When developers look into Heroku hosting, they usually want one thing, a simple way to deploy and run a web application without dealing with raw cloud infrastructure.
Heroku does make deployment easier compared to managing servers directly. But before an application ever goes live, developers still need to make several decisions about infrastructure, pricing, and runtime behaviour. These decisions often become long-term operational commitments.
This is why many teams today evaluate Kuberns (an AI-powered deployment platform) even before deploying on Heroku. Kuberns removes many of the decisions Heroku requires upfront.
To understand the difference, it helps to first look at how deployment on Heroku actually works.
The Hidden Decisions You Make Before Deploying on Heroku
Heroku is often described as simple, but deployment still starts with planning.
Before the first deploy, teams usually need to think about:
- What dyno size the application needs
- How many dynos should run
- Whether background jobs need separate workers
- Which add-ons are required for databases, caching, and monitoring
- How pricing will scale as traffic grows None of these are wrong decisions, but they must be made before real usage data exists. This is where friction begins.
How Deploying an Application on Heroku Works
Despite these trade-offs, Heroku remains widely used. Here is how developers typically deploy applications on Heroku.
1. Create a Heroku Application
The first step is creating a Heroku app. This app becomes the container for everything related to deployment:
- Code
- Environment variables
- Dynos and scaling rules
- Add-ons and services Each app represents one deployed environment.
2. Connect Your Code Repository
Applications are deployed to Heroku by connecting code.
Common methods include:
- Pushing code directly using Git
- Connecting a GitHub repository for automatic deployments
- Triggering deployments from CI pipelines Heroku detects the application stack using buildpacks and prepares the runtime environment.
3. Define Runtime Configuration
Before the application can run correctly, developers configure:
- Environment variables
- Runtime versions
- Build and start commands
- Procfiles to define web and worker processes This step decides how many processes run and what each process does.
4. Choose Dynos and Scaling
This is where Heroku hosting becomes more involved.
Developers must decide:
- Dyno size based on memory and CPU needs
- Number of dynos to run
- Separate dynos for background workers Scaling on Heroku is manual. Teams monitor usage and adjust dynos as traffic changes.
5. Add Databases and Services
Most applications need additional services. On Heroku, these are added through add-ons such as:
- Databases
- Caching layers
- Monitoring tools
- Logging systems Each add-on comes with its own pricing and usage limits, which must be tracked over time.
6. Manage the Application After Deployment
Once deployed, ongoing management includes:
- Watching performance and error logs
- Adjusting dyno counts
- Managing background jobs
- Monitoring add-on usage
- Controlling monthly costs Deployment may be simple, but management grows steadily as the application scales.
Why These Steps Become a Problem Over Time
Individually, none of these steps is difficult. The problem is that they all require continuous attention.
As applications grow:
- Dyno costs increase
- Add-on pricing becomes harder to predict
- Scaling decisions become frequent
- Infrastructure tuning becomes ongoing work Heroku removes servers, but not operational responsibility.
How Kuberns Removes These Decisions Entirely
This is where Kuberns takes a different approach.
Instead of asking developers to decide infrastructure and scaling behavior upfront, Kuberns automates these decisions.
With Kuberns:
- You do not choose dyno sizes
- You do not manage scaling rules
- You do not configure infrastructure components
- You do not separate deployment and management workflows You connect your code repository and deploy in minutes. The platform handles deployment, scaling, performance, and cloud operations automatically.
Deployment and Management Without Platform Overhead
Heroku treats deployment as simple, but management as ongoing work.
Kuberns treats deployment and management as one automated system.
This makes Kuberns especially useful for:
- Startups without DevOps teams
- Agencies managing multiple applications
- Teams that want predictable operations as they scale The application grows, the platform adapts, without manual tuning.
Choosing Between Heroku and Kuberns
Heroku hosting works well if you:
Want explicit control over infrastructure decisions
Are comfortable managing dynos and add-ons
Expect predictable workloads
Kuberns is better suited if you:
Want to avoid infrastructure decisions entirely
Prefer automation over configuration
Want deployment and management handled together
Expect the application to grow and evolve
Final Thoughts
Deploying on Heroku is a well-understood process, but it comes with upfront decisions and long-term operational work and pricing that hurts.
Kuberns removes those decisions by automating deployment, scaling, and application management from the start. For teams choosing a platform today, the question is no longer just how to deploy, but how much platform work they want to carry forward as their application grows.
Try Kuberns today and deploy your application in minutes
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