Heroku Postgres

Although they only let you create one database per plan, you can use schemas to emulate multiple databases.

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/ddl-schemas.html

Just a little usability nit, is the pricing per month, per year, lifetime?

It's not clear from the pricing page, and I'm assuming it's per month, in which case it's reasonable, especially given the value added services being offered, especially the ability to fork the database and the automated creation of read slaves.

It looks like a solid offering. It's probably not right for companies that are subject to HIPAA or PCI compliance requirements, and there's no information on the use of compiled extensions in the db which may limit it's utility if you're wanting to use PostGIS or other specialist datatypes.

This is really exciting - the team behind this really cares about developers and their experience. They see a way things could be better, and regardless of technical difficulty, say, "why not?" Forking a db? Brilliant. Offload expensive task to passive followers? Obvious (in hindsight). Instant, brain-dead db provisioning? Of course.

Personally, the only terrifying thing about this is that when Heroku releases something, it's been in the works for a good long while, and they usually have a stream of incredible releases waiting right behind it. The mind boggles at what they're going to be doing next.

But we'll be first in line for it :)

You can make snapshots of the data.

This is really awesome, just a few downsides (for me):

I don't use postgres - I hope heroku expands this kind of service to more databases (although I don't think it's likely in the near future).

The smallest database is also pretty expensive. I wouldn't mind a cheaper plan for less resources.

Only being able to create one database of each size is just weird, especially if forking or following. Can anybody confirm that this is a limitation? (I only read about this from one of the other comments here)