Heroku Free Alternatives(github.com)
github.com
Heroku Free Alternatives
https://github.com/Engagespot/heroku-free-alternatives
136 comments
We switched from Heroku to Render about 6 months ago. It was a great experience initially, but there are a lot of sharp edges we've encountered since then, to the point that if I were switching away from Heroku today, I'd consider something else.
For example, we had a monitor set up in Papertrail that notifies us if it doesn't see our application's heartbeat log entry in a 10-minute period. We had to disable that monitor because Render will regularly have outages related to logging where logs simply don't make it to the log stream. Their status page is all green and I've unfortunately had to reach out to support on more than one Friday night.
Deploys take a little too long, around 5 minutes on the paid Pro Plus tier.
And, minor gripe, but the web UI feels like an SPA, and I think it's built to be one, but the frontend state isn't stable and will often show the wrong information. From time to time, you'll need to manually refresh the page to get the correct information.
The security issue that happened with Heroku back in April and the subsequent flubbing of communication around the issue made it so we had no choice but to migrate. But the platform itself was rock solid in my experience. I don't get that same feeling from Render.
I'm holding out hope that it improves in the coming months!
EDIT: I double checked the deploy times because of the comment below, and it's actually closer to 5 minutes, not 10, so I've updated my comment accordingly. 5 minutes is much more reasonable.
For example, we had a monitor set up in Papertrail that notifies us if it doesn't see our application's heartbeat log entry in a 10-minute period. We had to disable that monitor because Render will regularly have outages related to logging where logs simply don't make it to the log stream. Their status page is all green and I've unfortunately had to reach out to support on more than one Friday night.
Deploys take a little too long, around 5 minutes on the paid Pro Plus tier.
And, minor gripe, but the web UI feels like an SPA, and I think it's built to be one, but the frontend state isn't stable and will often show the wrong information. From time to time, you'll need to manually refresh the page to get the correct information.
The security issue that happened with Heroku back in April and the subsequent flubbing of communication around the issue made it so we had no choice but to migrate. But the platform itself was rock solid in my experience. I don't get that same feeling from Render.
I'm holding out hope that it improves in the coming months!
EDIT: I double checked the deploy times because of the comment below, and it's actually closer to 5 minutes, not 10, so I've updated my comment accordingly. 5 minutes is much more reasonable.
I'm sorry you ran into these issues and feel your frustration. The tl;dr is we hit completely unexpected scale overnight when Heroku's free tier news broke, and had to find and fix unpredictable bottlenecks quickly. We're in better shape now, and I feel confident about the rough edges fading away over the next few weeks.
For example, we've worked hard to get logging to a stable state over the last couple of weeks, and I hope you've noticed the improvements already.
Regarding deploys, I'm surprised they're taking this long on paid plans. I'd love to follow up if you could share details over email (address in profile). We have internal SLOs around build times and we've made (and observed) improvements recently, so I'm wondering if this is specific to how your build is being cached.
For example, we've worked hard to get logging to a stable state over the last couple of weeks, and I hope you've noticed the improvements already.
Regarding deploys, I'm surprised they're taking this long on paid plans. I'd love to follow up if you could share details over email (address in profile). We have internal SLOs around build times and we've made (and observed) improvements recently, so I'm wondering if this is specific to how your build is being cached.
I just deployed my first app to render. Was a good experience.
However, they delete your database after 90 days if you do not have a paid plan. From https://render.com/docs/free#free-postgresql-databases
"Render’s free database plan allows you to run a PostgreSQL database that automatically expires 90 days after creation. Free databases are suspended after 90 days (unless they are upgraded to a paid plan), and are no longer reachable at this point."
The paid plans do start at $7, and you can share a database across many apps, though.
And if you have static site or a site without a database, it looks like it is forever free.
However, they delete your database after 90 days if you do not have a paid plan. From https://render.com/docs/free#free-postgresql-databases
"Render’s free database plan allows you to run a PostgreSQL database that automatically expires 90 days after creation. Free databases are suspended after 90 days (unless they are upgraded to a paid plan), and are no longer reachable at this point."
The paid plans do start at $7, and you can share a database across many apps, though.
And if you have static site or a site without a database, it looks like it is forever free.
You can try Neon(neon.tech). Disclaimer I’m CEO. We architected Neon such that it’s very cheap for us to keep the database forever.
It’s still behind the waitlist but it’s coming off in a few weeks. Also if you onboard via hasura.io there is no gate.
It’s still behind the waitlist but it’s coming off in a few weeks. Also if you onboard via hasura.io there is no gate.
I tried out Render and I must say I was not impressed. Every deploy took 3-5 minutes even with a Hello world Node app. Maybe it was that slow because I was using the free tier? In comparison, fly's deploy was also slow the first time but was significantly faster for subsequent deploys.
Free tier deploys are slow (but not on purpose). We're planning to unify our free and paid architectures so builds are fast across the board.
Supabase is the best place to let a VC fund your free DB.
