If you are anything like me, you have a few small projects that you are hosting on Heroku. Read on to learn more about some of the changes that will likely affect you.
What is Heroku?
Heroku is a Platform As A Service (PAAS) "based on a managed container system, with integrated data services and a powerful ecosystem, for deploying and running modern apps" heroku.com.
This means that, with a small amount of config, you can get your web app live and available to the world without setting up servers. Heroku offers, what they call, Dynos. These are used to run your code and a small servers to run your Web apps on.
What currently is available?
Currently Heroku offers a generous free tier so that developers can get their web apps up and running quickly and for free.
The only real downsides are not enabling a custom domain and slower cold starts.
A cold start is when the dyno, if it is not used for 30 mins, is spun down until a HTTP request fire's it back up again.
So what has changed?
The main change is that from November 28, 2022 this FREE tier will no longer be available. As part of this, the free Heroku Postgres, and free Heroku Data for Redis® will also be NO LONGER FREE.
So, if you are currently using a free tier of these, then you will need to upgrade to a paid plan before that date.
What do you need to do?
Heroku suggests that you upgrade to a paid plan before that date.
So that means that you'll need to join these plans:
Heroku Dynos starts at $7/month, Heroku Data for Redis® starts at $15/month, Heroku Postgres starts at $9/month.
What else has changed?
Starting October 26, 2022, they will also begin deleting inactive accounts and associated storage for accounts that have been inactive for over a year. So make sure you check you account and either remove any unused dynos/ projects or update your dynos to a hobby account for $7 a month.
What alternatives are there?
You could migrate your app to Digital ocean for $5 a month. And you can sign up here to get $200 free credit to get you started. (For full disclosure this is a referral link). And use this article to dockerise and deploy an API to digital ocean:
Or here is a very helpful github repo that lists other sites with free tiers.
https://github.com/ripienaar/free-for-dev
To get alternative to Heroku checkout the Web hosting section.
Thank you so much for reading. If you found this helpful, would you consider buying me a coffee to say thank you?
Top comments (20)
Thanks for this news, don't forget to mention for your referral link on Digital Ocean.
Edit :
If you want an alternative to Heroku, this post can may interest you 😄
Free Alternatives to Heroku
David Babalola ・ Aug 26 '22 ・ 1 min read
Thanks I forgot to mention that thanks. I'll add that now and I'll look at that article
What if he doesn't mention?
Will it change anything?
How will it affect the helpful article he has written?
We ask that posts including affiliate links contain a clear disclaimer so that readers are aware.
Right!! So after being aware, how will it help the readers?
That sucks especially for students who owed heroku to have a simple way to show their work to the world
I understand the rush to ask this question, but this ignores the structural issue which is the dark side of the internet:
Pedos, Crypto and Nazis
Every free tier offering, every free CI service, every free cloud service, every free storage situation, ... is being targeted by people highly motivated to let the free tier offering do their super illegal things, super morally répréhensible things and super wasteful "proof of work" "get rich quick" bitcoin shit.
So your alternative which is free today might well take the same decision tomorrow.
The other important question is "how do people offering free stuff make money in the long run?".
There is no way around this question and it's especially difficult if you also have to waste a lot of resources fighting pedos, crypto and Nazis.
For those looking for free alternative for web hosting and other aspects of running a website see this helpful github repository.
A list of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS offerings that have free tiers of interest to devops and infradev
free-for.dev
Developers and Open Source authors now have a massive amount of services offering free tiers, but it can be hard to find them all to make informed decisions.
This is a list of software (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc.) and other offerings that have free tiers for developers.
The scope of this particular list is limited to things that infrastructure developers (System Administrator, DevOps Practitioners, etc.) are likely to find useful. We love all the free services out there, but it would be good to keep it on topic. It's a bit of a grey line at times so this is a bit opinionated; do not be offended if I do not accept your contribution.
This list is the result of Pull Requests, reviews, ideas and work done by 1100+ people. You too can help by sending Pull Requests to add more services or by remove ones whose offerings have…
Thanks! I'd love to take a look :)
I mean yeah its sad to see they go.
Welcome, Azure.
Hehe, Heroku left the chat 😅
qoddi.com : we have a free tier that's not going away and we are compatible with most of Heroku's buildpacks.
?? Downplaying the seriousness of pedophilia by... comparing them to Nazis? Do I have to say explicitly that I consider Nazis to be bad people?
How comes then that each SaaS has to invest tons of financial and engineering resources fighting this issue and many have given up entirely like Heroku today? If you have insights on fixing this easily, I am sure they will love to hear from you, probably for money too.
This article has flown! Here are the stats
A great alternative is Heroku with AutoIdle
Have not used Heroku for a long time, and now I'm using heroku at home:
crappycode to dokku repoIt seems that you think that I think that offering free tier is bad thing per se?
No, I love free tier!
I am sad to see it go in Heroku and mulitple other offerings recently.
What I'm saying is that the economy of offering free tiers becomes every year harder than you think because of the illegal stuff, the morally very bad stuff and the very awasteful stuff. Shorthand for nazis, pedos, and crypto-mining guys. (Note that I put three reasons instead of one. That means that they are not all the same).
Do you think that the lawmakers hands you out free money and engineering resources so that your company has no problem managing, monitoring, preventing, removing the shitload illegal and/or morally super bad and/or super wasteful shit that the internet will inevitably try to use your free tier with?
Or do you think that preventing abuse is easy and cheap, that the bad guys never try to find a way to work around whatever you put in place?
I think you should go outside and walk a bit.
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