Why Stay Versus Move Away from Heroku?

Why Stay Versus Move Away from Heroku?

Heroku's user-friendly environment makes it a popular choice for startups and early-stage applications. However, as companies grow, they often encounter limitations in flexibility, cost efficiency, and security that prompt them to explore alternatives. This FAQ outlines factors influencing the decision to stay on Heroku or migrate to platforms like Control Plane. We also reference ShakaCode’s successful migrations from Heroku, including Popmenu.com and HiChee.com, to provide context.

1. What Are Common Challenges with Heroku?

As companies scale, they often require more from their infrastructure than Heroku’s standard offerings. Here are some specific limitations:

• Deployment Flexibility Constraints: Heroku’s buildpack system simplifies deployment but restricts customization, especially for applications needing Docker. The platform’s slug size limit of 500 MB poses challenges for large or complex Rails applications, impacting:

  • Dependency and Asset Management: Applications with extensive libraries or assets may quickly reach the limit, requiring developers to carefully optimize dependencies and offload assets to external solutions like CDNs, which adds both complexity and cost.

  • Multi-Service and Modular Architectures: Heroku’s slug size limit complicates deployments for applications adopting a multi-service structure, requiring workarounds and making scaling less straightforward.

  • Efficient Use of Docker: Modern Dockerized applications provide greater control and portability but require complex setups on Heroku, which lacks native Docker support and can introduce configuration challenges.

• Cost Scaling Challenges: Heroku’s pricing structure is manageable for smaller apps but can quickly become costly at scale. Heroku does not allow separate adjustments of CPU and memory, limiting cost efficiency. While lower-tier dynos work well for small projects, Standard and Performance dynos can become prohibitively expensive for larger deployments. Shared hardware on Standard dynos can result in performance inconsistencies, while Performance dynos provide only limited RAM options, leading to over-provisioning. Both Popmenu and HiChee found that this inflexibility resulted in unnecessary costs.

• Security and Compliance Costs: Heroku provides a private tier with enhanced compliance features, but it comes at a premium. For companies with stringent security needs, maintaining compliance with Heroku’s enterprise plan can become prohibitive. Advanced security features, such as private networking and application-specific DNS routing, are often necessary but costly on Heroku.

• Developer Productivity Limitations: While Heroku is known for its developer-friendly environment, teams managing complex microservices or large-scale client domains may find Heroku's limitations impact productivity. For example, the lack of advanced deployment customization (such as startup times and health checks) can restrict scalability and optimization. Heroku's "simplified" model of infrastructure ends up requiring more labor and complexity to work around limitations.

2. Why Do Larger Deployments Like Popmenu and HiChee Move Away from Heroku?

Scaling applications like Popmenu and HiChee demonstrate how growing businesses may outgrow Heroku’s capabilities. Popmenu, for example, needed:

• Advanced Deployment Customization: Custom routing for client domains and granular control over microservices—features not fully supported on Heroku.

• Cost Savings: More granular resource control for cost management. Both Popmenu and HiChee, for instance, achieved significant savings by leveraging Control Plane’s efficient CPU and RAM utilization, both the ability to configure servers to any settings of CPU and RAM and Control Plane's Capacity AI feature that tunes the usage to what servers need.

• Enhanced Security Without High Costs: Popmenu required advanced security features but found Heroku’s enterprise plan too costly. Control Plane offered necessary compliance tools at a more affordable rate. While HiChee didn't have external requirements for better security, the extra protection was a welcome bonus.

3. What Are the Advantages of Control Plane Over Heroku?

Control Plane, combined with ShakaCode’s Control Plane Flow CLI, provides the ease of use familiar to Heroku users, with the added flexibility of Dockerized infrastructure and enhanced customization options:

• Cost Savings: Not only does the control plane have flexibility in CPU and RAM, but it also has a feature called "Capacity AI" that continually looks to optimize the CPU and RAM used by servers. Thus, you can provision much more CPU and RAM than needed, and Control Plane will automatically adjust the servers to more optimal resource levels, resulting in significant savings.

• Real-Time Cost Insights: With real-time reporting on usage and costs, Control Plane enables data-driven decisions, helping teams optimize resources and control expenses.

• Multi-Tenant Support and Advanced Routing: Control Plane allows businesses to configure routing for complex microservices architectures and manage multiple tenant domains efficiently.

• Seamless Docker Integration: Unlike Heroku’s buildpacks, Control Plane fully supports Docker, enabling companies to deploy modern containerized applications without extra configuration.

4. When Might It Make Sense to Stay with Heroku?

Heroku is a legacy choice for many Ruby on Rails applications. If a company has adequate performance and costs are minimal, then there can be little reason to switch to a new deployment infrastructure. In such cases, ShakaCode might recommend optimizing an existing Heroku setup over moving to Control Plane. However, almost any production application will want the typically lower costs with better security of a Control Plane implementation. The most common example of better security from Control Plane is that the database can easily be behind private networking. By comparison, the default configuration of a database is with a public URL, meaning that the database can be accessed directly with that URL by anyone anywhere in the world.

5. When Should a Company Consider Moving Away from Heroku?

For businesses that need more flexibility, scalability, and control over their infrastructure, platforms like Control Plane provide significant advantages:

• Complex Microservice Architectures: If you’re managing multiple microservices or client domains, Control Plane’s routing and deployment customization features can support more complex architectures effectively. Popmenu had this scenario.

• Cost Optimization Needs: Companies with large-scale deployments may benefit from Control Plane's granular resource control and real-time cost visibility. Almost any production application has this need.

• Security and Compliance Requirements: Organizations with high compliance standards can access advanced security features on Control Plane without paying for the highest tiers as they would on Heroku. Given how much security is in the news, most organizations would prefer better security.

• Docker-First Workflows: For teams that prefer Dockerized applications, Control Plane, combined with ShakaCode’s Control Plane Flow CLI, offers a developer-friendly experience similar to Heroku Flow, but with more flexibility for containerized workflows.

6. How Does ShakaCode’s Control Plane Flow CLI Enhance the Experience?

ShakaCode’s open-source Control Plane Flow CLI extends Control Plane’s capabilities, bringing Heroku Flow-like features to Kubernetes environments. This tool enables teams to automate CI/CD pipelines, create testing environments, and manage deployments with ease, all while benefiting from Docker’s flexibility. For teams moving from Heroku, it provides a familiar ease of use while enabling more advanced deployment strategies.

For more information, read the full case study on Popmenu's transition from Heroku to Control Plane. ShakaCode can help you determine whether staying with Heroku or exploring an alternative platform is best for your specific needs. Reach out today for a free consultation.