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Tell HN: Heroku deleted my database with no warning

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11–20 of 216 posts

Re: Tell HN: Heroku deleted my database with no warning

#11
post #2

What frustrated me about Heroku nuking free projects was that the paid version was, IMO, too expensive. (Granted, I understand that the free tier was probably a money sink for them.) $5-10 a month is pocket change in some contexts, but for a hobby or a one-off project, it's a huge chunk of change. I really wish they offered a lower-cost tier.

Or let me share dynos across all my projects. $5-$10 per month for all projects, sounds good! $5 per month for each project adds up very quickly.

Re: Tell HN: Heroku deleted my database with no warning

#12
Heroku sent me repeated messages that they would shut down my account due to inactivity. I was fine with that because finding and turning off the supposedly active Dyno was impossible. Guess what? Still charging me $27 a month for a server I can't even manage.

Re: Tell HN: Heroku deleted my database with no warning

#13
post #2

What frustrated me about Heroku nuking free projects was that the paid version was, IMO, too expensive. (Granted, I understand that the free tier was probably a money sink for them.) $5-10 a month is pocket change in some contexts, but for a hobby or a one-off project, it's a huge chunk of change. I really wish they offered a lower-cost tier.

That's 2 cups of coffee, or 1 latte. It's objectively not a huge chunk of change unless you live in a very LCOL area.

You can also go to any competitors, which have their smallest tier around the same price. Linode has a $5/m tier.

You could also buy a Raspberry Pi for $50 and run it in your closet.

Re: Tell HN: Heroku deleted my database with no warning

#14
post #10

Well, I moved everything I had to a VPS for the time being because I left it to the end. So I take this opportunity to ask, what alternatives have people moved to? I really haven't gone back to look what's out there. Not looking for free, just alternatives to review.

I went full blast into SQLite, agreed there's a migration job in between. But it's totally worth it. In fact my app is now 5x faster.

Re: Tell HN: Heroku deleted my database with no warning

#16
post #10

Well, I moved everything I had to a VPS for the time being because I left it to the end. So I take this opportunity to ask, what alternatives have people moved to? I really haven't gone back to look what's out there. Not looking for free, just alternatives to review.

You can host static sites on DigitalOcean's app platform for free. Their lowest tier offering for non-static sites is like $5/mo. Might be worth checking out.

Re: Tell HN: Heroku deleted my database with no warning

#17
"I learned my lesson about not doing an offsite backup regularly"

Heroku is a shitshow after the Salesforce takeover and not to shit on you because I know it really sucks. BUT please everyone, do offsite backups and test them. Please people. Please. If you have anything that is important, BACK THEM UP on your own outside of the provider.

Heck, we wrote our own script to backup RDS databases offsite as well even though RDS has backups and restore options. I want that database file.

Re: Tell HN: Heroku deleted my database with no warning

#18
post #2

What frustrated me about Heroku nuking free projects was that the paid version was, IMO, too expensive. (Granted, I understand that the free tier was probably a money sink for them.) $5-10 a month is pocket change in some contexts, but for a hobby or a one-off project, it's a huge chunk of change. I really wish they offered a lower-cost tier.

My personal take is that I'd rather work with heroku than dealing with aws or gcs.

Sure there are others out there that provide the same easy of use, I am just too lazy to switch ;)

OTOH I've never had them wipe a database on me, so I guess that would be the motivation to move on.

Re: Tell HN: Heroku deleted my database with no warning

#20

This whole debacle has been such short-term thinking from Salesforce. That after carrying these free projects for years they couldn't stomach more than 30d of data retention is just the icing on the cake. In my view this has caused yet further reputational harm for Heroku, and is going to have a long-term effect on the bottom line from paid projects. The value prop of Heroku has always been being able to sleep at nig…

I assumed the value prop of being on Heroku in 2023 was purely "not having to do the pain in the butt to migrate your legacy app that you made on Heroku in the pre-2010 era" - in other words, I would be really shocked if Heroku got significant new business or any growth at all, now that it's just expensive AWS with some basic CI integration points.

I also assume Salesforce only bought them as a cash generator and has no interest in investing in it. So if they saved bottom line from this move, that's a win for them.

(Feel free to correct my assumptions if I'm very wrong)

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