Only if you are willing to fuck with it every week or two to keep it alive. They changed their free tier recently and they now turn off your project if it’s not “active”. (They don’t delete it, but your have to log in and turn it back on.)
I'm not an expert but I believe it boils down to something connecting to the DB within a week, which seems do-able once things are running and maybe a tiny hassle during initial dev if it's a weekend hobby project.
-- fwiw had an awful interview process with railway - long call with the CEO - asked some follow up questions via email - got a reply to move forward - put in 6 hours of work - ghosted --
Oh man, that’s not at all what I’m aiming for here (Railway Founder)
Could you bump the email in my inbox? Even if you hate my guts and have no interest in the company, I‘d like to know cause I don’t recall this at all :(
We do a 30 minute screen with me (to protect our engineers time) and share the problem ahead of time (to not surprise the interviewee)
Could you bump the email in my inbox? Even if you hate my guts and have no interest in the company, I‘d like to know cause I don’t recall this at all :(
We do a 30 minute screen with me (to protect our engineers time) and share the problem ahead of time (to not surprise the interviewee)
Is delta just ... free? I cant see any price anywhere on the site, which just leaves me suspicious.
They do seem to be pushing some sort of creative-focus, maybe they intend to just keep it really small user base, invite only, just people who actually make things vs a platform just to run your SaaS on?
They do seem to be pushing some sort of creative-focus, maybe they intend to just keep it really small user base, invite only, just people who actually make things vs a platform just to run your SaaS on?
I've been using deta for a (quite small) side project for a year now. It's free, but it has quite the limitations: max RAM of 512 MB (recently upgraded, before it was 128), and their database is a custom thingy, which doesn't have too many features.
One more, my personal favorite.
https://northflank.com/ - The comprehensive developer platform to build and scale microservices, jobs and managed databases with a powerful UI, API & CLI.
https://northflank.com/ - The comprehensive developer platform to build and scale microservices, jobs and managed databases with a powerful UI, API & CLI.
I’ve run a couple Telegram bots on Fly’s free tier and it’s been very slick - I especially like the remote docker builders they added recently. Remote docker building is ideal vs. having to debug my local Podman install on Fedora.
I will say I’m not sure how the reporting is supposed to work. Fly thinks I’ve been running a failed process for the last couple days but it sure is working!
I will say I’m not sure how the reporting is supposed to work. Fly thinks I’ve been running a failed process for the last couple days but it sure is working!
We have been using render in production for about 8 months (paid services).
Overall happy but some things are annoying:
- Latency of the oregon region is very high. A simple health endpoint is around 500ms from north america and europe, 1.3s from Asia/Australia (we have been monitoring it for many months with better uptime)
- Services tend to die at least once a week, so you do need at least two instances all the time
- Logs are often delayed for a long time, though it has been more severe recently.
- Build time is just horrible, our rust service takes around 40m to deploy. I get that it is free, but at least give me a docker registry so I can build it elsewhere and push the image
- No option to pay for support 24/7, so if there is an outage during the US night you are on your own
- Latency of the oregon region is very high. A simple health endpoint is around 500ms from north america and europe, 1.3s from Asia/Australia (we have been monitoring it for many months with better uptime)
- Services tend to die at least once a week, so you do need at least two instances all the time
- Logs are often delayed for a long time, though it has been more severe recently.
- Build time is just horrible, our rust service takes around 40m to deploy. I get that it is free, but at least give me a docker registry so I can build it elsewhere and push the image
- No option to pay for support 24/7, so if there is an outage during the US night you are on your own
Glad to hear you're happy overall, and I want to add that we're working to address the things you mentioned. We also have paid 24/7 support with response and uptime SLAs: https://render.com/pricing#support
I'm surprised to hear about the service dying once a week: in my experience this is typically an application issue. Happy to help debug if you'd like to shoot me an email.
I'm surprised to hear about the service dying once a week: in my experience this is typically an application issue. Happy to help debug if you'd like to shoot me an email.
I recently migrated OnlineOrNot's uptime checks to run (mostly) on fly.io, strong recommend for ease of use and reliability!
I wrote about the experience here: https://onlineornot.com/on-moving-million-uptime-checks-onto...
I wrote about the experience here: https://onlineornot.com/on-moving-million-uptime-checks-onto...
How does alwaysdata work? The pricing just references different storage tiers - how is that related to vCPUs or RAM or the number of apps, DBs etc. deployed? Couldn't really find anything on their site...
Can you include Hatchbox ( https://hatchbox.io/ )? Coupled with Linode.
Hatchbox doesn't provide hardware and is tied down to Ruby.
Request for startup: something like Render, but that is HIPAA compliant from day one.
(Render CEO) We now offer a standard BAA for HIPAA compliance. Email [email protected] to get started.
Thanks for the response, anurag! Is that usually the most that your customers passing PHI through Render will ask for? Or are there a few other steps they have to take in order to feel like their compliance requirements are met by the platform?
It depends on the customer, but the BAA is the most we've been asked for so far outside of our regular security practices.
That's good to know, appreciate you sharing that.
