS provider is known for delivering fast and secure app deployment services to businesses.

However, if we talk about its pricing structure, then it is different compared to Heroku. Although it costs only $25/month for entry-level instances but it charges $49/month for every optimized container unit (OCU). The monthly charges of its standard unit also begin from $150.

Features

Rolling Deployments — With 12-factor principles, it is very smooth to deploy your app using Engine Yard. This PaaS platform promises continuous deployment without any downtime and hassle.

Private Clusters — If you don’t want to face side effects of neighborhood issues, then you must consider Engine Yard because it provides a private Kubernetes cluster. Developers don’t have to face problems when using this Engine Yard feature, and it also doesn’t cost anything extra for this service.

In-Built Stacks — Engine Yard confers ready-to-use stacks and optimized AWS infrastructure to set up an application for development teams. Therefore, these pre-built stacks improve performance and scalability and reduce costs.

Auto Scaling — This PaaS platform also enables auto-scaling according to the demand of your application. On this matter, it facilitates the businesses and developers with horizontal scaling and enhances CPU and further resources as per the need of your program.

Native Monitoring — This Heroku alternative keeps programmers away from expensive monitoring tools because of its built-in insight functionalities. Yes, it provides all necessary metrics and further insights to development teams.

6. Railway.App

Railway.App is another compelling alternative to Heroku. This platform has the ability to handle and deploy any size of project with great ease. You just need to hand over your script to Railway.App, and it will do the rest.

On the other hand, if we discuss its pricing model, it is also very attractive. Luckily, the Starter plan of Railway.App is freemium. However, it costs $10/GB and $20/vCPU on a monthly basis.

Features

Easy to Deploy — It is effortless to begin deploying your application on Railway.App. Its CLI, solid base and Infrastructure as Legos enable smooth deployment whether you are commencing with a template or using a repository.

Fast — If you want a fast alternative to Heroku, you must consider Railway.App because it eliminates the basic deployment hurdles. Thus, you can access features like instant rollbacks and distinct development environments.

Uptime & Scalability — More than 99% uptime is another appealing property of the Railway.App that differentiates it from other PaaS platforms. By the same token, you don’t need to increase or decrease the resources when you choose the auto-scaling option on Railway.App.

Templates — Templates page of this PaaS platform enables the developers to set up an application within seconds. You can select any language and database here and explore a template to deploy your app within a few clicks.

7. Fly.io

Fly.io is a relatively new platform for deploying applications and servers compared to other Heroku alternatives.

Yes, this Chicago-based company started its services in 2017. However, it could be a reliable place to set up your servers.

Fortunately, Fly offers a free tier to novices and startups. Withal, its monthly charges begin from $29.

Features

Physical Servers — Fly claims about providing your setup support from your nearby physical servers. Yes, this PaaS platform permits you to use servers that are near your app’s users. You can also see server locations of Fly on the map that are available on its official site.

Secure — This PaaS provider grants SSL certificates to applications to avoid any security breaches and cyber-attacks.

PostgreSQL Clusters — The best thing about Fly is the availability of PostgreSQL database system support under its freemium plan. You can build and deploy a PostgreSQL application within a few clicks.

Framework Support — Fly provides support to a variety of frameworks and languages, including Rails, Django, Remix, Go & Rust. You can even run Dockerfile apps on this platform.

8. Platform.sh

Are you looking for a free-tier cloud hosting provider like Heroku for your project? If yes, then you should give a chance to Platform.sh.

This is definitely one of the ideal platforms to host, build and deploy web applications and sites. Especially its support for different frameworks and user-friendly interface will fascinate you.

Features

Frameworks & Languages Support — Developers find support for almost all types of CMS, frameworks and languages when they use Platform.sh. Indeed, you can get backing here for Django, Express, Drupal 9, WordPress, Spring Boot, Python, PHP, Ruby and much more.

Observability Suite — It is one of the most compelling features of the Platform.sh if you want an in-built monitoring tool. It doesn’t only allow you to analyze the performance of your application, but you can also manage and improve it by using validate, debug and enhance functions.

Fleet Management — If you are a big enterprise and want to deploy and track hundreds or thousands of applications on a single platform, then you can pick Platform.sh. Undoubtedly, the Fleet Management Strategy of this Heroku alternative is the best to deal with such projects.

9. Google App Engine

Google App Engine is also a Heroku-like service of Google Cloud. GAE is basically a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that depends on Google-administered data centers to host, create and deploy applications.

Fortunately, it provides a free tier without any server management. However, you can benefit from the Google Cloud Pricing calculator if you want this PaaS platform for SMEs or large projects.

Features

Fully Managed — GAE is an entirely managed alternative to Heroku, where you just have to focus on the application because it takes care of all infrastructural operations.

Easy Monitoring — It empowers the developers with Cloud Logging and Monitoring to examine the performance of applications. You can also utilize a debugger and additional fixation tools to improve the performance of your programs.

Versioning & Languages Support — Google App Engine is not only an excellent solution to host and deploy 1–2 versions of your applications, but it backs all versions of your program. By the same token, its support for programming languages is also outstanding. You can also use almost all popular languages on this platform.

10. Netlify

Netlify is a fast-growing cloud computing platform that was initially launched in 2014 in Delaware.

Since its launch, it has served more than 2.5 million companies and development teams. The prominent clients of Netlify are Unilever, Twilio, Peloton and Verizon.

On the other hand, if we talk about its pricing model, its Starter plan is freemium, and monthly charges of its Pro plan begin from $19.

