Azure App Service vs. Heroku Platform

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure App Service
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
The Microsoft Azure App Service is a PaaS that enables users to build, deploy, and scale web apps and APIs, a fully managed service with built-in infrastructure maintenance, security patching, and scaling. Includes Azure Web Apps, Azure Mobile Apps, Azure API Apps, allowing developers to use popular frameworks including .NET, .NET Core, Java, Node.js, Python, PHP, and Ruby.
$9.49
per month
Heroku Platform
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
The Heroku Platform, now from Salesforce, is a platform-as-a-service based on a managed container system, with integrated data services and ecosystem for deploying modern apps. It takes an app-centric approach for software delivery, integrated with developer tools and workflows. It’s three main tool are: Heroku Developer Experience (DX), Heroku Operational Experience (OpEx), and Heroku Runtime. Heroku Developer Experience (DX) Developers deploy directly from tools like…
$85
per month
Pricing
Azure App ServiceHeroku Platform
Editions & Modules
Shared Environment for dev/test
$9.49
per month
Basic Dedicated environment for dev/test
$54.75
per month
Standard Run production workloads
$73
per month
Premium Enhanced performance and scale
$146
per month
Production
$25.00
per month
Advanced
$250.00
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure App ServiceHeroku Platform
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsFree and Shared (preview) plans are ideal for testing applications in a managed Azure environment. Basic, Standard and Premium plans are for production workloads and run on dedicated Virtual Machine instances. Each instance can support multiple applications and domains.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure App ServiceHeroku Platform
Considered Both Products
Azure App Service
Chose Azure App Service
In terms of deploying your apps, Azure App Service provides a solid foundation. You may use either the Azure command-line interface or the Web Portal to administer these apps. As a whole, I find You may easily deploy your apps to Azure App Service to be a really difficult …
Chose Azure App Service
Azure App Service will give you a very solid and strong platform to deploy your applications. It gives you great interfaces to manage those applications either through a Web Portal or the Azure command-line interface. However, I consider Azure overall to be very complex and …
Heroku Platform
Chose Heroku Platform
I believe Azure App Service is pretty similar to Heroku as you can in both deploy your backend applications.
However, the dyno concept and it's drastically simple web dashboard makes Heroku a much better and sane alternative to Azure App Service. In Heroku, you get abstracted of …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Azure App ServiceHeroku Platform
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Azure App Service
8.7
3 Ratings
6% above category average
Heroku Platform
8.1
44 Ratings
1% below category average
Ease of building user interfaces8.03 Ratings7.627 Ratings
Scalability9.23 Ratings8.244 Ratings
Platform management overhead9.03 Ratings7.643 Ratings
Workflow engine capability8.02 Ratings8.329 Ratings
Platform access control8.83 Ratings7.043 Ratings
Services-enabled integration9.03 Ratings8.042 Ratings
Development environment creation8.83 Ratings8.739 Ratings
Development environment replication10.02 Ratings8.638 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification8.03 Ratings8.242 Ratings
Issue recovery8.23 Ratings8.339 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes9.03 Ratings8.344 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure App ServiceHeroku Platform
Small Businesses
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Score 8.9 out of 10
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.5 out of 10
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.5 out of 10
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure App ServiceHeroku Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(7 ratings)
6.9
(48 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(6 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.2
(17 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(2 ratings)
8.7
(19 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure App ServiceHeroku Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
You may easily deploy your apps to Azure App Service if they were written in Visual Studio IDE (typically.NET applications). With a few clicks of the mouse, you may already deploy your application to a remote server using the Visual Studio IDE. As a result of the portal's bulk and complexity, I propose Heroku for less-experienced developers.
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Salesforce
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.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • It has options to deploy using CI/CD.
  • It has great integration with Azure Devops
  • It has all the common runtimes, so we don't need to install softwares.
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Salesforce
  • 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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Cons
Microsoft
  • the learning curve can be tough (just like other azure services)
  • the UX/UI could be more intuitive (just like other azure services as well)
  • monitoring can be hard to understand
  • Microsoft's learning resources are hard to understand
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Salesforce
  • 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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Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
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.
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Usability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
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.
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Reliability and Availability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
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.
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Performance
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
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.
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Support Rating
Microsoft
We had an issue where we deployed too large of a resource and didn't notice until the bill came through. They were very understanding and saw we weren't utilizing the resources so they issued a generous refund in about 4 hours. Very fast, friendly, and understanding support reps from my experience.
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Salesforce
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.
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Implementation Rating
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
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.
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Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
Azure has many data center, their services are more reliable. Azure has way more features than both Linode and DigitalOcean. If someone wants a complete reliable service, he/she must go to Azure instead of Linode and DigitalOcean because even though azure charges more, it is worth the money you pay there.
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Salesforce
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.
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Reduced the deployment time of ASP .NET applications in the company.
  • Gave us an alternative to quickly deploy our applications without granting access to the version control system to a third platform.
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Salesforce
  • 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.
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ScreenShots