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Dokku

170
215
+ 1
69
Google App Engine

10.1K
7.9K
+ 1
611
Heroku

25.5K
20.3K
+ 1
3.2K

Dokku vs Google App Engine vs Heroku: What are the differences?

## Introduction
These are the key differences between Dokku, Google App Engine, and Heroku.

1. **Deployment Control**: Dokku allows for more control over deployments compared to Google App Engine and Heroku. Developers can manually deploy applications and have more flexibility in managing the deployment process.
2. **Scalability**: Google App Engine offers automatic scalability with minimal configuration required, whereas Dokku and Heroku require more manual scaling adjustments. Heroku provides vertical scaling easily, while Dokku requires more configuration for horizontal scaling.
3. **Pricing**: Google App Engine has a pay-as-you-go pricing model, while Heroku and Dokku are based on the number of dynos/containers. Heroku tends to be more expensive than Dokku due to the added features and convenience it offers.
4. **Community support**: Heroku has a larger and more established community, providing extensive resources and support for developers. Dokku has a growing but smaller community, while Google App Engine's community support may not be as robust as the other two platforms.
5. **Platform Lock-In**: Google App Engine can have more vendor lock-in due to its proprietary nature, while Dokku is more open-source and can be self-hosted, providing more flexibility. Heroku falls in the middle, offering some vendor lock-in but also providing the option to export data and move to other platforms.
6. **Ease of Use**: Google App Engine is known for its ease of use with its simple deployment process and automatic scaling, making it beginner-friendly. Heroku also offers a user-friendly interface but may require more configuration for complex applications. Dokku, being a self-hosted platform, requires more setup and configuration but offers more customization options for advanced users.

In Summary, the key differences between Dokku, Google App Engine, and Heroku lie in deployment control, scalability, pricing, community support, platform lock-in, and ease of use.
Decisions about Dokku, Google App Engine, and Heroku

The Friendliest.app started on Heroku (both app and db) like most of my projects. The db on Heroku was on the cusp of becoming prohibitively expensive for this project.

After looking at options and reading recommendations we settled on Render to host both the application and db. Render's pricing model seems to scale more linearly with the application instead of the large pricing/performance jumps experienced with Heroku.

Migration to Render was extremely easy and we were able to complete both the db and application moves within 24 hours.

The only thing we're really missing on Render is a CLI. With Heroku, we could manage everything from the command line in VSCode. With Render, you need to use the web shell they provide.

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I'm transitioning to Render from heroku. The pricing scale matches my usage scale, yet it's just as easy to deploy. It's removed a lot of the devops that I don't like to deal with on setting up my own raw *nix box and makes deployment simple and easy!

Clustering I don't use clustering features at the moment but when i need to set up clustering of nodes and discoverability, render will enable that where Heroku would require that I use an external service like redis.

Restarts The restarts are annoying. I understand the reasoning, but I'd rather watch my service if its got a memory leak and work to fix it than to just assume that it has memory leaks and needs to restart.

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Pros of Dokku
Pros of Google App Engine
Pros of Heroku
  • 23
    Simple
  • 12
    Open Source
  • 11
    Built on Docker
  • 11
    Free
  • 4
    Yay, it works like a charm
  • 4
    Git deploy
  • 2
    HTTP proxy from public hostname to container IP address
  • 2
    Zero downtime deploys
  • 145
    Easy to deploy
  • 106
    Auto scaling
  • 80
    Good free plan
  • 62
    Easy management
  • 56
    Scalability
  • 35
    Low cost
  • 32
    Comprehensive set of features
  • 28
    All services in one place
  • 22
    Simple scaling
  • 19
    Quick and reliable cloud servers
  • 6
    Granular Billing
  • 5
    Easy to develop and unit test
  • 5
    Monitoring gives comprehensive set of key indicators
  • 3
    Really easy to quickly bring up a full stack
  • 3
    Create APIs quickly with cloud endpoints
  • 2
    No Ops
  • 2
    Mostly up
  • 703
    Easy deployment
  • 459
    Free for side projects
  • 374
    Huge time-saver
  • 348
    Simple scaling
  • 261
    Low devops skills required
  • 190
    Easy setup
  • 174
    Add-ons for almost everything
  • 153
    Beginner friendly
  • 150
    Better for startups
  • 133
    Low learning curve
  • 48
    Postgres hosting
  • 41
    Easy to add collaborators
  • 30
    Faster development
  • 24
    Awesome documentation
  • 19
    Simple rollback
  • 19
    Focus on product, not deployment
  • 15
    Natural companion for rails development
  • 15
    Easy integration
  • 12
    Great customer support
  • 8
    GitHub integration
  • 6
    Painless & well documented
  • 6
    No-ops
  • 4
    I love that they make it free to launch a side project
  • 4
    Free
  • 3
    Great UI
  • 3
    Just works
  • 2
    PostgreSQL forking and following
  • 2
    MySQL extension
  • 1
    Security
  • 1
    Able to host stuff good like Discord Bot
  • 0
    Sec

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Cons of Dokku
Cons of Google App Engine
Cons of Heroku
    Be the first to leave a con
      Be the first to leave a con
      • 27
        Super expensive
      • 9
        Not a whole lot of flexibility
      • 7
        No usable MySQL option
      • 7
        Storage
      • 5
        Low performance on free tier
      • 2
        24/7 support is $1,000 per month

      Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

      - No public GitHub repository available -
      - No public GitHub repository available -

      What is Dokku?

      It is an extensible, open source Platform as a Service that runs on a single server of your choice. It helps you build and manage the lifecycle of applications from building to scaling.

      What is Google App Engine?

      Google has a reputation for highly reliable, high performance infrastructure. With App Engine you can take advantage of the 10 years of knowledge Google has in running massively scalable, performance driven systems. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow.

      What is Heroku?

      Heroku is a cloud application platform – a new way of building and deploying web apps. Heroku lets app developers spend 100% of their time on their application code, not managing servers, deployment, ongoing operations, or scaling.

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      What companies use Dokku?
      What companies use Google App Engine?
      What companies use Heroku?

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      What tools integrate with Dokku?
      What tools integrate with Google App Engine?
      What tools integrate with Heroku?

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