You might check out https://www.aptible.com/. It's not quite as ridiculously simple as Heroku but they are HIPAA compliant.
fly advertises HIPAA
https://fly.io/docs/about/healthcare/
https://fly.io/docs/about/healthcare/
Reading what they offer, you'd think Java runtime didn't exist anymore.
I wish fly.io provided more clarity about their free tier.
What’s unclear about it? I read the pricing page and it seems clear to me.
I wish they provided more clarity considering they are seen as a Heroku alternative, let me explain that.
I am not saying that it fails to provide clarity to someone who is willing to pay for it, but the rule of thumb of pricing pages offering a "free" product is to explicitly mention this ⇒ "$0". Am I being picky? Yes. Why? Because it is a Heroku alternative, and Heroku did mention free in an obvious way in describing their pricing plans.
When you mention overage charges immediately after the free tier, it kinda feels a little bit weird. In the pricing plans section, they don't mention a free plan.
https://fly.io/plans
https://render.com/pricing
https://www.heroku.com/pricing
I am not saying that it fails to provide clarity to someone who is willing to pay for it, but the rule of thumb of pricing pages offering a "free" product is to explicitly mention this ⇒ "$0". Am I being picky? Yes. Why? Because it is a Heroku alternative, and Heroku did mention free in an obvious way in describing their pricing plans.
When you mention overage charges immediately after the free tier, it kinda feels a little bit weird. In the pricing plans section, they don't mention a free plan.
https://fly.io/plans
https://render.com/pricing
https://www.heroku.com/pricing
I wrote a pricing comparison guide at https://fly.io/docs/rails/getting-started/migrate-from-herok...
What’s important is that pricing isn’t the same and the free plan is really a way for you to try Fly before deciding to dial up the resources. You can use it for really small apps, but trying to squeeze a Rails app into 256Mb RAM on 3 servers is tough.
I moved few of my Heroku apps over to Fly and pay about half much for about 4x what I was getting on Heroku. When v2 of the Fly app platform goes out, I expect that price to go down even more since apps can sleep when they’re not serving up requests.
What’s important is that pricing isn’t the same and the free plan is really a way for you to try Fly before deciding to dial up the resources. You can use it for really small apps, but trying to squeeze a Rails app into 256Mb RAM on 3 servers is tough.
I moved few of my Heroku apps over to Fly and pay about half much for about 4x what I was getting on Heroku. When v2 of the Fly app platform goes out, I expect that price to go down even more since apps can sleep when they’re not serving up requests.
We're happy people are running workloads on us that they used to run on Heroku, but we are our own thing; we've been around for years, long before Heroku killed their free tier.
My apologies. I totally understand fly.io being a distinct company with their offering and history.
To me, fly.io is an alternative to Heroku as the title of the thread is "on: Heroku Free Alternatives". So I was comparing it to Heroku and their pricing section UX.
To me, fly.io is an alternative to Heroku as the title of the thread is "on: Heroku Free Alternatives". So I was comparing it to Heroku and their pricing section UX.
Totally fair! Whatever our pricing does to surprise or annoy Heroku free tier users, it's totally fair to call it out! The only thing that moved me to comment was the implication that we had somehow set out to be the second coming of Heroku. We set out to make every app in the world run close to its users globally. That we're amenable to Heroku people is just a bonus for us. :)
> The only thing that moved me to comment was the implication that we had somehow set out to be the second coming of Heroku.
Dude, I didn't mean it like that. Again, I am sorry.
My cloud experience is very limited. I have seen people talk about your SQLite related blog posts on HN, but I didn't participate in those threads, because I simply wasn't passionate enough or had an understanding about those topics.
I, too, love my job. But sometimes people with limited exposure to our product say some things about that mildly annoys me. But at the end, they don't know any better. I have unfortunately become one of those guys in this circumstance here. To me, the value proposition of a PAAS is only limited to the free pricing tier. It is a very insignificant comment about a UX thing.
I wish I could delete that comment. Please, I hope you take no further offense.
Dude, I didn't mean it like that. Again, I am sorry.
My cloud experience is very limited. I have seen people talk about your SQLite related blog posts on HN, but I didn't participate in those threads, because I simply wasn't passionate enough or had an understanding about those topics.
I, too, love my job. But sometimes people with limited exposure to our product say some things about that mildly annoys me. But at the end, they don't know any better. I have unfortunately become one of those guys in this circumstance here. To me, the value proposition of a PAAS is only limited to the free pricing tier. It is a very insignificant comment about a UX thing.
I wish I could delete that comment. Please, I hope you take no further offense.
This topic came up a few weeks ago and I commented [0] that I started using Coolify (https://coolify.io), an open source self-hosted PaaS that's similar to CapRover and Dokku but in my opinion the developer experience is a lot simpler since it has a GUI unlike Dokku (non-Pro version, anyway) and the deployment was easier than CapRover since it connects directly to your GitHub/GitLab account via their API.
