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Lorenzo Zarantonello
Lorenzo Zarantonello

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Bye Bye Heroku

If you are a developer, you might have used or heard of Heroku.

Heroku is a cloud programming platform designed to help build and deploy online applications.

Founded in 2007, it is now one of the largest PaaS platforms in existence, with hundreds of thousands of customers spread around the world.

It supports six programming languages (through which to develop apps for distribution on the Web) and is based on the Debian operating system or, more recently, Ubuntu (two Linux distributions).

Goodbye Heroku

According to a recent update, "Starting October 26, 2022, we will begin deleting inactive accounts and associated storage for accounts that have been inactive for over a year. Starting November 28, 2022, we plan to stop offering free product plans and plan to start shutting down free dynos and data services. We will be sending out a series of email communications to affected users".

Why is this a pity?

Because many people/students/dev have their first experience with deploying an application on Heroku!
And to be honest, the quality of the environment was pretty good, even in terms of analytics.

What's next?

I am sure many will move to other platforms to deploy their apps. Vercel, Netlify, GitHub Pages are all good options.
Do you know more?

Top comments (43)

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lukeecart profile image
Luke Cartwright

Here's a great Github repo I was shown recently that could help you.

There's a webhosting section that gives some great options as replacements.

github.com/ripienaar/free-for-dev#...

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lorenzojkrl profile image
Lorenzo Zarantonello

Thanks! I need to spend some time on this! Quite some stuff 🥳

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ngocsotn profile image
The Ngoc Nguyen

Good share, thank you

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koleajeolayinka profile image
KOLEAJEOLAYINKA

Thanks for sharing this amazing info i really appreciate

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mezieb profile image
Okoro chimezie bright

thanks for puting all this together.

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lukeecart profile image
Luke Cartwright

This wasn't me, I was told about it

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mmarulka profile image
Marija N. • Edited

Microtica offers a Heroku-like platform experience to deploy your apps securely on the cloud. You can use our Freemium plan to get started and then move to your own AWS account when ready (prices start at $19/month). Check out the platform at app.microtica.com and contact me to get help with free AWS credits.

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lorenzojkrl profile image
Lorenzo Zarantonello

Interesting! Thanks for sharing:)

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meshvpatel18 profile image
Meshv Patel

Cool. Thanks for this link.

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mterrel profile image
Mark Terrel

Give Adaptable.io a try. It's easier to use than Heroku and the free tier includes your database (Postgres or MongoDB).

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lorenzojkrl profile image
Lorenzo Zarantonello

Never heard of it! Thanks for sharing! I’ll give it a try!

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kostjapalovic profile image
Kostja Appliku.com

hey, Lorenzo!

3 years ago, I started working on a Heroku alternative.

A Heroku alternative deployment service that uses your cloud server from any provider to run your apps.

appliku.com/

The primary focus is on Python/Django but also runs node apps.

I posted the story here a while ago: dev.to/kostjapalovic/tired-of-depl....

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gurchiekt profile image
Thomas Gurchiek

I knew about the inactivating of accounts, but i guess i missed that part about free dyno time. That free dyno time was perfect for quick staging of applications for testing. Not to mention a great place for Rubyists.

I mean pay as you go im sure will still be around, but thats still ops maintenance to remember to cycle up/down. /rollEyes

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alonedatascientist profile image
alonedatascientist

Yep. "But just go to [insert platform here] it starts as low as 99$ for a chunk of time and data that will be sure to change every 2 months" ...(there is no emoji committing suicide but imagine him here)

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lorenzojkrl profile image
Lorenzo Zarantonello

Ahahah nailed it!

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maxfindel profile image
Max F. Findel

Hey Lorenzo, have you checked fly.io? I didn't see it listed below and the free tier is enough for a single Heroku app with it's database.

Their approach is focused on deploying your code on multiple locations to process requests closest to your users, but just deploying a single server like DigitalOcean+Dokku works just fine.

I migrated some of my old projects over there and I like it a lot. I hope it helps!

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lorenzojkrl profile image
Lorenzo Zarantonello

Thanks! I didn’t know about it! I’ll check it out 😊

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elijahtrillionz profile image
Elijah Trillionz

Keyword "students".

When I just started learning back-end development, Heroku was the first PaaS I encountered. I was excited it was free and I could try it out immediately along with the tutorial I was watching.

It was great while it lasted.

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agonzales profile image
Alexandre Gonzales

qoddi.com is compatible with most of Heroku's buildpacks. We wrote a guide to help with the migration: dev.to/qoddiapps/migration-guide-h...

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sarozpradhan profile image
Saroj Pradhan • Edited

eu.pythonanywhere.com/pricing/ is the good option for the python web apps. Its backed by Anaconda

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sohamboratee profile image
Soham

Glitch has got to be one of the best options.