Alternatives to Heroku
Cloud platform-as-a-service for building and deploying web apps
Pricing: $5/mo Eco dynos, $25/mo Basic, $50/mo Standard-1X From $5/mo
Common pain points:
- ✗ Eliminated free tier in 2022, driving many developers away
- ✗ Expensive compared to modern alternatives like Railway or Fly.io
- ✗ Add-on costs for databases and other services stack up
- ✗ Perceived as stagnant — fewer new features compared to competitors
3 Alternatives to Heroku
Coolify
Self-hostable PaaS for deploying apps, databases, and services on your own servers
Free and open-source. Only cost is server infrastructure (~$5/mo on Hetzner). Cloud version ~$10/mo.
- ✓ 280+ one-click deployable services and templates
- ✓ Dramatically cheaper than Vercel/Heroku ($5/mo vs $850/mo)
- ✓ Automatic SSL, Git deployments, and Docker support
Dokploy
Free self-hostable PaaS with Docker Swarm scaling and automated backups
Completely free and open-source. Only cost is your server infrastructure.
- ✓ Docker Swarm multi-node scaling built in
- ✓ Automated database backups to external storage
- ✓ Real-time CPU, memory, storage, and network monitoring
Dokku
The smallest PaaS implementation you have ever seen, powered by Docker and Heroku buildpacks
Free and open-source. Runs on a single $5/mo VPS for small apps.
- ✓ Heroku buildpack compatible for zero-config deployments
- ✓ Simple git push deployment workflow
- ✓ Extensible plugin system for databases, caching, and more