I've used a lot of the alternatives listed here but each one had some drawback or another. In contrast, I got a cheap 5 dollar Hetzner server and it's more powerful than any of what the free options here give you (Hetzner gets you 2 AMD vCPUs and 2 GB RAM), plus unlike AWS I never have to worry about whether I'm gonna randomly pay $10k this month due to a traffic spike. The only thing that was missing before was a good PaaS solution for the server (and I used to use Dokku before primarily) but Coolify solves that neatly.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33077118#33077464
I've used a lot of the alternatives listed here but each one had some drawback or another. In contrast, I got a cheap 5 dollar Hetzner server and it's more powerful than any of what the free options here give you (Hetzner gets you 2 AMD vCPUs and 2 GB RAM), plus unlike AWS I never have to worry about whether I'm gonna randomly pay $10k this month due to a traffic spike. The only thing that was missing before was a good PaaS solution for the server (and I used to use Dokku before primarily) but Coolify solves that neatly.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33077118#33077464
I agree that hetzner is great value, but there are also free alternatiäes for small projects: https://paul.totterman.name/posts/free-clouds/
The part that worries me about managing your own server is the security aspect, it's just a much larger surface area than just running a docker image on fly.io, for example. Do self-hosted PaaS like Coolify/Dokku/CapRover handle this aspect? Or do you still have to take all the steps you'd usually take securing the server?
Thanks. This would be a lot more useful with a comparison of features or trade offs (e.g. how many resources do you get? does it suspend? what about databases? etc.) instead of just the marketing taglines for each service.
This is my main problem with "awesome lists". I appreciate all the work that goes into cataloging things but without any exploration functionality (i.e. search, filter, sort), it's nearly useless. Tbh I don't recall a single time I really got something from an awesome list and I definitely haven't ever referred back to any of the lists I've saved/starred
They might be fun for random exploration if you're killing time, but not really a tool
They might be fun for random exploration if you're killing time, but not really a tool
I don’t believe “awesome lists” are intended to make your decisions for you; rather, they’re intended as an input for a business analyst to gather that data (i.e. to thoroughly follow all the links, read entries for competitors in a solution-space, and build a feature-matrix themselves) and then make those decisions. In that use-case, they’ve been invaluable to me personally.
Of course, you could get that same discoverability from language-package manager tool/website, if such systems ever allowed users (not developers!) to tag or otherwise multiply categorize packages, the way that e.g. Spotify allows users to create discoverable public playlists.
Of course, you could get that same discoverability from language-package manager tool/website, if such systems ever allowed users (not developers!) to tag or otherwise multiply categorize packages, the way that e.g. Spotify allows users to create discoverable public playlists.
They're far from useless, awesome-whatever is usually great for getting an overview of what kind of tools exist out there and what some popular choices are.
If you're already aware of all that, sure, they don't add much information. Concise comparison is pretty difficult...except in cases like this.
If you're already aware of all that, sure, they don't add much information. Concise comparison is pretty difficult...except in cases like this.
> Concise comparison is pretty difficult
I don't know if I agree. I think maybe thorough comparison is difficult. But if you have a list of, for example, open-source alternatives to Postman, just including something like the amount of GitHub stars a project has can go a really long way. Especially if it becomes a list of 20+ projects and many of them have less than 10 stars or are no longer being developed
The difference is basically the difference between a list and a table.
Huge bonus if you use something like a spreadsheet software to make it interactive/sortable
I don't know if I agree. I think maybe thorough comparison is difficult. But if you have a list of, for example, open-source alternatives to Postman, just including something like the amount of GitHub stars a project has can go a really long way. Especially if it becomes a list of 20+ projects and many of them have less than 10 stars or are no longer being developed
The difference is basically the difference between a list and a table.
Huge bonus if you use something like a spreadsheet software to make it interactive/sortable
Right. Really what’s needed is one of those feature comparison sections with check marks or not as seen on landing pages.
Put it in an airtable. Done.
Put it in an airtable. Done.
Shameless plug, I created my own awesome list that covers many of these providers - I curated products that developers would like:
https://github.com/agamm/awesome-developer-first#deployment-...
I might add the limits too - a cool idea.
https://github.com/agamm/awesome-developer-first#deployment-...
I might add the limits too - a cool idea.
Agreed. I am looking for a very specific use case. These lists don't really provide much insight into whether or not a service fits.
For reference, my use case/requirements:
For reference, my use case/requirements:
- I want to be able to deploy dockerized apps to an AWS region.
- I should be able to define different process types with different env vars/instance scale
- I don't want to have to worry at all about underlying infrastructure
- I want to be able to pipe the logs out to some other unified logging
- I want to be able to deploy from a CI pipeline.
I was very happy with fly.io - migrating my Rails app from Heroku was an absolute no brainer, took me like half an hour.
Then I tried Django, and all hell broke loose... Still some ways to go to catch up with Heroku on all fronts I suppose, but for Rails, clear recommendation.
Then I tried Django, and all hell broke loose... Still some ways to go to catch up with Heroku on all fronts I suppose, but for Rails, clear recommendation.
