
Ask HN: Do people still use Heroku and the like? - _bxg1
With Docker-based deployments being the current hotness, you don&#x27;t really read about services that do source-based deployments as much these days. Are they being truly supplanted, or are they still going steady just outside of the limelight?<p>Edit:<p>Did some research and found this good comparison: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rubygarage.org&#x2F;blog&#x2F;heroku-vs-amazon-web-services. Looks like the technical terms are &quot;Infrastructure as a Service&quot; vs &quot;Platform as a Service&quot;, where the latter is Heroku&#x27;s main product.<p>Still interested in people&#x27;s anecdotes, though!
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dhruvkar
Yes!

In fact, I was using Digital Ocean for our company and in process of
transferring everything to Heroku. It's been such a breath of fresh air/load
off of my shoulders.

As the sole developer, I don't need to worry about my server going down and
worrying about the database (although DO introduced managed databases
recently). Heroku is perfect for our needs -- lots of scheduled one-off
scripts and a rough API.

~~~
erkken
As the sole dev in my company, I have spent last few weeks to look at other
solutions to DO as well. I can work it out fine as is, it's just that nowadays
I am getting more and more security questionnaires sent by customers and it
would be such a relief to just say that the security of the platform is
managed by someone else.

Have been looking at beanstalk but no. Now its between app engine and heroku.
Question on heroku: It feels a bit weird they not support hardware 2fa,
doesn't it?

Do you have any other insight to give me on your transition?

~~~
dhruvkar
It's too new for me to have any meaningful advice. The transition has some
bumps as I was trying to figure out the Heroku ecosystem (e.g. how to install
a python package from a private pip repo, how to use a google credentials
file, how to schedule scripts and test them, etc.)

I looked into app engine a few years ago, but it felt more restrictive at the
time.

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tnolet
I noticed many folks swept up by the docker hype actually moving to Heroku.
Turns out dockerizing your apps only brings 5% of the benefits a platform like
Heroku brings you.

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mtmail
Outside of limelight I think. There's no new features to report. Heroku works
fine what I use it for, it scales, pricing is stable, at some point they will
move from Postgresql-11 to 12. During my work week it's one piece of tech I
least think about.

~~~
_bxg1
I've had a similar experience- I use it for a website I built for a small
business and for my personal website, as well as basically any other personal
project I want to throw up on the internet. It's been a very positive user
experience; mainly I was curious how well both its features and pricing scale
to a "real product".

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freehunter
I still use “the like” for most of my projects but not Heroku specifically. I
love Heroku’s service but for a small bootstrapped company it’s really
expensive.

Specifically I use dokku on a DO droplet. It does mean I have to manage the
server myself which Heroku removes from the user, but again for a small
company it’s just one server so it’s maybe an hour or two a month I spend on
server admin. But my monthly cost for 15 projects running 24/7 is $10,
compared to $100+ on Heroku. It’s not a huge difference if you’re funded or
have a very profitable business, but my margins are thinner than I could
afford with Heroku.

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duxup
You can use docker images on Heroku so I don't see any reason they would be
supplanted automatically.

~~~
_bxg1
I didn't know Heroku offered that service. In any case, my question was really
about source vs containers. The nice thing about the former is most of the
infrastructure is taken care of for you, so you don't need a devops person or
a docker workflow.

~~~
photonios
There are actually two ways to do Docker with Heroku.

You can let Heroku build your image during the deployment phase by simply
having a `Dockerfile` in your repository [1].

Or, you can build the image yourself on your CI service and push it to
Heroku's registry and then trigger a release. This last option is useful if
you want to run tests against the exact image that is going to be deployed
without having to rebuilt it [2].

[1] [https://blog.heroku.com/build-docker-images-heroku-
yml](https://blog.heroku.com/build-docker-images-heroku-yml) [2]
[https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/container-registry-
and...](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/container-registry-and-
runtime#building-and-pushing-image-s)

