Service Overview
Founded in 2007, Heroku is one of the earliest Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) providers, headquartered in San Francisco, USA. Heroku supports Ruby, Node.js, Python, Java, PHP, Go and other programming languages. Developers can deploy and scale applications quickly via Git push. Heroku is known for its simple deployment workflow and rich add-on ecosystem, acquired by Salesforce in 2010.
Key Advantages
- Git Push Deployment: Deploy applications with
git push— no server infrastructure management needed. - 2000+ Add-on Ecosystem: From databases to monitoring and logging, a rich marketplace for various needs.
- Autoscaling: Automatically adjust application instance counts based on traffic.
- Built-in Postgres Database: High-performance managed Postgres database with zero maintenance overhead.
Limitations
- Limited Free Tier: Free dynos have runtime limits, not suitable for production use.
- High Pricing: Long-term running costs are higher compared to VPS or container platforms.
- Vendor Lock-in: Deep integration with Heroku ecosystem makes migration costly.
Recommended Scenarios
- Rapid Prototyping & MVP（★★★★★）：Deploy in minutes to validate product ideas.
- Small Team Web Applications（★★★★）：No operations team needed, developers deploy independently.
- API Service Launch（★★★★）：Quickly build API backends with Postgres and Redis.
- Teaching & Experiments（★★★★）：Great for learning cloud deployment and DevOps practices.
Pricing
| Plan | Spec | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Eco | Basic config | $5/mo |
| Basic | Standard Web app | $7/mo |
| Standard-1X | Production entry | $25/mo |
| Standard-2X | High performance | $50/mo |
| Performance-M | High traffic | $250/mo |
FAQ
- Heroku & Salesforce? Heroku was acquired by Salesforce in 2010 and operates as an independent brand within Salesforce.
- Free tier available? Eco plan includes free credits, but free dynos have monthly runtime limits.
- Supported languages? Ruby, Node.js, Python, Java, PHP, Go, Scala, Clojure, and more.