Likelihood to Recommend If you have your own in-house servers or have a cloud server with the freedom to configure any PaaS that you want, then Dokku is for you. So far, I have never run into a scenario where Dokku was not able to fit my needs, after deploying many different types of applications with varying frameworks, languages, and connected services. If you already have a PaaS available, however, Dokku may not be for you.
Read full review Heroku is very well suited for startups looking to get a server stack up and running quickly. There is little to no overhead when managing your instances. However, you'll need a background in basic DevOps or system management to make sure everything is set up correctly. In addition, it's easy to accidentally go crazy on pricing. Make sure you're only creating the server instances you need to run the base application and set up an auto-scaler plugin to handle peaks.
Read full review Pros Dockerfile deployments are an incredibly simple and straightforward way to spin up applications. The docker-options plugin allows endless direct configuration of options passed to different docker lifecycle stages. Read full review Heroku has a very simple deployment model, making it easy to get your application up-and-running with minimal effort. We can focus on our efforts the unique aspects of our application. The robust add-on marketplace makes it easy to try out new approaches with minimal effort and investment -- and when we settle on a solution, we can easily scale it. Heroku's support is quite good -- their staff is quite technical and willing to get into the weeds to diagnose even complicated problems. Read full review Cons Dokku might overreach on its assumptions about how you want to host your app, using its own VHOSTS plugin by default. This may be a pro or a con depending on what you want. Proxy port configuration can be somewhat difficult, with Dokku resetting any pre-deployment configuration to "smart" defaults on the first deployment. Read full review Large price jumps between certain resource tiers (2x Dyno for $50 per month versus Performance Dyno for $250). Free Postgres next jumps to $50 per month. Marketing/Branding to non-technical stakeholders. As the years pass, I've had to fight more to convince stakeholders on the value of Heroku over AWS. Improve Buildpack documentation. This is one area where Heroku's documentation is fairly confusing. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Heroku is easy to use, services a ton of functions for you out of the box, and provides a means to get a software product off the ground and managed quickly and easily. The tools provide allows a small to medium size org to move very quickly. The CLI tools provided make managing an entire technical infrastructure simple.
Read full review Usability Easy to use web based console and easy to use command line tools; deployment is done directly from a GIT repository. What more could you ask for? The one thing that keeps me from giving it a 10 is that custom build packs are almost incomprehensible. We used one for a while because we needed cairo graphics processing. Fortunately, I was able to figure out a different way to do what we needed so that we could get off the custom build pack.
Read full review Reliability and Availability Heroku availability correlates pretty strongly to AWS US EAST availability. We had a couple of times where there was a Heroku-specific issue but not for the last 7-8 months.
Read full review Performance The only issue that I ever have is that about 1 out of 20 deployments (git push) will hang and need to be cancelled and done again.
Read full review Support Rating Dokku is incredibly well documented and also takes advantage of the documentation and community of Heroku, being essentially the same thing, but in the case that you encounter an actual bug or issue, it can take time for a fix to make it into a new version. Since you manage Dokku yourself, there is no support team to call for help.
Read full review I've used it for many years without facing any major problem. It's not hard at all to get used to it, it's documentation is outstanding and simple. We are close to 2020 and I don't think most of the existing companies or startups should still face old problems such as wasting time deploying code and calculate computing resources.
Read full review Implementation Rating Be ready to pay a bit more than expected in the beginning if you're migrating from a big server. The application is probably not ready for the change and you have to keep improving it with time.
It's also important to consider that you can't save anything to the disc as it will be lost when your application restarts, so you have to think about using something like S3.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Dokku is essentially the same thing as Heroku, except maintained by you on the platform of your choice. If you have any experience using Heroku, then you will feel right at home using Dokku. Dokku is an entirely free to use PaaS, requiring only that you have a platform to deploy it on, making it far more versatile than Heroku in my opinion.
Read full review Heroku is the more expensive option for hosting compared to some of the cloud platforms we investigated, but it's worth it for us because of the plug-and-play nature of Heroku deployment. We can be up and running in a few minutes and know with precision how much it will cost us each month to run the application, unlike
Amazon Web Services where you have to go to great pains to configure it correctly or else you might end up with a shocking monthly bill. Overall, spending the time to configure
Amazon Web Services or one of its competitors is likely the more affordable and powerful choice, because you have control over so many specifics of the configuration. But it also requires the burden of continuing to maintain and update your AWS instance, whereas with Heroku they take care of security fixes and platform upgrades. It's a great service and we are happy to pay the extra cost for the value-adds Heroku provides.
Read full review Return on Investment Since there's no investment besides a little time to set up, the return has been overwhelmingly positive. Deploying a new app is incredibly quick and easy. Read full review It has been critical in seamlessly operating our platform with runs all of our programs. It has been impressive with its ability to scale quickly which results in the growth of our work. It allows for tracking of different features which allows for quick problem solving which saves us time. Emily Cooper Director, Illinois Science & Technology Coalition
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