Heroku
Heroku is a platform-as-a-service created by Salesforce that abstracts infrastructure management for developers deploying web applications. Unlike AWS Elastic Beanstalk or Google App Engine, Heroku uses a container-based 'slug' system where applications are packaged with dependencies into deployable units. Companies like Shopify and Buffer use Heroku for rapid prototyping and scaling web apps with PostgreSQL add-ons. A key technical detail is its use of ephemeral filesystems, where local disk writes are lost between dyno restarts, requiring external storage for persistence.
Use Heroku when you need to deploy web applications quickly without managing servers, such as for startups or MVPs where developer productivity outweighs cost control. It is not suitable for high-performance computing or latency-sensitive workloads, like real-time trading systems, due to its shared runtime and potential dyno sleeping. The vendor acknowledges that Heroku can become expensive at scale, with dyno costs and add-on pricing making it less economical than self-managed cloud infrastructure for large enterprises.
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