Item: Heroku Platform
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Heroku to control our web stack across the entire organization. Our engineers are able to scale and control server instances, web, database and others through one easy to use control panel. Heroku runs our website and the background jobs that the website depends on. It addresses the problem of having a single place to control all things related to our web stack.

Pros and Cons

Easy to use control panel
Virtually effortless to scale server instances with the click of a button
Fully managed servers, although you still have good control over what is run on the instances

Price has crept up a bit
The plugin system is useful, but sometimes not perfect

Return on Investment

We don't need SysOps!
It's allowed us to scale nearly infinitely
No need to own the servers

Usability

The web interface is really easy to use and pretty straightforward. There are many places where you can drill down into the details, so you'll need a background in basic DevOps to understand why the system operates the way it does. I would estimate that I've saved months of work having used Heroku, versus rolling our own On Metal server stack.

Support Rating

Heroku customer service is good, but not perfect. You can purchase higher levels of support, but we never did. There were times where I would ask questions and I wouldn't have the right service level, so my answer would take time to get back to me, but that's to be expected.

Alternatives Considered

Docker, AWS Elastic Beanstalk and Google App Engine

Heroku has advantages over Docker, Google App Engine and AWS products, but it depends largely on your use case. If you are already in AWS, it's probably in your best interest to stay with AWS products. However, other "Cloud Formation/Orchestration" products like Docker are typically lacking the ease-of-use factor that allows you to get up and running with Heroku quickly.

Other Software Used

Docker, Google App Engine, AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Heroku allows you to scale massively without taking on the burden of SysOps or owning servers

Overall Satisfaction with Heroku