Item: Heroku Platform
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Heroku is the platform in which we deploy our applications. It hosts the backend services and it's dependencies such as databases, message queue platform, etc. Instead of setting up a virtual machine and deploy things manually, with Heroku we just attach it to a code repository and automate the deployment to it. It abstracts the resources units and uses a much easier one named `dyno` which allows a much easier scaling mechanism.

Pros and Cons

Continuous deployment via repositories
Abstraction of computing resources
Add-ons mechanism (databases, message-queue services, etc.)

Some Heroku-specific errors are hard to debug

Return on Investment

It has saved us a bunch of time by automatically deploying our code every time we updated the repository.
When our application has slowed down by the increase of user activity, we just add another dyno and problem solved!
It's very easy to modify the environment variables via the Heroku dashboard or via it's CLI.

Alternatives Considered

Azure App Service

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 computing resources units by introducing the `dyno` concept, and you do not get overwhelmed by the complexity of the interface of Azure. The Heroku's web dashboard interface is simple and you are only shown what you need.

Support Rating

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.

Key Insights

Do you think Heroku Platform delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Heroku Platform's feature set?

Yes

Did Heroku Platform live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Heroku Platform go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Heroku Platform again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Azure App Service, Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), Google Analytics, Stripe

Likelihood to Recommend

I consider Heroku to be an outstanding platform. It is perfectly suited for agile teams that want to quickly develop and deploy their applications without losing time on setting up virtual machines, dependencies and deploying. With Heroku, you can deploy Docker images, code from repositories, and just let it handle it. If at some point your application gets bottlenecked and you need more computing resources then it's as easy as adding another dyno. No need to set up anything, just focus on writing your application code!

Heroku: perfect platform for agile teams!

Overall Satisfaction with Heroku Platform