What users are saying about
115 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 8.4 out of 100
Based on 115 reviews and ratings
160 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 7.5 out of 100
Based on 160 reviews and ratings
Feature Set Ratings
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

8.4
DigitalOcean
84%

Heroku Platform
Feature Set Not Supported
N/A
DigitalOcean ranks higher in 9/9 features
DigitalOcean ranks higher in 9/9 features
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime

9.0
90%
27 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Dynamic scaling

8.6
86%
29 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Elastic load balancing

7.6
76%
21 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Pre-configured templates

9.3
93%
26 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Monitoring tools

7.9
79%
31 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images

8.7
87%
30 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Operating system support

7.6
76%
30 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Security controls

8.1
81%
29 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Automation

8.4
84%
3 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Platform-as-a-Service

DigitalOcean
Feature Set Not Supported
N/A

7.5
Heroku Platform
75%
Heroku Platform ranks higher in 11/11 features
Heroku Platform ranks higher in 11/11 features
Ease of building user interfaces

N/A
0 Ratings

7.9
79%
27 Ratings
Scalability

N/A
0 Ratings

6.9
69%
44 Ratings
Platform management overhead

N/A
0 Ratings

8.1
81%
43 Ratings
Workflow engine capability

N/A
0 Ratings

7.0
70%
29 Ratings
Platform access control

N/A
0 Ratings

6.0
60%
43 Ratings
Services-enabled integration

N/A
0 Ratings

6.8
68%
42 Ratings
Development environment creation

N/A
0 Ratings

8.7
87%
39 Ratings
Development environment replication

N/A
0 Ratings

8.0
80%
38 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification

N/A
0 Ratings

7.5
75%
42 Ratings
Issue recovery

N/A
0 Ratings

7.7
77%
39 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes

N/A
0 Ratings

8.0
80%
44 Ratings
Attribute Ratings
- DigitalOcean is rated higher in 3 areas: Likelihood to Recommend, Availability, Support Rating
- Heroku Platform is rated higher in 2 areas: Likelihood to Renew, Usability
- DigitalOcean and Heroku Platform are tied in 1 area: Performance
Likelihood to Recommend

8.6
DigitalOcean
86%
32 Ratings

6.7
Heroku Platform
67%
48 Ratings
Likelihood to Renew

9.0
DigitalOcean
90%
2 Ratings

9.5
Heroku Platform
95%
6 Ratings
Usability

8.6
DigitalOcean
86%
6 Ratings

9.2
Heroku Platform
92%
17 Ratings
Availability

10.0
DigitalOcean
100%
2 Ratings

8.0
Heroku Platform
80%
2 Ratings
Performance

9.0
DigitalOcean
90%
2 Ratings

9.0
Heroku Platform
90%
2 Ratings
Support Rating

8.8
DigitalOcean
88%
18 Ratings

8.7
Heroku Platform
87%
38 Ratings
Online Training

DigitalOcean
N/A
0 Ratings

6.0
Heroku Platform
60%
1 Rating
Implementation Rating

DigitalOcean
N/A
0 Ratings

9.0
Heroku Platform
90%
6 Ratings
Product Scalability

10.0
DigitalOcean
100%
1 Rating

Heroku Platform
N/A
0 Ratings
Likelihood to Recommend
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean is a powerful tool with respect to the services and pricing that it offers. It is easier than other products and also provides servers that are inexpensive with great performance. DigitalOcean also offers additional add-ons such as additional IP addresses, scheduling of backups, etc. One of the best advantages is that it is efficient and is open source. Although, it is suited for a firm that is looking to cut down cost. Also, it is not suited for an organization where the dev/platform/DBA team is less experienced.

Verified User
Consultant in Finance and Accounting
Accounting Company, 10,001+ employeesHeroku Platform
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.

Verified User
C-Level Executive in Corporate
Financial Services Company, 11-50 employeesPros
DigitalOcean
- DigitalOcean provides some of the best cost-to-value services available
- The DigitalOcean cloud console is very intuitive and easy to navigate
- DigitalOcean has great support for Docker and other dev ops tools like Terraform.
- DigitalOcean iterates quickly and provides cutting edge features for organizations that want to keep up with the latest and greatest dev ops tooling
- DigitalOcean has a great developer community and numerous support docs/tutorials

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Marketing and Advertising Company, 11-50 employeesHeroku Platform
- 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.