I recently started the migration of my Django projects from Heroku to Fly. To test things out, I created this simple Django project. You might want to fork it and test whatever you need. I run into a few issues as well, all of them are described in the readme.
https://github.com/tomwojcik/django-fly.io-example-project
https://github.com/tomwojcik/django-fly.io-example-project
Thanks, that actually helped me figure it out! :D
For those watching who want to move over a Rails app, I wrote the guide at https://fly.io/docs/rails/getting-started/migrate-from-herok...
Sorry to hear Django was a pain. There’s a guide in the works for launching Django apps, but I can’t remember the exact status of that. https://community.fly.io/ is a good place to search for others who migrated or ask for help on there.
Sorry to hear Django was a pain. There’s a guide in the works for launching Django apps, but I can’t remember the exact status of that. https://community.fly.io/ is a good place to search for others who migrated or ask for help on there.
For me, I was mainly using the free Heroku Postgres for side projects. I tried some of those listed here but they were not a fit for me. I ended up going with cockroach db and am liking it so far, esp that I can easily create an unlimited number of clusters that are free to start.
https://www.cockroachlabs.com/
(I have no affiliation with cockroach labs)
The best alternative to Heroku is a cheap VPS with Digital Ocean or Linode. Throw on the open source PAAS software https://dokku.com/ and boom, cheap, simple and easy.
+1
Also, dokku author is very responsive in GitHub issues list.
Also, dokku author is very responsive in GitHub issues list.
If interested in self hosted alternative, which can be hosted on Digital Ocean, Linode, Hetzner, check out Sailor[1].
Sailor[1] is a tiny PaaS to install on your servers/VPS that uses git push to deploy micro-apps, micro-services, sites with SSL, on your own servers or VPS, similar to Heroku
[1] https://github.com/mardix/sailor.
[1] https://github.com/mardix/sailor.
TejPage.com[https://TejPage.com] - currently in beta, supports heroku buildpacks and docker containers is providing services in India using baremetal servers located in India. We use dokku running on ubuntu to provide the services. We slowly rolling it out. Performance on baremetal is great!
Fantastic. Do you ensure 100% uptime? If yes, can this be used to delegate and run validator nodes in Proof of stake networks?
We have redundancy, backups and standby instance for have ~100% uptime. We should be able to run the validators provided they are in the languages supported by us.
Why not just use AWS? The free tier goes pretty far for a basic webapp. Plus basically any extra infrastructure you might need. I have a whole distributed data ingestion startup that when not used costs 2$ to host on AWS. The front end and backend APIs are basically free, its only the ML workloads that cost anything
Infrastructure is a distraction to what Heroku users actually care about: sharing their thing online. AWS takes us in the wrong direction in terms of minimizing that distraction. It’s also kinda scary to screw up and be on the hook for lots of money.
> Infrastructure is a distraction to what Heroku users actually care about: sharing their thing online. AWS takes us in the wrong direction in terms of minimizing that distraction
Isn’t that what AWS Elastic Beanstalk is about? AWS supports a wide variety of different approaches.
Isn’t that what AWS Elastic Beanstalk is about? AWS supports a wide variety of different approaches.
Beanstalk has a lot of surprising costs like loadbalancing.
I was trying something on a simple Django project that nobody else accessed except me for like 3 times. AWS charged me $30 that month. Nobody knows what load they were balancing since I barely used the app.
I shut down everything.
I was trying something on a simple Django project that nobody else accessed except me for like 3 times. AWS charged me $30 that month. Nobody knows what load they were balancing since I barely used the app.
I shut down everything.
Because an IaaS is not a PaaS, and people who were previously dependent on Heroku probably don’t have the DevOps skillset required to use an IaaS?
I know Elastic Beanstalk and Lightsail both exist; but they’re both much more complicated than `git push heroku master`. And that’s not even counting what you have to do/learn to be able to wire up a DB or Redis instance or Email deliverability on AWS.
I know Elastic Beanstalk and Lightsail both exist; but they’re both much more complicated than `git push heroku master`. And that’s not even counting what you have to do/learn to be able to wire up a DB or Redis instance or Email deliverability on AWS.
I should just start a startup that converts heroku into an AWS instance then because its straightforward
I have various friends/acquaintances/prior coworkers running 8-9 figure digital/IT agencies premised on very similar workflows.
Straightforward to you may still be magic to most non-tech people. They will pay an insane premium to not have to worry about this type of stuff.
Straightforward to you may still be magic to most non-tech people. They will pay an insane premium to not have to worry about this type of stuff.
8-9 figures on webhosting/helping non technical people manage and deploy some app? Or you're saying those digital agencies would pay a premium to be an end user.
Cloud66 provides a Heroku-like experience on EC2 instances in your AWS account. (plus there are open source options, like Dokku)
When I had to work with Heroku, I found that it had many of its own specific eccentricities.
And to do the setup of a bare metal web service was not much more to know.
This is especially true looking at prebaked stuff like what digital ocean offers. You can use their Django image and the entire thing is ready to go.
