GitHub Pages vs Heroku

Overview

Heroku

Stacks25.8K

Followers20.5K

Votes3.2K

GitHub Pages

Stacks17.7K

Followers13.0K

Votes1.1K

GitHub Pages vs Heroku: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this markdown, we will discuss the key differences between GitHub Pages and Heroku, both of which are popular platforms for deploying websites and web applications. These platforms have different features and use cases, making them suitable for various types of projects.

Deployment Process: One key difference between GitHub Pages and Heroku lies in their deployment process. GitHub Pages is designed specifically for hosting static websites, where you can simply commit your code to a GitHub repository, and the platform will automatically build and deploy the website. On the other hand, Heroku is a cloud platform that supports dynamic web applications. To deploy on Heroku, you need to push your code to a Git repository and specify the necessary buildpacks and configurations.
Supported Technologies: Another significant difference between GitHub Pages and Heroku is the range of technologies they support. GitHub Pages primarily focuses on static websites and supports popular front-end technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It does not support server-side technologies such as database integration, server scripting, or backend frameworks. In contrast, Heroku supports a wide range of technologies, including both front-end and back-end technologies. It provides support for various programming languages, databases, and frameworks, allowing you to build more complex web applications.
Custom Domain: GitHub Pages and Heroku also differ in terms of custom domain setup. GitHub Pages allows you to associate a custom domain with your hosted website or application. However, you are limited to using only one custom domain per GitHub Pages account. In contrast, Heroku offers greater flexibility by allowing you to add multiple custom domains to your application, making it easier to handle different domains or subdomains associated with your project.
Pricing Model: The pricing models of GitHub Pages and Heroku also vary significantly. GitHub Pages provides free hosting for static websites, making it an affordable option for personal projects or small websites. However, if you require additional features like HTTPS support or a higher level of customization, you may need to consider a paid plan. Heroku, on the other hand, offers a freemium model with limited resources on their free plan. For more advanced features and additional resources, you would need to upgrade to a paid plan, which can be more expensive compared to GitHub Pages.
Scaling Capabilities: GitHub Pages is not designed to scale indefinitely and has certain limitations when it comes to handling high traffic or scaling resources dynamically. It provides a limited amount of bandwidth and storage, making it more suitable for smaller websites or personal projects. In contrast, Heroku is built to handle scalability and can dynamically scale resources based on the traffic and demands of your application. It offers features like vertical and horizontal scaling, allowing you to accommodate increasing traffic and provide a seamless user experience.
Version Control Integration: Lastly, GitHub Pages has seamless integration with Git version control system, as it is a part of the GitHub platform. This makes it easy to manage and track changes to your codebase. On the other hand, while you can still utilize version control with Heroku by connecting to a Git repository, it does not have the same level of integration and collaboration features as GitHub Pages.

In Summary, GitHub Pages is ideal for hosting static websites with simpler requirements, whereas Heroku is a versatile platform suitable for deploying dynamic web applications with a wide range of technologies and scalability needs.

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Advice on Heroku, GitHub Pages

Howie

Full Stack Engineer at Yintrust

Aug 13, 2020

Decidedon

Netlify

We use Netlify to host static websites.

The reasons for choosing Netlify over GitHub Pages are as follows:

Netfily can bind multiple domain names, while GitHub Pages can only bind one domain name
With Netfily, the original repository can be private, while GitHub Pages free tier requires the original repository to be public

In addition, in order to use CDN, we use Netlify DNS.

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Detailed Comparison

Heroku	GitHub Pages
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.	Public webpages hosted directly from your GitHub repository. Just edit, push, and your changes are live.
Agile deployment for Ruby, Node.js, Clojure, Java, Python, Go and Scala.;Run and scale any type of app.;Total visibility across your entire app.;Erosion-resistant architecture. Rich control surfaces.	Blogging with Jekyll; Custom URLs; Automatic Page Generator
Statistics
Stacks 25.8K	Stacks 17.7K
Followers 20.5K	Followers 13.0K
Votes 3.2K	Votes 1.1K
Pros & Cons
Pros 703 Easy deployment 459 Free for side projects 374 Huge time-saver 348 Simple scaling 261 Low devops skills required Cons 27 Super expensive 9 Not a whole lot of flexibility 7 No usable MySQL option 7 Storage 5 Low performance on free tier	Pros 290 Free 217 Right out of github 185 Quick to set up 108 Instant 107 Easy to learn Cons 4 Not possible to perform HTTP redirects 3 Limited Jekyll plugins 3 Supports only Jekyll 1 Jekyll is bloated
Integrations
Mailgun Postmark Loggly Papertrail Redis Cloud Red Hat Codeready Workspaces Nitrous.IO Logentries MongoLab Gemfury	GitHub

What are some alternatives to Heroku, GitHub Pages?

