Are you comparing Heroku to EC2 and other non-managed parts of AWS? Because for most parts Heroku and AWS is two different offerings. There are two main reasons

Are you comparing Heroku to EC2 and other non-managed parts of AWS? Because for most parts Heroku and AWS is two different offerings. There are two main reasons to use Heroku: they manage it and they provide easy tools for configuration. Even if AWS provide similar managed services I would assume it is as the rest as AWS: a pain to configure. I use many AWS services and not only it is required to have a PhD in AWS to understand basic tasks but the risk of doing something wrong is high. Take IAM for example. Or just setting up a static website with S3, Cloudfront and Route 53 - what a mess. Not saying that AWS isn't great for many things or for companies wanting more control (and with resources to manage it), but comparing it to Heroku is for most parts not a valid comparison.