Ultimately, docker and docker orchestrations are fairly standard devops skills at this point.
I think these paas solutions take devs who might otherwise bite the bullet and learn how to work with these in the wrong direction.
And to do the setup of a bare metal web service was not much more to know.
This is especially true looking at prebaked stuff like what digital ocean offers. You can use their Django image and the entire thing is ready to go.
Ultimately, docker and docker orchestrations are fairly standard devops skills at this point.
I think these paas solutions take devs who might otherwise bite the bullet and learn how to work with these in the wrong direction.
Or go with the Oracle OCI free-tier and get even more resources for $0. The free 24GB ARM instances are generous and capable. Just make sure to select a home region during sign-up which has them (Phoenix / PHX probably gives the best odds).
that said, perhaps not everyone is a sysadmin and security expert. In fact, this was the whole beauty of Heroku; "git push heroku" and you're done.
that said, perhaps not everyone is a sysadmin and security expert. In fact, this was the whole beauty of Heroku; "git push heroku" and you're done.
You couldn't pay me to use anything Oracle based. I'd much rather take my chances with AWS or another host than use Oracle.
What is the distinction between Bezos vs. Ellison? They are both sociopathic jerks. In any case, more power to you, friend.
In my eyes, a rented server is a rented server regardless of which data center or network provider is behind it. It's not emotional, merely an optimization game.
In my eyes, a rented server is a rented server regardless of which data center or network provider is behind it. It's not emotional, merely an optimization game.
Amazon/AWS is playing the long game, not raising prices (and even lowering them) even though many of their customers are thoroughly locked in; and of producing products that are pretty popular with users.
Most of their assholery is towards employees, suppliers, and competitors - rather than customers.
Oracle, on the other hand, has a reputation for extracting maximum money from locked-in customers; an aggressive legal team; and producing products like Oracle Financials which are widely hated by users.
Most of their assholery is towards employees, suppliers, and competitors - rather than customers.
Oracle, on the other hand, has a reputation for extracting maximum money from locked-in customers; an aggressive legal team; and producing products like Oracle Financials which are widely hated by users.
Debatably, Amazon is focused on delivering a good product ("customer focused"). Oracle feels far more likely to "trick" you into a costly financial arrangement where you are offered a deal you cannot refuse.
I've found OCI to be roughly on par with AWS for compute and networking. I've had the free tier account and corresponding instances for more than 5 years now with zero issues.
With that said, it's generally good advice to not count or rely on anything free for important things.
Hence the motivation behind this story; Heroku used to be free and now it's evaporating away back into the ether.
My only goal here is to provide helpful information. Cheers.
With that said, it's generally good advice to not count or rely on anything free for important things.
Hence the motivation behind this story; Heroku used to be free and now it's evaporating away back into the ether.
My only goal here is to provide helpful information. Cheers.
Yeah, but then I have to be looking over my shoulder that Larry Ellison is going to spring some kind of legal/financial trap.
I will pay more to avoid Oracle.
I will pay more to avoid Oracle.
Maybe, but if you do enough fishing around on github repos, you can find CDK code that will spin up a whole secure website with a database.
What is CDK?
AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) — https://aws.amazon.com/cdk/
> AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) is an open-source software development framework used to model and provision your cloud application resources with familiar programming languages. AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) accelerates cloud development using common programming languages to model your applications.
If you have used or read about Hashicorp Terraform, this is basically the same thing but limited to AWS. The “Getting Started” website shows a bit of code if you want a preview — https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/v2/guide/getting_started.htm...
> AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) is an open-source software development framework used to model and provision your cloud application resources with familiar programming languages. AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) accelerates cloud development using common programming languages to model your applications.
If you have used or read about Hashicorp Terraform, this is basically the same thing but limited to AWS. The “Getting Started” website shows a bit of code if you want a preview — https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/v2/guide/getting_started.htm...
While the AWS SDK is limited to AWS, Hashicorp ported the CDK to Terraform.
https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/cdktf
https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/cdktf
I tried oracle cloud for some time. Its interface is horrendous, some of its instances gave issues all over the place and after shooting it down I am still getting emails , in Portuguese (for some unknown reason I guess someone read my last name and thought I speak that language) and I get calls from time to time.
It was a horrible experience.
It was a horrible experience.
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dokku does that well. not sure if it works on ARM arch though.
Dokku works on ARM and ARM64, in addition to AMD64.
Note: I'm the maintainer of Dokku.
Note: I'm the maintainer of Dokku.
Thank you for the work! It has been amazing using dokku.
Free tier is limited to 12 months though, isn’t it?
I’ve tried Render recently and overall i liked the experience with setup and configuration of my stack.
Although the performance was abysmal. It’s either their compute or postgres, but my import of 25mb json via a script took 22 minutes ($450/month) on job plan, while my 2GB digital ocean box did the same in 3 minutes.
Also email support takes 3 business days to respond.
But render has great potential. If they fix the performance and straighten out the support, they would definitely win over a lot of heroku customers.
Probably will just migrate to Dokky and be done with it.
