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Removal of Heroku free product plans

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Re: Removal of Heroku free product plans

#41

Post by joshstrange »

coffee_beqn wrote: post #39
joshstrange wrote: post #26

So their next chapter is obscurity followed by shutting down? It was clear even before their horribly bungled GitHub security incident that Heroku was on life support at best and it's been a long time since "Heroku" was the answer to "What PaaS should I use?". The beancounters took control a while back and are sucking all they can out of it before they discard it's empty shell. Having Heroku as your PaaS provider see…

What is the PaaS people use today? Just big cloud is too powerful or are there still niche companies that make life easy for startups like Heroku used to?

Fly.io is one I've looked at a few times but hasn't been exactly what I wanted to normally I just use AWS, Firebase, or a DO droplet. Supabase is something I've been interested in as well but I haven't played with it yet either.

Re: Removal of Heroku free product plans

#42

Post by mcintyre1994 »

tf2_pyro wrote: post #5
cmg wrote: post #3

> Starting October 26, 2022, we will begin deleting inactive accounts and associated storage for accounts that have been inactive for over a year. Starting November 28, 2022, we plan to stop offering free product plans and plan to start shutting down free dynos and data services. We will be sending out a series of email communications to affected users. Sad to see this, but not surprised after the Salesforce purchase…

fly.io i think - never tried it but HN feedback has been pretty positive on it

Fly is really good. If you go over the free tier limits by under $5 they don't charge too, which gives a bit more flexibility on hobby projects.

Re: Removal of Heroku free product plans

#43

Post by simonw »

An important detail: If you have a free PostgreSQL database running on Heroku it will be deleted three months from today.

You'd better be paying attention to their emails!

I think this is a particularly tough part of this.

Heroku: please consider instead stashing a backup of that data somewhere, so that users who wake up on November 29th and find that their application has vanished can sign in and at least recover their data to migrate it somewhere else.

Re: Removal of Heroku free product plans

#44

Post by yencabulator »

duxup wrote: post #29

Why did Salesforce buy Heroku if they're just going to sort of wind it down?

Well, it did take them 12 years after the purchase to shut it down.. Apart from that, it sounds like the standard acquihire. Salesforce bought Ruby/Java/etc experts to make their platform(s) more amenable to Ruby/Java/etc developers.

Re: Removal of Heroku free product plans

#45

Post by jeromegv »

tf2_pyro wrote: post #4

Pretty frustrated by this. I run a UAT instance on heroku free which I will now need to start paying for effectively doubling my cloud cost. Think i will migrate to fly.io instead which I guess is what they want to happen

That's correct, they do not want people getting service and not paying for it.

Re: Removal of Heroku free product plans

#46

Post by Kye »

aarondf wrote: post #15

Fly.io has a dedicated process for moving off of Heroku. Auth via Heroku and they'll launch your app onto Fly. They also have a free tier. The process: https://fly.io/launch/heroku The docs: https://fly.io/docs/app-guides/speed-up-a-heroku-app I haven't used it [the Heroku -> Fly process] myself, but it's been around for quite some time!

Fly was the subject of a front-page story a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31390506

Re: Removal of Heroku free product plans

#47

Post by zippergz »

I've barely used Heroku, just playing with it for a day or two when it was in its heyday to see what it was about. But my incredibly anecdotal sense is that Heroku's real sweet spot was apps that started out on the free plan and then grew to be paying customers. Is that not really accurate? I know that's kind of a hard business model because only a tiny percentage of free customers will ever start paying. But do companies that can afford to pay from day 1 really use Heroku?

Re: Removal of Heroku free product plans

#48

Post by joshfraser »

Heroku's business model was getting developers hooked w/ their free plan, and then making up the lost revenue by overcharging them once they needed to scale. This worked because the last thing you want to deal with when your business starts blowing up is moving everything over to a new stack. It's hard to imagine businesses choosing to start with Heroku's overpriced plans w/o first getting hooked with the free samples.

On the other hand, I can only imagine the amount of bitcoin mining and DDOS farms that people must try to deploy on their platform every day. It sounds like a never-ending game of cat and mouse. It's remarkable that they offered free accounts for as long as they did.

Re: Removal of Heroku free product plans

#49

Post by freeformz »

craigkerstiens wrote: post #17

This is a sad day. Pricing changes are always hard, and having been through some of the earlier pricing changes at Heroku you can't make everyone happy. But, so many developers deployed their first app on Heroku and was a staple for so many bootcamps. Without it I'm confident we'd have less developers in the world. It is still one of the gold standards for developer experience. Years after its heyday companies and to…

It would be a poor business decision to exclude boot camp students from the upcoming student plan(s). That obviously doesn’t cover all types of learning/getting started though. I too mourn the loss of free, but also think it is the right decision for the times.
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