An Update on Heroku • Hacker News Board

Re: An Update on Heroku

#111

Post by brightball » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

bearjaws wrote: post #88

The downfall of Heroku should be studied, they had lightning in a bottle and blew it. Salesforce acquired them and just let it die, baffling.

I remember feeling the same way about Slicehost back in the day after Rackspace acquired them. Loved Slicehost. Not too long after though, Digital Ocean appeared with everything I loved about Slicehost and has kept getting better ever since.

I feel like that's Fly.io now. They took all of the great things about Heroku but also dramatically improved and added new capabilities...while improving on pricing, particularly for lower traffic stuff. Love Fly.

Re: An Update on Heroku

#112

Post by codegeek » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 9:18 PM UTC

g8oz wrote: post #5

"transitioning to a sustaining engineering model". I don't care what anyone says, it takes real talent to come up with lines like this.

I am sure that the guy whose name is on the Post didn't even write this himself. Probably some corporate writer using LLM :).

Re: An Update on Heroku

#113

Post by OGEnthusiast » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 9:18 PM UTC

bearjaws wrote: post #88

The downfall of Heroku should be studied, they had lightning in a bottle and blew it. Salesforce acquired them and just let it die, baffling.

Downfall? The founders and VCs made tens of millions of dollars. That’s the success condition for them.

Re: An Update on Heroku

#114

Post by codegeek » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 9:18 PM UTC

bobbyiliev wrote: post #86

I've been using DigitalOcean App Platform for a while now. It's not a 1:1 Heroku replacement, but the git-based deploys, managed DBs, and ability to move to Droplets later without a big migration have worked very well for me.

I am considering DO App Platform for a new project. Would you be open to sharing any lessons learned ?

Re: An Update on Heroku

#115

Post by vintagedave » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

davidhariri wrote: post #102

Railway is the spiritual successor. Fly is great too. I highly recommend both.

I really like Railway, and have deployed many sites with them, but got worried by their recent funding round. At some point those investment bills are going to come due.

Re: An Update on Heroku

#116

Post by teaearlgraycold » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #10

"We know changes like this can raise questions, and we want to be clear about what this means for customers." Proceeds to not be clear about what this means for customers.

> including helping organizations build and deploy enterprise-grade AI in a secure and trusted way.

Baffling

Re: An Update on Heroku

#117

Post by betteryet » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

Back in the day, Heroku, Stripe, and GitHub were iconic engineering organizations. They had this culture rooted in Unix ethos with a sprinkle of modern minimalism and style that was outstanding. You could really see people give a damn in the careful design and polish of their APIs, docs, primitives, and overall output.

Now Heroku and GitHub have been gutted in spirit by their acquirers, which is such a damn shame for our field. We still have Stripe and Apple to some extent, and maybe some new places, but I personally feel a real sense of loss from Heroku and GitHub exiting their status as places you could admire.

Re: An Update on Heroku

#118

Post by nubg » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 9:22 PM UTC

Title should be updated to "Sunsetting Heroku".

Re: An Update on Heroku

#119

Post by codegeek » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 9:22 PM UTC

bearjaws wrote: post #88

The downfall of Heroku should be studied, they had lightning in a bottle and blew it. Salesforce acquired them and just let it die, baffling.

Nothing to study. A common scenario when a mega corp acquires an incredibly successful startup and then lets it die. Happens more often than not. This is why I chuckle when I see an acquisition and the founders claim "Nothing is changing. We are not going anywhere" . There may be exceptions but the moment a hugely successful company like heroku gets acquired, you know it's most likely game over. To their credit, they survived 15 years after acquisition but barely.

Re: An Update on Heroku

#120

Post by decidertm » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 9:22 PM UTC

ezekg wrote: post #107

decidertm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hey! northflank supports the same buildpacks that you run on Heroku, so it should be fairly straightforward. we have these docs for a more detailed walkthrough: 1/ https://northflank.com/docs/v1/application/migrate-from-hero... 2/ https://northflank.com/blog/how-to-migrate-from-heroku-a-ste...

Sorry, but telling people to take a logical backup of their database, and then download it onto their local work station is insane for a production application. First, a logical backup at any decent scale will fail, and second, I don't even have enough local storage to do that -- even ignoring the compliance issues with downloading a full copy of production data onto a work station. For a company like Northflank, I'd…

I agree, I wouldn't either. You can import directly via a DB to DB import in the platform without involving your laptop.

https://northflank.com/docs/v1/application/databases-and-per....

Some folks want to do that, others want to import a backup directly, some want to spawn a read replica and sync their DB. Different strokes for different folks, all supported on Northflank.