I don’t use Heroku anymore

I’ve got very nice e-mail starting with:

Thank you for being a Heroku user. Starting November 28, 2022, free Heroku Dynos, free Heroku Postgres, and free Heroku Data for Redis® will no longer be available…

So what?

For many years they were my go solution for deploying simple projects. Whenever it was for learning, interview, or personal purposes. I always emphasized how generous they were, by giving those free tiers.

How to deploy a Django app for FREE

Pretty much everybody knew that their PaaS business model was great for rapid development. and easy testing new ideas. But there was tipping point, where at certain scale of operation there were better solutions.

Alternatives for Heroku

1. Web hosting

When comes to shared hosting this isn’t that obvious choice, because for many years the only available hosting plans were focused around PHP. When you asked admin about possibility of running something other than that (Python, Node.js), they would laugh at you. Thankfully it’s changing right now.

Bluehost

SiteGround

2. Cloud

Amazon is your friend, wink, wink.

3. Your own PaaS

Yes, you can do this with open source tools like:

Dokku

CapRover

4. Real competitors

Fortunately, there are some new players who offer high quality services (even for free):

Railway

render

Fly

Future plans

Fortunately we have some good replacements for that wretched Heroku. Flu.io seems to be a good option, but you need to “Dockerize” your app.

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PS. Another company I will have to slander is SendGrid (Twilio). They also can write “beautiful” e-mails, which raise blood pressure:

account has been deactivated due to inactivity and cannot be reactivated due to security precautions. If you would like to continue to use Twilio SendGrid, you can set up a new direct account…

WTF?!