{"slug": "heroku", "name": "Heroku", "category": "infra", "category_name": "Infrastructure and DevOps", "description": "", "recommenders": 4, "commenters": 15, "warners": 8, "score": -2.865, "rising": -1.31, "first": "2025-11-28", "latest": "2026-06-16", "why": "Heroku when you just want your app to work forever without having to think about it.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 1, "compare": 2, "warn": 8}, "spark": [1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Heroku when you just want your app to work forever without having to think about it.", "icon": true, "domain": "heroku.com", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.heroku.com", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Heroku"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 776953058, "item_id": 48559566, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48559566", "by": "digitaltrees", "date": "2026-06-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "All great products that get eroded by the neglect of big tech.", "excerpt": "I love cursor. It's so frustrating that large companies are allowed to buy everything. Think of a world where github was still independent, cursor remained independent, heroku wasn't part of Salesforce. All great products that get eroded by the neglect of big tech.", "context": "", "use_case": "app hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "SpaceX to buy Cursor AI coding agent operator Anysphere for $60B"}, {"id": 763829904, "item_id": 47739369, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47739369", "by": "the__alchemist", "date": "2026-04-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "You can also solve the tech stack problem with Heroku.", "excerpt": "I concur with some of the commenters that this read as a bit of a brain dump. It has a thread connecting several loosely-related topics. Observation #1: You can also solve the tech stack problem with Heroku. I think the author's stack probably has a steeper learning curve, but is a cheaper option. I think it's a bit of an odd comparison (I won't say straw-man, as I don't doubt some people do this) to go from a fully-", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting web apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack"}, {"id": 750784608, "item_id": 46924038, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46924038", "by": "kayo_20211030", "date": "2026-02-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Heroku just hummed along. It ran our business.", "excerpt": "It was such a great product. Yes, I know they had one truly horrible year. But, they righted the ship. I worked for a company that ran 10bn in revenue, with thousands of users, and Heroku just hummed along. It ran our business. The benefit to us was the lack of problems that occurred at deploy time. Heroku's orchestration of removing old dynos, adding new dynos, and their network control was spectacular. DB's were up", "context": "worked for a company with 10bn revenue", "use_case": "hosting business apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "An Update on Heroku"}, {"id": 737356016, "item_id": 46084751, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46084751", "by": "more_corn", "date": "2025-11-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Heroku when you just want your app to work forever without having to think about it.", "excerpt": "Heroku when you just want your app to work forever without having to think about it.", "context": "", "use_case": "app hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Which cloud provider do you like best and why?"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 776652593, "item_id": 48540787, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48540787", "by": "kreutz", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Will never forgive how badly they've botched Heroku.", "excerpt": "This sucks. I love Intercom. I hate Salesforce. I do not have confidence in Salesforce to be good stewards. Will never forgive how badly they've botched Heroku.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Salesforce to Acquire Fin (formerly Intercom) for $3.6BN"}, {"id": 776627811, "item_id": 48539238, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48539238", "by": "amotinga", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "heroku is shit now", "excerpt": "taking sabbatical from work (after getting laid off) went to visit family in moldova. my nieces tell me there is no app to learn romanian online - this cant be true. I do a bit of research and turns out this is mostly true, mostly these websites built for english speaking people, meaning you learn romanian - but starting from english. at the same time I need to dig in into all the rails 8 goodies. also, I've been hea", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)"}, {"id": 752315568, "item_id": 47019723, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47019723", "by": "ktaraszk", "date": "2026-02-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "it was watching the price stay high while reliability got worse", "excerpt": "I used Heroku until 2023 too. That \"operational excellence\" line felt like a euphemism for \"we're done here.\" The frustrating part wasn't just the lack of new features - it was watching the price stay high while reliability got worse. We're building miget.com partly because of that: flat pricing for unlimited apps, so you don't get nickel-and-dimed as you scale out. Starts at $5/mo for hobby projects, free tier for t", "context": "Used Heroku until 2023", "use_case": "app hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Heroku Is Not Dead"}, {"id": 751775553, "item_id": 46985972, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46985972", "by": "ed", "date": "2026-02-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Heroku is most definitely dead.", "excerpt": "I moved off Heroku to Neon + Hetzner today. I asked Claude to build /provision-server and /deploy skills. It was way easier than it should\u2019ve been. My infra costs on this one project have gone from $1200 to <$200/mo. Neon is awesome, with lightweight branching and instant restores. Heroku is most definitely dead.", "context": "", "use_case": "app hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Heroku Is Not Dead"}]}], "who": [{"by": "kayo_20211030", "context": "worked for a company