Clever Cloud

Clever Cloud is a polyglot cloud application platform. The service helps developers to build applications with many languages and services, with auto-scaling features and a true pay-as-you-go pricing model.

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.

Red Hat OpenShift

OpenShift is Red Hat's Cloud Computing Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. OpenShift is an application platform in the cloud where application developers and teams can build, test, deploy, and run their applications.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Once you upload your application, Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring.

DomainRacer

It is a blazing fast hosting solution that provides Customer Satisfaction driven Web Hosting services since 2016.

Netlify

Netlify is smart enough to process your site and make sure all assets gets optimized and served with perfect caching-headers from a cookie-less domain. We make sure your HTML is served straight from our CDN edge nodes without any round-trip to our backend servers and are the only ones to give you instant cache invalidation when you push a new deploy. Netlify is also the only static hosting service with integrated continuous deployment.

Render

Render is a unified platform to build and run all your apps and websites with free SSL, a global CDN, private networks and auto deploys from Git.

Hasura

An open source GraphQL engine that deploys instant, realtime GraphQL APIs on any Postgres database.

Cloud 66

Cloud 66 gives you everything you need to build, deploy and maintain your applications on any cloud, without the headache of dealing with "server stuff". Frameworks: Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Jamstack, Laravel, GoLang, and more.

Vercel

A cloud platform for serverless deployment. It enables developers to host websites and web services that deploy instantly, scale automatically, and require no supervision, all with minimal configuration.

Related Comparisons

GitHub Pages vs Heroku: What are the differences?

Introduction

Deployment Process: One key difference between GitHub Pages and Heroku lies in their deployment process. GitHub Pages is designed specifically for hosting static websites, where you can simply commit your code to a GitHub repository, and the platform will automatically build and deploy the website. On the other hand, Heroku is a cloud platform that supports dynamic web applications. To deploy on Heroku, you need to push your code to a Git repository and specify the necessary buildpacks and configurations.
Supported Technologies: Another significant difference between GitHub Pages and Heroku is the range of technologies they support. GitHub Pages primarily focuses on static websites and supports popular front-end technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It does not support server-side technologies such as database integration, server scripting, or backend frameworks. In contrast, Heroku supports a wide range of technologies, including both front-end and back-end technologies. It provides support for various programming languages, databases, and frameworks, allowing you to build more complex web applications.
Custom Domain: GitHub Pages and Heroku also differ in terms of custom domain setup. GitHub Pages allows you to associate a custom domain with your hosted website or application. However, you are limited to using only one custom domain per GitHub Pages account. In contrast, Heroku offers greater flexibility by allowing you to add multiple custom domains to your application, making it easier to handle different domains or subdomains associated with your project.
Pricing Model: The pricing models of GitHub Pages and Heroku also vary significantly. GitHub Pages provides free hosting for static websites, making it an affordable option for personal projects or small websites. However, if you require additional features like HTTPS support or a higher level of customization, you may need to consider a paid plan. Heroku, on the other hand, offers a freemium model with limited resources on their free plan. For more advanced features and additional resources, you would need to upgrade to a paid plan, which can be more expensive compared to GitHub Pages.
Scaling Capabilities: GitHub Pages is not designed to scale indefinitely and has certain limitations when it comes to handling high traffic or scaling resources dynamically. It provides a limited amount of bandwidth and storage, making it more suitable for smaller websites or personal projects. In contrast, Heroku is built to handle scalability and can dynamically scale resources based on the traffic and demands of your application. It offers features like vertical and horizontal scaling, allowing you to accommodate increasing traffic and provide a seamless user experience.
Version Control Integration: Lastly, GitHub Pages has seamless integration with Git version control system, as it is a part of the GitHub platform. This makes it easy to manage and track changes to your codebase. On the other hand, while you can still utilize version control with Heroku by connecting to a Git repository, it does not have the same level of integration and collaboration features as GitHub Pages.

GitHub Pages vs Heroku

Overview

GitHub Pages vs Heroku: What are the differences?