Heroku is one of the most popular cloud platform as a service (PaaS) providers, making it easy for developers to deploy, run, and scale applications without worrying about infrastructure management. With its wide range of pricing plans and add-ons, Heroku offers flexible and scalable options to meet diverse business needs. But how much does Heroku actually cost? In this post, we'll break down Heroku's pricing, give tips on getting better deals, discuss core features and alternatives, and explain how Spendflo can help optimize Heroku spending.

‍

How Much Does Heroku Cost?

Heroku has a wide pricing range depending on the scale and complexity of applications being deployed. At a high level, pricing can range from $10,000 per month to $60,000+ per month.

‍

Here's an overview of what to expect:

‍

• Eco and Basic: $5 and up per month
• Production: ~$0.035/hour and up (max of $25/month and up)
• Advanced: ~$0.347/hour and up (max of $250/month and up)
• Enterprise: Contact Sales for custom pricing

‍

Heroku is a fully managed platform, so you don't pay for separate servers or ops teams. But, additional services, dyno uptime, and scale all add to your monthly Heroku invoice.

‍

How to Get a Better Deal on Heroku

While Heroku pricing is simple and transparent, there are several optimization strategies you can leverage to get better deals and reduce expenses:

‍

Right size dynos

Heroku dynos are the compute resources that run your application. It's important to monitor usage patterns and scale dyno types and quantities up or down to match your workload needs precisely. Having too many large dynos results in waste and overpayment. Use metrics and traffic data to determine the optimal dyno plan.

‍

Use Heroku optimization tools 

Heroku provides free tools like Heroku Optimizer to analyze resource efficiency and optimize infrastructure costs. Take advantage of these tools to right size everything based on data.

‍

Minimize add-ons 

Heroku add-ons provide services for databases, caching, monitoring, and more. Scrutinize each add-on and disable or downgrade to lighter tiers if not necessary. Eliminate unused add-ons.

‍

Reduce code bloat 

Bulky apps with excessive libraries and dependencies can increase slug size and cost more to run. Trim down unnecessary code to run leaner, smaller dynos.

‍

Use Heroku Enterprise 

Consider using Heroku Enterprise plans for better discounts and custom pricing for large, complex workloads. Lock in lower rates with a contract.

‍

Leverage discounts 

Look for ways to get discounts on Heroku, such as annual billing, committed usage, or negotiated volume discounts. Multi-year contracts can provide savings.

‍

Optimize databases

Large production databases on Heroku Postgres can be expensive. Consider managed alternatives like AWS RDS or self-hosted databases.

‍

Heroku's Core Features

Heroku provides a fast, scalable, resilient, and secure platform for deploying cloud-native applications. Some of the standout features that make Heroku a popular platform include:

‍

Heroku Runtime: Heroku apps run inside smart containers called dynos. The runtime is fully managed by Heroku, which handles load balancing, configuration, orchestration, security, logging, failovers, and more. Developers don't need to worry about infrastructure.

Heroku Postgres: Managed SQL database service powered by PostgreSQL. Provides easy setup, simple scaling, encryption at rest, continuous protection, database forking, and high reliability.

Heroku Redis: In-memory key-value datastore delivered as a service. Enables fast caching, queues, rate limiting etc. Integrates seamlessly with major languages and frameworks.

Auto Scaling: Heroku applications can scale instantly and elegantly, both vertically and horizontally. Capable of handling everything from small projects to large enterprise apps.

Add-ons Marketplace: Over 150 add-ons available for services like New Relic, MongoDB, SendGrid etc. Makes it easy to extend app capabilities.

Data Clips: Share live query results securely via URLs. Enables real-time data insights and monitoring for apps.

Rollback Support: Code and databases can be instantly rolled back to a previous state. Allows fearless development and experimentation.

Metrics and Monitoring: Heroku provides built-in monitoring for key metrics like throughput, response times, errors, memory usage, and more.

Continuous Delivery: Heroku enables continuous delivery workflows using Pipelines, Review Apps, and GitHub integration. Smooth iteration from development to production.