Features

Edge Functions — It is super easy to create, host and deploy your APIs, stores and applications with Netlify. This platform only depends on three steps: connect, build and run in this regard. To better understand this process, you can also visit the Edge Functions page of Netlify.

Deploy Previews — Netlify doesn’t only give you access to preview your deployments, but you can also share them with the GitHub community and your team to get reviews and make improvements.

Build Plugins — To add dynamic properties to your project, you can install ready-to-use plugins with Netlify. By the way, you can also utilize your own created plugins here.

11. Red Hat OpenShift

Red Hat OpenShift is ideal for developers and businesses that want a container service like Heroku. This product of Red Hat effectively administers the edge, multi-cloud and hybrid cloud deployments.

In short, whether you want on-premises services or cloud infrastructure, Red Hat would present the best services to deploy, run and host your applications. Best Buy, Delta Air Lines, and Deutsche Bank are leading organizations that use OpenShift.

Features

Multiple Clusters — OpenShift is able to deal with multiple clusters through a single console. It can also make different policy implementations while managing these clusters.

Highly Secure — This Heroku alternative grants detailed security to the entire life cycle of your application. In this regard, it uses built-in templates and Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security (ACS) function.

Ecosystem Support — If you want ample ecosystem support for your project, you can rely on OpenShift without confusion. It backs several AI, databases, metrics, ML, languages and frameworks workloads in this regard.

12. Firebase

Although Firebase is a complete cloud platform to build, run, test, host and deploy applications but you can use it as a free hosting service like Heroku. This app development platform of Google was initially introduced in 2011, and since then, it has been doing great work in the cloud world.

Firebase grants 2 types of pricing plans to its users. One is Spark Plan, which is free to use for 10 GB of data storage and 360 MBs of daily data transfers. Howbeit, if your limit exceeds, Firebase will charge $0.026/GB for storage and $0.15/GB for data transfer under its Blaze Plan.

Features

Realtime Databases — Cloud Firestore and Realtime Database are the two major databases that Firebase provides to developers and businesses. You can gather, fetch and sync data spontaneously by using these NoSQL databases of this vendor.

Cloud Hosting — Whether you want to deploy a dynamic, extensive or single-page application, you will find Firebase hosting agile and secure. SSD backing and free SSL certificates are also benefits of using this hosting.

App Check — The App Check function is beneficial for preventing invalid traffic or abuse.

13. Azure App Service

Azure App Service is one of the most reliable alternatives to Heroku because of Microsoft’s support. It is not only famous because of its prominent brand name in the industry, but it manages 60 billion app building, hosting and deployment requests per day.

Features

Fast Deployments — It is fast to deploy your PHP, Python, .NET, Node.js, .NET Core and Java applications in containers when you use Azure App Service. You just simply need to deploy the app within a few clicks through Powershell, Git or other means.

Low Cost — Developers just have to pay for services or instances they use. This platform doesn’t ask for upfront fees or fixed charges.

Secure — Multifactor authentication and compliance with Payment Card Industry and ISO make it a safe deployment choice.

14. Porter.run

Porter.run is an ultra-modern Heroku alternative that has the ability to administer and deploy applications within DigitalOcean, Google Cloud Product and AWS. It is also free to use for one cluster, 20 GB of memory and one user.

Features

Economical — Porter is a 5x more economical PaaS platform than Heroku. Even you can click its ‘Porter vs Heroku’ tab and identify its competitive edges on Heroku.

Effortless Deployment — The dashboard of Porter is very easy to handle, particularly for newbies. It consists of three steps: app source, service type, update or scale.

15. Clever Cloud

Clever Cloud is a perfect choice for companies that don’t want to administer infrastructure and deal with operating systems and updates. Yes, with its hardware, operating systems and regular updates, it helps businesses emphasize core competencies and coding only.

Features

Autoscaling & Healing — You are free to pick resources according to your requirements with Clever Cloud. By the same token, auto-healing assists developers in redeploying apps in case of a crash or failure.

Customer Support — The customer support of Clever Cloud is outstanding. They address your tickets within minutes and allow clients to discuss issues on phone calls.

15+ Microtica

Microtica is a cloud self-service platform that enables developers to easily build and deploy apps on AWS without being DevOps experts. With minimal configuration and deployment time, it reduces the number of tasks that need to be completed manually, making it easy for your team to get started straight away.

The platform offers a growing list of production-ready infrastructure and application templates to simplify provisioning and management on AWS. Using the templates you can deliver on your own AWS account, as well as deploy applications/services on EKS on AWS.

Microtica offers a Free plan and 7-day trials on the paid plans, starting from $29/month.

Features

• Built-in best practices — all templates are created by AWS well-architected best practices for security, compliance, and performance.
• Git-push deployments — deliver automatically when committing to your Git repository. If something goes wrong with a deployment, rollbacks are handled automatically.
• Inline configuration — update your application’s configuration, select scaling settings, and define and execute pipelines through an intuitive UI.
• Live monitoring — you’ll always know what’s going on with your apps and infrastructure. Track application resource usage, deployments, and logs in real-time.
• Deployment History — zoom-in on an individual deployment to analyze logs and understand changes compared to previous successful deployments. Identify the exact code and configuration changes that are preventing a successful deployment.
• Cost Optimization — utilize Microtica’s sleeping schedules and let the platform save automatically on unused cloud resources.

Conclusion

Although Heroku is a well-established PaaS platform, developers and businesses have used it for years. However, if you need its replacement, then our list of Heroku alternatives is going to help you a lot.

We provided the 15 best alternatives to Heroku here, but if you know more options, you can share them by commenting below!