Heroku isn't selling blank VMs, though. It's a value-added service -- you don't have to configure servers, build docker images, manage logging, wire up routes,

Heroku isn't selling blank VMs, though. It's a value-added service -- you don't have to configure servers, build docker images, manage logging, wire up routes, inject service dependencies ... it goes on and on. PaaSes are expensive if your time is free. I work for a company which donates enormous engineering resources to an opensource Heroku competitor (Cloud Foundry). As a note, Cloud Foundry lets you specify exactly how much RAM you want to use. You can try it on Pivotal Web Services[0] (hosted by my employers) or BlueMix. [0] https://run.pivotal.io/ https://run.pivotal.io/