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Now I want more competitors for platforms like Heroku just so that they can put their prices down. Heroku is great, but it is crazy expensive. Furthermore, I do

Now I want more competitors for platforms like Heroku just so that they can put their prices down. Heroku is great, but it is crazy expensive. Furthermore, I don't see any signs of Heroku lowering their price at all.

mark_l_watson 11y ago
Is Heroku really that expensive? I use their new $7/month instances and I have no complaints with performance and features. $50/month for a managed Postgres database is a bit expensive but other cloud storage options like Cloudant (use the service in same AWS region as Heroku) can be very reasonable.
- kevindeasis 11y ago
  It adds up really fast. $7/month for an instance then $20/month for ssl (even if you don't want the wildcard) and add another $9/month for backend. $ 36/month in 12 month is $432/month That is indeed a cheap service. However, relatively expensive for people not making a profit for their projects. It would be nice if Heroku lowered their prices occasionally as well.
- criley2 11y ago
  Heroku is expensive when considering you can use similar tools on a vps for a fraction of the cost (or get a whole lot more for your money). And yeah, when you charge $20 for SSL, you're expensive.
  - cheez 11y ago
    When you have to spend even 10 hours a year maintaining that vps, I think most PaaS pay for themselves.
    - criley2 11y ago
      I'm sorry but at $20/mo for basic SSL, you can easily spend $40/mo on Heroku for ONE app, almost $500/yr! A private VPS with enough resources for 4 of those same apps would be 2-4X cheaper. If your time is so valuable that you can waste money like that, congratulations, but many of us find halving a price and learning marketable skills in the process to be valuable.
      - cheez 11y ago
        It's $20/month for basic SSL for custom domains. You can still have SSL at https://your-app-name.herokuapp.com https://your-app-name.herokuapp.com. If your app is so important that SSL is necessary, that's worth $500/year. Or your app isn't that important and the point is moot.
  - seanwilson 11y ago
    > Heroku is expensive when considering you can use similar tools on a vps Do you know what Heroku offers over a VPS? They're not the same thing.
    - criley2 11y ago
      Heroku does not offer much over VPS+Dokku. For the money, Heroku offers far far less than VPS+Dokku
      - josegonzalez 11y ago
        Speaking as one of the Dokku maintainers, that is a false statement. Security, true isolation, the ability to easily scale horizontally and vertically, integrations into many services are all things Heroku offers that you need to work hard for in Dokku. Disregarding the fact that you need to maintain your own server(s) with Dokku, Heroku is tthe clear winner here. The only thing Dokku offers people is the ability to save some money at the cost of their own time. Sure, I can manage just fine as I was maintaining my own servers anyhow - and know how - but honestly I already have a dayjob, why would I want to make my programming hobby more work?
  - mark_l_watson 11y ago
    I front end with Cloudflare to get HTTPS. I have probably spent a thousand (paid) hours doing devops for customers. For my own projects I don't want to spend the time.
- jordanthoms 11y ago
  It's expensive if you need decent performance - Isolated Dynos (i.e. running in their own EC2 instance) start at $250/month. We found that the shared Dyno options had significant noisy-neighbour problems.
- yowmamasita 11y ago
  Got a 4 core, 3GB ram server I pay <$7/month (paid yearly) on a reputable low end host, so yes it is expensive
  - boundlessdreamz 11y ago
    Which hosting provider?
    - kevindeasis 11y ago
      I think he might have been sarcastic with his statement.
- reitoei 11y ago
  Out of curiosity, is there much of a performance hit using Cloudant vs a Heroku managed DB?
  - mark_l_watson 11y ago
    Not much if you are in the same AWS region.

mark_l_watson 11y ago

Is Heroku really that expensive? I use their new $7/month instances and I have no complaints with performance and features. $50/month for a managed Postgres database is a bit expensive but other cloud storage options like Cloudant (use the service in same AWS region as Heroku) can be very reasonable.

kevindeasis 11y ago
It adds up really fast. $7/month for an instance then $20/month for ssl (even if you don't want the wildcard) and add another $9/month for backend. $ 36/month in 12 month is $432/month That is indeed a cheap service. However, relatively expensive for people not making a profit for their projects. It would be nice if Heroku lowered their prices occasionally as well.
criley2 11y ago
Heroku is expensive when considering you can use similar tools on a vps for a fraction of the cost (or get a whole lot more for your money). And yeah, when you charge $20 for SSL, you're expensive.
- cheez 11y ago
  When you have to spend even 10 hours a year maintaining that vps, I think most PaaS pay for themselves.
  - criley2 11y ago
    I'm sorry but at $20/mo for basic SSL, you can easily spend $40/mo on Heroku for ONE app, almost $500/yr! A private VPS with enough resources for 4 of those same apps would be 2-4X cheaper. If your time is so valuable that you can waste money like that, congratulations, but many of us find halving a price and learning marketable skills in the process to be valuable.
    - cheez 11y ago
      It's $20/month for basic SSL for custom domains. You can still have SSL at https://your-app-name.herokuapp.com https://your-app-name.herokuapp.com. If your app is so important that SSL is necessary, that's worth $500/year. Or your app isn't that important and the point is moot.
- seanwilson 11y ago
  > Heroku is expensive when considering you can use similar tools on a vps Do you know what Heroku offers over a VPS? They're not the same thing.
  - criley2 11y ago
    Heroku does not offer much over VPS+Dokku. For the money, Heroku offers far far less than VPS+Dokku
    - josegonzalez 11y ago
      Speaking as one of the Dokku maintainers, that is a false statement. Security, true isolation, the ability to easily scale horizontally and vertically, integrations into many services are all things Heroku offers that you need to work hard for in Dokku. Disregarding the fact that you need to maintain your own server(s) with Dokku, Heroku is tthe clear winner here. The only thing Dokku offers people is the ability to save some money at the cost of their own time. Sure, I can manage just fine as I was maintaining my own servers anyhow - and know how - but honestly I already have a dayjob, why would I want to make my programming hobby more work?
- mark_l_watson 11y ago
  I front end with Cloudflare to get HTTPS. I have probably spent a thousand (paid) hours doing devops for customers. For my own projects I don't want to spend the time.
jordanthoms 11y ago
It's expensive if you need decent performance - Isolated Dynos (i.e. running in their own EC2 instance) start at $250/month. We found that the shared Dyno options had significant noisy-neighbour problems.
yowmamasita 11y ago
Got a 4 core, 3GB ram server I pay <$7/month (paid yearly) on a reputable low end host, so yes it is expensive
- boundlessdreamz 11y ago
  Which hosting provider?
  - kevindeasis 11y ago
    I think he might have been sarcastic with his statement.
reitoei 11y ago
Out of curiosity, is there much of a performance hit using Cloudant vs a Heroku managed DB?
- mark_l_watson 11y ago
  Not much if you are in the same AWS region.