with 10bn revenue", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46924038", "date": "2026-02-07"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["app hosting", "hosting", "hosting web apps", "hosting business apps", "hosting a side project", "hosting apps"], "compared": [{"slug": "aws", "name": "AWS", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "dokku", "name": "Dokku", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "coolify", "name": "Coolify", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "render", "name": "Render", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "google-app-engine", "name": "Google App Engine", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "supabase", "name": "Supabase", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "vercel", "name": "Vercel", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46983196", "title": "Heroku Is Not Dead", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46913903", "title": "An Update on Heroku", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48553224", "title": "SpaceX to buy Cursor AI coding agent operator Anysphere for $60B", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48540126", "title": "Salesforce to Acquire Fin (formerly Intercom) for $3.6BN", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48528779", "title": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47872324", "title": "I Am Building a Cloud", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 1}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"compare": 1}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 1, "warn": 6, "recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1, "compare": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"warn": 2, "recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 776953058, "item_id": 48559566, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48559566", "by": "digitaltrees", "date": "2026-06-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "All great products that get eroded by the neglect of big tech.", "excerpt": "I love cursor. It's so frustrating that large companies are allowed to buy everything. Think of a world where github was still independent, cursor remained independent, heroku wasn't part of Salesforce. All great products that get eroded by the neglect of big tech.", "context": "", "use_case": "app hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "SpaceX to buy Cursor AI coding agent operator Anysphere for $60B"}, {"id": 776652593, "item_id": 48540787, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48540787", "by": "kreutz", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Will never forgive how badly they've botched Heroku.", "excerpt": "This sucks. I love Intercom. I hate Salesforce. I do not have confidence in Salesforce to be good stewards. Will never forgive how badly they've botched Heroku.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Salesforce to Acquire Fin (formerly Intercom) for $3.6BN"}, {"id": 776627811, "item_id": 48539238, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48539238", "by": "amotinga", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "heroku is shit now", "excerpt": "taking sabbatical from work (after getting laid off) went to visit family in moldova. my nieces tell me there is no app to learn romanian online - this cant be true. I do a bit of research and turns out this is mostly true, mostly these websites built for english speaking people, meaning you learn romanian - but starting from english. at the same time I need to dig in into all the rails 8 goodies. also, I've been hea", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)"}, {"id": 765987794, "item_id": 47874237, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47874237", "by": "collimarco", "date": "2026-04-23", "stance": "compare", "quote": "you could run any web app on a simple platform like Heroku", "excerpt": "Kubernetes is not bad, it's just low level. Most applications share the exact same needs (proof: you could run any web app on a simple platform like Heroku). That's why some years ago I built an open source tool (with 0 dependencies) that simplify Kubernetes deployments with a compact syntax which works well for 99% of web apps (instead of allowing any configuration, it makes many \"opinionated\" choices): https://gith", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Am Building a Cloud"}, {"id": 763829904, "item_id": 47739369, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47739369", "by": "the__alchemist", "date": "2026-04-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "You can also solve the tech stack problem with Heroku.", "excerpt": "I concur with some of the commenters that this read as a bit of a brain dump. It has a thread connecting several loosely-related topics. Observation #1: You can also solve the tech stack problem with Heroku. I think the author's stack probably has a steeper learning curve, but is a cheaper option. I think it's a bit of an odd comparison (I won't say straw-man, as I don't doubt some people do this) to go from a fully-", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting web apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack"}, {"id": 752315568, "item_id": 47019723, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47019723", "by": "ktaraszk", "date": "2026-02-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "it was watching the price stay high while reliability got worse", "excerpt": "I used Heroku until 2023 too. That \"operational excellence\" line felt like a euphemism for \"we're done here.