Although the performance was abysmal. It’s either their compute or postgres, but my import of 25mb json via a script took 22 minutes ($450/month) on job plan, while my 2GB digital ocean box did the same in 3 minutes.
Also email support takes 3 business days to respond.
But render has great potential. If they fix the performance and straighten out the support, they would definitely win over a lot of heroku customers.
Probably will just migrate to Dokky and be done with it.
(Render CEO) Very curious about the performance issue. Would you mind sharing details over email? (address in profile)
I submitted a post to HN last week that provides a technical overview of migrating from Digital Ocean Kubernetes to Fly.io.[1]
The submission contains a lot of interesting comments on the perceived pros and cons of using a service like Fly.io from a variety of viewpoints.
I'm happy to also answer any questions here about my DO k8s -> Fly.io migration experience.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33235042
The submission contains a lot of interesting comments on the perceived pros and cons of using a service like Fly.io from a variety of viewpoints.
I'm happy to also answer any questions here about my DO k8s -> Fly.io migration experience.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33235042
Which one of these free alternatives would work best for a Spring Boot deployment, ideally with a PostgreSQL database?
Anyone know something like these but that supports GPU? I'm struggling a bit to figure out the best way to host a demo that involves a deep learning component. Usage is expected to be bursty so I don't want to constantly have to rent an unknown number of instances just because I don't know when people will use it. Seems like a good use case for "serverless" but those (Lambda, etc) don't seem to support GPU either. Maybe I need some DL-specific backend service instead of going for a regular web host?
I really enjoy fly.io so far and I got the impression that the primitives they have can take me really far, the only thing I'm missing is better documentation and more examples but I'm sure they will improve as usage grows. One thing that I can't wait to try is the machines api which has the ability to scale to zero.
Currently I have a directus app with sqlite and litestream on it but will probably move away from that to something custom as I don't have a good story regarding migration and ci/cd.
Currently I have a directus app with sqlite and litestream on it but will probably move away from that to something custom as I don't have a good story regarding migration and ci/cd.
I do machines Devrel at Fly.io and I've got a whole lot of demos coming soon, so stay tuned :)
One downside of fly is it doesn't have direct deploy from GitHub push. You can set it up through GitHub action, but it's a lot more work than direct GitHub integration.
I migrated my Heroku app to GCP Cloud Run. Works like a charm, integrates well with Github, and has a generous free tier.
GCP have a few good choices for a Heroku alternative. App Engine standard also has a free tier of 28 instance hours a day and has convenient deploy and tracing features built in. But GCP has no free tier transactional SQL database.
I know of Heroku, but am a little removed from it because I’m so invested in AWS. There’s been a few Heroku alternative articles on HN recently. Is my understanding correct that it’s still around and there haven’t been any plans communicated to kill the service? Are the concerns more that Salesforce purchased them?
It's not just that Salesforce has acquired Heroku, but that they also will be retiring the free plans, as per the following links:
https://www.heroku.com/free
https://blog.heroku.com/next-chapterhttps://windmill.dev: open source developer platform to turn scripts in Python, Typescript and go into endpoints, shareable internal apps, workflows and schedulable jobs.
Hey, great list!
Just wanted to give a shoutout to Netlify, great free tier and very easy to use
Just wanted to give a shoutout to Netlify, great free tier and very easy to use
I have used Heroku free in the past but and thinking of using a digital ocean droplet in the future for Rails apps in a docker container.
Anyone have better options than a droplet? My budget is around $5/month ideally
Anyone have better options than a droplet? My budget is around $5/month ideally
I moved my CouchDB and Pocketbase instances previously running on the cheapest DO droplets to Fly.io, and they're both faster and I haven't paid Fly.io anything to run them.
(They're small projects, so not running into paid tier yet)
(They're small projects, so not running into paid tier yet)
Cool thanks for the suggestion. I’ve been aware of fly.io from seeing their ads but having someone recommend it (and informing me on their free tier) is more convincing. Cheers
Why are people moving away from Heroku? I haven't used it in a while but I thought it was the gold standard at least for Rails deployments.
They removed all free tiers is probably the source for this.
But, they also have had little innovation in years, anecdotally the rate of issues is increasing, they released a very uninteresting roadmap, and the future level of investment from salesforce seems iffy.
But, they also have had little innovation in years, anecdotally the rate of issues is increasing, they released a very uninteresting roadmap, and the future level of investment from salesforce seems iffy.
I will continue to rail against Fly.io for their lack of cron job support. They recently announced scheduled machines but I tried it and it simply ... didn't work. Spent several hours trying to deploy a machine and got nowhere.
Please don't spread misinformation playing a FUD book.
Nothing stops you from using cron in your Dockerfile:
fly.io is universal, it just runs your Dockerfile. Everything else is up to you.
Nothing stops you from using cron in your Dockerfile:
RUN apt-get install -y cron
fly.io is universal, it just runs your Dockerfile. Everything else is up to you.