GitHub Integration: Seamless GitHub integration for rapid testing and auto-deployments. Review apps created for every pull request.

‍

Custom Buildpacks: Support for custom buildpacks allows running Gradle, Meteor, NGINX, Haskell, etc. Extendable to any language or framework.

‍

‍

Heroku Alternatives

While Heroku leads the PaaS market, some alternatives worth considering include:

‍

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a robust PaaS solution offered by Amazon Web Services for quickly deploying and scaling web applications. It allows developers to deploy code to AWS-managed containers without worrying about infrastructure or configuration. AWS handles load balancing, auto-scaling, health monitoring, etc., automatically.

‍

Microsoft Azure App Service

Microsoft Azure App Service is another robust PaaS offering ideal for hosting Windows and Linux-based web applications. It features integrated developer tools for Visual Studio, GitHub, Docker, and more. Azure App Service enables autoscaling, load balancing, staging environments, and continuous deployment capabilities. 

‍

Google App Engine

Google App Engine is a fully managed serverless platform that abstracts away infrastructure completely. It provides automated scaling capabilities without developers having to manage any servers at all. App Engine has a free tier available subject to usage quotas. It supports languages like Node.js, Java, Python, and Go.

‍

How Spendflo Can Help You Get Better Deals on Heroku

Spendflo is a cloud cost optimization platform that helps businesses save on services like Heroku. With Spendflo, you can:

‍

• Get full visibility into Heroku spend and usage trends across your organization.
• Identify opportunities to optimize, downsize, or eliminate wasteful Heroku resources.
• Right size Heroku dynos by mapping usage metrics to traffic patterns.
• Compare Heroku pricing and performance with other provider options.
• Leverage Spendflo's purchasing power to negotiate better Heroku pricing contracts.
• Monitor add-on consumption and unused services for elimination.
• Stay informed of any pricing changes, discounts, or account alerts.

‍

By leveraging Spendflo's cloud cost management platform, you can actively control Heroku expenses, optimize usage, and maximize savings. Get a custom quote from Spendflo to optimize your Heroku costs today.

‍

Frequently Asked Questions about Heroku Pricing

What are the pricing plans offered by Heroku?

Heroku has several pricing plans depending on your usage and scale: Eco, Production, Advanced, and Enterprise. Each plan has a monthly cost per dyno and add-ons are priced separately.

‍

Does Heroku offer any free tiers?

No, Heroku does not have a free tier. The lowest cost plan is the Eco plan at $5 per dyno per month.

‍

How is Heroku pricing calculated?

Heroku pricing is based on the number of active dynos, size of dynos, add-ons usage, bandwidth usage, and number of domains connected. The monthly invoice reflects your total infrastructure usage.

‍

What factors determine the cost of running an app on Heroku?

The main factors are the number of dynos required to run the app, size of those dynos, usage of add-ons like databases or caching, bandwidth needs, and utilization of free monthly dyno hours.

‍

Does Heroku offer discounts on pricing?

Yes, some discounts may be available for annual vs monthly billing, higher tier plans, committed usage, or negotiated volume discounts for large customers.

‍

Is Heroku more expensive than other PaaS alternatives?

Heroku can be more expensive at a large scale than options like AWS Elastic Beanstalk. But for smaller workloads, it is competitively priced compared to other PaaS platforms.

‍

Can I upgrade or downgrade my Heroku plan flexibly?

Yes, you can seamlessly upgrade or downgrade your Heroku plan as your application needs to change. This provides flexibility to match pricing to usage.

‍

How can I optimize costs when using Heroku?

Strategies like right-sizing dynos, minimizing add-ons, leveraging free dyno hours, reducing code bloat, and using Heroku optimization tools can help minimize costs.

‍

Does Heroku offer a way to estimate costs?

Yes, Heroku provides a pricing calculator to estimate your monthly dyno, add-ons, and bandwidth costs based on projected usage parameters.

‍