AWS Lambda vs Heroku Platform

• AWS Lambda is a welcoming platform, supporting several languages, including Java, Go, PowerShell, Node.js, C#, Python, and Ruby. And if you need to deploy a Lambda function in another language, AWS offers a Runtime API for integration.
• We really appreciate how AWS Lambda is always-on for our functions, with only a brief "cold-start" waiting period the first time a function is called after being dormant.
• In addition to only generating costs when it's actually being used, AWS Lambda really puts the "serverless" in serverless architecture, offering turnkey scaleability and high availability for our code with zero effort on our part.

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• 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.

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• The UI and Developer experience is not so great. IF you use an abstraction like Serverless Application Model (SAM), things get pretty easy, but it's still AWS UI/DX you're working with after that (which is to say, not their strength).
• Documentation is always a mixed bag. Sometimes it's just easier to google your specific problem and see how others have solved it. This can be much faster than trying to find an example that may or may not be there in the documentation (which oftentimes has multiple versions and revisions).

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• 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.

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• I was able to perform a lot of processing on data delivered from my website and little or no cost. This was a big plus to me.
• Programming AWS Lambda is quite easy once you understand the time limits to the functions.
• AWS Lambda has really good integration with the AWS S3 storage system. This a very good method of delivering data to be processed and a good place to pick it up after processing.

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• Heroku allowed us to get up and running fast. Deployment was really easy and connecting to our codebase was, too. The deployment integration with GitHub is pretty slick.
• The add-ons provisioning is so simple and the documentation is so thorough that, at least at first, it means you don't have to hire a dedicated devops person to manage this stuff.
• Heroku has tools that allow the collaborators (those with access to the Heroku dashboard) to be able to quickly and easily do triage from just about anywhere, including your smartphone.

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