Heroku VS AWS: Heroku or Amazon Web Services — Which is Best for Your Startup?
By: Echo - Custom Software Development Company
Tags: Startup, AWS, Heroku, Web Server, Aws Ec2

Heroku vs AWS

A product manager eventually comes to a point of choosing a hosting service. In the process of elaborating on a web project, the product managers have to first consider Heroku vs AWS. If the tech stack is defined, the software product will need a platform. So, that they can be deployed and become available to the web world. Nowadays, everyone can pick the most applicable solution based on the particular requirements as there is an abundance of hosting providers. But a question that arises is what type of web hosting is needed.

In this article, you will get to know about cloud hosting which can serve as a proper project foundation and a tool for deploying, monitoring, and scaling the pipeline. Here we will see the two most famous representatives of cloud services namely Heroku and Amazon. But before that here is something that you have to know about cloud hosting.

Cloud hosting

The two extremes are the dedicated and the shared in which the cloud hosting is distinct. Its principal hallmark is that you are not limited to the capabilities of your physical server. The necessary things can be scaled fast manually with a few clicks of a button and even automatically depending on the traffic spikes.

Another classification of the host providing options depends on what the users get. It can be the function, software, platform, or an entire infrastructure. The serverless architecture also falls under this category.

Heroku vs AWS: Top reasons to choose cloud-based solutions

With cloud technologies, the business can manage its data in multiple ways and the business operations are made more flexible.

The cloud services will ensure whether the company employees have easy access to the data. It also provides the feasibility to edit or change the files from anywhere.

Organizations need not worry about the safety of the data if they are using a cloud platform. This is because the data is collected on fully secured servers.

Amazon web services and Heroku are the two commonly used cloud services where you can monitor, deploy, and scale web and mobile applications. These cloud services provide cloud computing resources. They are great for hosting applications. If you are building a mobile or web application choosing a hosting service becomes harder. First, look in for the features of AWS and Heroku and then consider the key solutions that they offer. With these, you can figure out the best option for you.

What is Heroku?

Heroku is a (Platform as a Service) PaaS solution where it is a handy cloud app development as well as deployment service. The key element of Heroku is dynos. It is the proprietary lightweight Linux container where all the processes run. You will be charged based on how many dynos you need. Also the size of the dynos matters. The more dynos types you will need to use when your app is larger. You can choose from the below-listed dynos.

Web dynos : this is for running web processes

: this is for running web processes Worker dynos : this is for any type of processes you assign

: this is for any type of processes you assign One-off dynos: for database migrations

How does Heroku work?

The app development and deployment process are made easy with the help of Heroku. Once you are done with the app then it is sent to the Heroku cloud. And the tools do the rest. The infrastructure and the resources provisioning on AWS (where the app is deployed) are automatically configured.

With Heroku, the developers can build their app in any language they choose and select from the Heroku add-ons. This is to speed up development. Here the simplicity and the time-savings are big pluses. To understand more clearly, for now, anything built on Heroku is deployed to AWS, but it still runs by Heroku.

AWS Elastic compute cloud

Elastic Compute Cloud is an Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) product. You will have to develop the server infrastructure before deploying it. But what is that actually? You will need to manually configure and maintain virtualized servers that run the application. Also, add the database instances. You will have to choose and set up an operating system and set up a load balancer which is to spread the load across multiple application servers. Select a CPU and RAM and the storage that can satisfy the applications’ needs. The backup servers are installed and are connected to the main servers.

Here you will be provided with the building blocks. So you have to select the building blocks for the application and you have to manage them actively.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

To simplify application deployment AWS offers elastic beanstalk. This is also similar to that of Heroku. You need to deploy applications on AWS elastic beanstalk by running commands in a command-line interface or by using the management console. Once the deployment process is over, elastic beanstalk manages infrastructure without your control.

You need not set up capacity provisioning, load balancing, or scaling. You will be still able to get access to the infrastructure and you can save the multiple configuration options for the application. To host your application elastic beanstalk uses EC2 instances. Therefore it becomes easy to migrate from AWS beanstalk to EC2 and this is something great.

Why use Heroku?

Here are the benefits of using Heroku.

Here the developer can focus on code instead of infrastructure

The productivity of the cloud app development team can be enhanced

Heroku offers single billing for all projects broken by the team

With rich application monitoring, you can monitor and enhance the performance

The business stakeholders can create a unified dashboard

Get support from the modern open source languages

High-performance salesforce integration

Horizontal and vertical scalability

The Heroku team is instantly ready to help you 24/7

You can focus on the innovation and not the operations

The architecture offers minimal or no downtime during the system updates

Fast application lifecycle management and permissions

Allows you to remove the friction from the development

You get a powerful dashboard and CLI

Integrates with familiar developer workflows

Predictability into the cost of application development and maintenance

A bunch of supportive tools

Startup friendly

You can create a new server in just 10 seconds by using the interface of the Heroku command line

It takes care of patching systems and keep everything healthy

A range of automated functionalities like scaling, configuration, setup, and others

Easy integration with AWS products

Medium learning curve

Offers best-in-class developer experience

Secure connectivity to salesforce data

Flexibility to customize

Why choose Amazon web services?

Here are the benefits of selecting AWS web services.

When you have DevOps teams who can configure and manage the infrastructure you can opt for AWS.

You will have to spend only a little time on the deployment of a new version of your web or mobile app.

Get easy deployment process for an app

It is an ideal option when your project needs high computing power

You can improve the productivity of the application development team

You get a range of automated functionalities like configuration, scaling, setup, and others

With AWS you will have full control over the resources.

Allows the organizations to use familiar programming models, operating systems, databases, and architectures

Cost-effective service where you can pay only for what you use, you will not have any long term commitments

No need to spend more money on running and maintaining data centers

Offer fast deployments

You can easily add or remove capacity

Cloud access is quick with limitless capacity

The cost of ownership is very low compared to private/dedicated servers

Provides centralized billing and management

Provides hybrid capabilities

You can deploy your application in multiple regions only with a few clicks

Main features of AWS

Elastic beanstalk

Capacity provisioning

Load balancing

Auto-scaling

App health monitoring

Elastic compute cloud

Ready templates for deployment

Multiple configurations

Main features of Heroku

Capacity provisioning

Database rollback

Application rollback

Manual vertical and horizontal scaling

App health monitoring

Full GitHub integration

Final verdict: Heroku VS AWS

When you have confusion in choosing between AWS and Heroku, you have to consider the costs. Check which one is cost-effective for you. Here are a few things that you have to consider.

You can use AWS Elastic Compute Cloud when,

Infrastructure flexibility is needed

You can afford a DevOps engineer who can manage the infrastructure

The projects demand great resources

You can spend more time deploying new versions of your app

One can use Heroku when,