Verified User
C-Level Executive in Other
Consumer Services Company, 1-10 employeesCons
DigitalOcean
- Some products/services available on other Cloud providers aren't available, but they seem to be catching up as they add new products like Managed SQL DBs.
- While they have FreeBSD droplets (VMs), support for *BSD OSs is limited. I.e. the new monitoring agent only works on Linux.
- There are no regions available on South America.
- They don't seem to offer enterprise-level products, even basic ones as Windows Server, MS SQL Server, Oracle products, etc.
Director of Technology
Global Brigades, Inc.Non-Profit Organization Management, 11-50 employees
Heroku Platform
- 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.
Co-Creator
Flights MachineLeisure, Travel & Tourism, 1-10 employees
Pricing Details
DigitalOcean
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
$5 Starting Price Per Month
DigitalOcean Editions & Modules
Edition
1GB-16GB | $5.001 |
---|---|
8GB-160GB | $60.001 |
- Starting Price Per Month
Additional Pricing Details
—Heroku Platform
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
$85 per month
Heroku Platform Editions & Modules
Edition
Production | $25.001 |
---|---|
Advanced | $250.001 |
- per month
Additional Pricing Details
—Likelihood to Renew
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean 9.0
Based on 2 answers
I've been very happy with it for my purposes and I plan to continue to use DigitalOcean for the foreseeable future!
Devops Engineer
Tommy BahamaComputer Software, 1-10 employees
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 9.5
Based on 6 answers
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.
Software Engineer
ShiptInternet, 51-200 employees
Usability
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean 8.6
Based on 6 answers
I honestly can't think of an easier way to set up and maintain your own server. Being able to set up a server in minutes and have fully control is awesome. The UX is incredibly intuitive for first-time users as well so there's no reason to be intimidated when it comes to giving DigitalOcean a shot.
VP of Technology & Human Resources
Quality Ironworks, Inc.Construction, 51-200 employees
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 9.2
Based on 17 answers
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.
Chief Technology Officer
TrustRadiusComputer Software, 1-10 employees
Reliability and Availability
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean 10.0
Based on 2 answers
Have not found a single second of down time myself. Superior availability.
Front-end developer
Velocity PartnersInformation Technology and Services, 11-50 employees
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 8.0
Based on 2 answers
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.
Chief Technology Officer
TrustRadiusComputer Software, 1-10 employees
Performance
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean 9.0
Based on 2 answers
Very quick response and high performance, you have to fine tune configurations on your machines though.
Front-end developer
Velocity PartnersInformation Technology and Services, 11-50 employees
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 9.0
Based on 2 answers
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.
Chief Technology Officer
TrustRadiusComputer Software, 1-10 employees
Support Rating
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean 8.8
Based on 18 answers
They have always been fast, and the process has been straight-forward. I haven't had to use it enough to be frustrated with it, to be honest, and when I have an issue they fix it. As with all support, I wish it felt more human, but they are doing aces.
Co-Founder / Full Stack Dev
Madness LabsComputer Software, 1-10 employees
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 8.7
Based on 38 answers
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.

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Information Technology and Services Company, 1-10 employeesImplementation Rating
DigitalOcean
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 9.0
Based on 6 answers
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.
Backend Engineer
DoistInternet, 11-50 employees
Alternatives Considered
DigitalOcean
Amazon has a very complex UI and many products to offer. They haven't polished up their UI and it has a much greater learning curve compared to DigitalOcean. However, Amazon Web Services (AWS) does have more comprehensive cloud computing services, which forces some companies to migrate their backend and other services to AWS as they scale up.
Co-Founder/CEO
aspace, Inc.Computer Software, 1-10 employees
Heroku Platform
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.
Web & Mobile Developer
Bluefire ProductionsComputer Software, 11-50 employees
Scalability
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean 10.0
Based on 1 answer
Great scalability, you can start with small plans and move up to premium features at a very good price.
Front-end developer
Velocity PartnersInformation Technology and Services, 11-50 employees
Heroku Platform
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
DigitalOcean
- With DigitalOcean, I've been able to move all my sites to https using my own implementations of SSL with LetsEncrypt.
- Since moving my sites to DigitalOcean, my hosting plan costs less than 40% of what I paid for similar hosting from Site5.
Web Developer
satinflame designHigher Education, 1-10 employees
Heroku Platform
- 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.
Director, Illinois Science & Technology Coalition
Illinois Science and Technology CoalitionEducation Management, 1-10 employees