It's OK! This comment would be great without the first line. They're making a legit point: Heroku had some built-in cron thing, I guess? (I'm not the Heroku person on our team). We're gradually rolling one of those out. That's the comparison they're making.
It's weird, because there's a group of (understandably) devoted Heroku users who have very high standards for fidelity to Heroku's DX, and while we're thrilled to do our best to meet (or at least approach) those standards, being Heroku is actually not the primary mission of our team; getting people's apps running quickly and close to their users globally is.
It's weird, because there's a group of (understandably) devoted Heroku users who have very high standards for fidelity to Heroku's DX, and while we're thrilled to do our best to meet (or at least approach) those standards, being Heroku is actually not the primary mission of our team; getting people's apps running quickly and close to their users globally is.
Heroku was the original gold standard for git based app deploys, but never for scheduling tasks. Here's a link to the documentation of Heroku's supposed "cron alternative" : https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/scheduler
It only supports hourly, daily, or every 10 minutes and it isn't even guaranteed to run. I would see it skip jobs more often than I expected, maybe 1 in 20 at times.
Supporting actual cron is way better than anything Heroku offered.
It only supports hourly, daily, or every 10 minutes and it isn't even guaranteed to run. I would see it skip jobs more often than I expected, maybe 1 in 20 at times.
Supporting actual cron is way better than anything Heroku offered.
I've wanted us to do a cron-thing for years, ever since I started, but because I hate cron. :)
I'm also a very happy user of cronjobs using `cron -f` (managed with Overmind) on one of their free shared VMs.
> I will continue to rail against Fly.io for their lack of cron job support.
Don't need to 'rail against' someone building a product that doesn't exactly fit your needs.
Don't need to 'rail against' someone building a product that doesn't exactly fit your needs.
This is what I did with Heroku and will continue to do if I am trying out fly.io or render (1 dollar for cronjob). I know you could get free cronjob on Heroku if you provide them your credit card info.
So, here is what I did. Added a simple API layer in front of my script. The API layer takes in a secret message to a specific endpoint that initiates a background process. Initially, I used my raspberry pi to periodically make the API requests. But I plan to try out: https://cron-job.org/en/
So, here is what I did. Added a simple API layer in front of my script. The API layer takes in a secret message to a specific endpoint that initiates a background process. Initially, I used my raspberry pi to periodically make the API requests. But I plan to try out: https://cron-job.org/en/
I'd consider initiating them from free GitHub actions
I’ve been using cron-job.org this way on my own side project and it’s been working great.
I found some rough edges as well trying to deploy a rust app.
Having heard about fly.io from fasterthanlime I was expecting things to be smoother but there were a few gotchas.
Eventually I managed to configure things in the right way but it was a far cry from heroku buildpacks.
I'm trying to get my clients (1M+ spending per year) to switch from azure (absolute dumpster fire) to fly.io but I'm not sure it's mature enough just yet.
At that point I'd rather have to configure standard machines on hetzner than finding the quirks of a random paas
Having heard about fly.io from fasterthanlime I was expecting things to be smoother but there were a few gotchas.
Eventually I managed to configure things in the right way but it was a far cry from heroku buildpacks.
I'm trying to get my clients (1M+ spending per year) to switch from azure (absolute dumpster fire) to fly.io but I'm not sure it's mature enough just yet.
At that point I'd rather have to configure standard machines on hetzner than finding the quirks of a random paas
We are amid a similar switch from Azure to Fly.io and it is a smooth sailing so far.
The best aspects of fly.io are 1) effortless multi-regional deployments 2) technological freedom 3) price. For example: Azure = $140, Fly.io = $10 for the same deployment. We are in love with those guys and gals.
But it's not all sunshine and roses. Some fly.io users have intermittent problems during deployments (see forum). I believe those issues will be rectified and improved with time.
The best aspects of fly.io are 1) effortless multi-regional deployments 2) technological freedom 3) price. For example: Azure = $140, Fly.io = $10 for the same deployment. We are in love with those guys and gals.
But it's not all sunshine and roses. Some fly.io users have intermittent problems during deployments (see forum). I believe those issues will be rectified and improved with time.
It’s on my list to evaluate Fly.io. I’m surprised by this.
Happy to have come across this
Thanks for sharing
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Is there a service that supports SSO?
Have you looked at any of them? All the ones I just tried support at least one SSO options.
Links to further reading would be appreciated!
https://render.com/ - One of the top Heroku alternatives with a free plan to get started.
https://fly.io/ - Run your full stack apps (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required.
https://railway.app/ - Railway is the cloud that takes the complexity out of shipping software.
https://www.cyclic.sh/ - Connect your GitHub repo. We will build, deploy and manage the hosting.
https://qoddi.com/ - Qoddi is a fully managed App Hosting Platform running on a tier 1 network at 10% of the cost of similar solutions.
https://www.deta.sh/ - Build & deploy your ideas on the universe's most developer friendly cloud platform.
https://adaptable.io/ - Just connect your GitHub repository and let Adaptable handle the rest.
https://www.alwaysdata.com/en/ - All your services in one place.