\" The frustrating part wasn't just the lack of new features - it was watching the price stay high while reliability got worse. We're building miget.com partly because of that: flat pricing for unlimited apps, so you don't get nickel-and-dimed as you scale out. Starts at $5/mo for hobby projects, free tier for t", "context": "Used Heroku until 2023", "use_case": "app hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Heroku Is Not Dead"}, {"id": 751775553, "item_id": 46985972, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46985972", "by": "ed", "date": "2026-02-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Heroku is most definitely dead.", "excerpt": "I moved off Heroku to Neon + Hetzner today. I asked Claude to build /provision-server and /deploy skills. It was way easier than it should\u2019ve been. My infra costs on this one project have gone from $1200 to <$200/mo. Neon is awesome, with lightweight branching and instant restores. Heroku is most definitely dead.", "context": "", "use_case": "app hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Heroku Is Not Dead"}, {"id": 751751936, "item_id": 46984496, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46984496", "by": "CoffeeOnWrite", "date": "2026-02-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Heroku is dead as a doornail, of course.", "excerpt": "I love this article but don't understand the conclusion. Heroku is dead as a doornail, of course. Salesforce's core product was on bare metal up to a couple years ago. What they should have done is adopt Heroku as their internal Platform-as-a-Service. That would have solved three problems: 1) provided a ready and proven foundation for cloud adoption by Salesforce business units, 2) stimulated Heroku's product roadmap", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Heroku Is Not Dead"}, {"id": 751747216, "item_id": 46984201, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46984201", "by": "themanmaran", "date": "2026-02-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "it very quickly fell behind the capabilities and devex of products like Supabase and Vercel.", "excerpt": "> Heroku remains an actively supported, production-ready platform, with an emphasis on maintaining quality and operational excellence rather than introducing new features [1] This sentence is what really seals the death for me. I used to be a big Heroku fan. And used them as late as 2023. But tbh it very quickly fell behind the capabilities and devex of products like Supabase and Vercel. While I agree that it will pr", "context": "former Heroku fan, used until 2023", "use_case": "app hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Heroku Is Not Dead"}, {"id": 750784608, "item_id": 46924038, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46924038", "by": "kayo_20211030", "date": "2026-02-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Heroku just hummed along. It ran our business.", "excerpt": "It was such a great product. Yes, I know they had one truly horrible year. But, they righted the ship. I worked for a company that ran 10bn in revenue, with thousands of users, and Heroku just hummed along. It ran our business. The benefit to us was the lack of problems that occurred at deploy time. Heroku's orchestration of removing old dynos, adding new dynos, and their network control was spectacular. DB's were up", "context": "worked for a company with 10bn revenue", "use_case": "hosting business apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "An Update on Heroku"}, {"id": 750777328, "item_id": 46923583, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46923583", "by": "muzani", "date": "2026-02-07", "stance": "warn", "quote": "this is shady af.", "excerpt": "I've had a zombie project running on this for many years now. I used to charge people about $25 for 'lifetime', but there's only about ~10 regular users on it, so I try to keep it alive. Decided this is the time to make the switch over to AWS. They've been rather painful with cancellation. They required all dynos be downgraded to \"Eco\". Fine. But this downgrade also incurred another $5 charge which they now required ", "context": "runs a small zombie project", "use_case": "hosting a side project", "switched_from": "", "story": "An Update on Heroku"}, {"id": 750738976, "item_id": 46921186, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46921186", "by": "neya", "date": "2026-02-06", "stance": "warn", "quote": "They made the platform incredibly expensive to run.", "excerpt": "They shot themselves in the foot a long time ago and never recovered from that, I guess. I remember back in 2012-13 they made some changes that ghosted their primary ICP - indie devs and startup owners. They made the platform incredibly expensive to run. A lot of us panicked and had to move to other vendors - I in particular chose Google's AppEngine which was hugely under-appreciated at the time and eventually became", "context": "GCP consultant, former indie dev", "use_case": "app hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "An Update on Heroku"}, {"id": 750716560, "item_id": 46919785, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46919785", "by": "WinstonSmith84", "date": "2026-02-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Heroku made it incredibly easy to create cool apps.", "excerpt": "I used Heroku extensively before AWS reached its current level of maturity. Heroku made it incredibly easy to create cool apps. When Salesforce acquired it, and knowing a lot about Salesforce, I expected tight integration to address use cases where Apex is too limited (Apex being Salesforce's native language). There were (and still are) numerous such use cases. Unfortunately, this never materialized, and Salesforce g", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "An Update on Heroku"}, {"id": 748218057, "item_id": 46763628, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46763628", "by": "freetonik", "date": "2026-01-26", "stance": "compare", "quote": "But it was still not as robust and invisible, and also pricey (Heroku).", "excerpt": "I was also suspicious of Cloudflare as a full platform, but now it's one of my favorite ways to develop and scale web applications. I have implemented Minifeed[1] (and Exotext [2]) completely in Cloudflare Workers (except for the full-text search, for which I use a self-hosted instance of Typesense; though in my testing, Cloudflare's D1 database does come with full-text search enabled - it's SQLite compatible, and it", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting Rails apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "You can just port things to Cloudflare Workers"}, {"id": 737356016, "item_id": 46084751, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46084751", "by": "more_corn", "date": "2025-11-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Heroku when you just want your app to work forever without having to think about it.", "excerpt": "Heroku when you just want your app to work forever without having to think about it.", "context": "", "use_case": "app hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Which cloud provider do you like best and why?"}]}