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Heroku vs Microsoft Azure: What are the differences?
Heroku: Build, deliver, monitor and scale web apps and APIs with a trail blazing developer experience. 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; Microsoft Azure: Integrated cloud services and infrastructure to support computing, database, analytics, mobile, and web scenarios. Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any language, tool or framework. And you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment.
Heroku can be classified as a tool in the "Platform as a Service" category, while Microsoft Azure is grouped under "Cloud Hosting".
Some of the features offered by Heroku are:
- 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.
On the other hand, Microsoft Azure provides the following key features:
- Use your OS, language, database, tool
- Global datacenter footprint
- Enterprise Grade with up to a 99.95% monthly SLA
"Easy deployment", "Free for side projects" and "Huge time-saver" are the key factors why developers consider Heroku; whereas "Scales well and quite easy", "Can use .Net or open source tools" and "Startup friendly" are the primary reasons why Microsoft Azure is favored.
StackShare, Heroku, and SendGrid are some of the popular companies that use Heroku, whereas Microsoft Azure is used by Starbucks, Movielala, and Docplanner. Heroku has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1496 company stacks & 937 developers stacks; compared to Microsoft Azure, which is listed in 489 company stacks and 463 developer stacks.
We are preparing to deploy a MERN-stack application (PWA) for a client. The app will be a public-facing real estate platform for listing, buying, and selling homes. While presenting a user experience much like a website, it retains the scalability and functionality of a web application.
I am weighing the pros and cons of using Microsoft Azure over Heroku, especially now that Heroku no longer supports mLAB for connecting Mongo databases. See more Suggestions and feedback always welcome.
DigitalOceanMeanwhile I migrated away from Azure and Heroku to DigitalOcean. Reasons are high cost of both compared to DigitalOcean, cumbersome usability on Azure and limited stack flexibilty on Heroku. 4 month after the move we are still happy with the decision.
Even if the integration is no longer available on Heroku, you can still startup a MongoDB hosted database and deploy it on one of the regions that Heroku uses for good latency (e.g. AWS Oregon for North America) https://www.dropbox.com/s/k2y2xbpoy95b09l/Pasted_Image_9_14_20__11_55_PM.png?dl=0
I really like how simple the Heroku interface is, how reliant their services are, and in general how great their CLI tools work.
The Azure control panel has grown to a point where it's very convoluted, and in general it's a bit more expensive than the rest. They also stopped their entrepreneur incentive program (Spark?) so there's little incentive to start something new on it.
Depending on what I'm building I usually go for: a) Vercel + Serverless functions if it's a React SPA b) Heroku, for NodeJS/Express + Postgress + Any FE framework you like c) DigitalOcean if I need full control of the server
That said... if latency is REALLY important then go with Azure. If you have tradeoffs, go for the ones that make your customer's experience better, even if you're annoyed at Azure's interface, or have to pay a few extra bucks
Hope that helps
This decision is a follow-up to my previous request for advice
We ultimately decided to use Heroku for the production build of the full-stack web application we built for Ormica LLC. React.js, Node.js, Express.js
The deployment had its share of issues; all of these I experienced firsthand. It would seem that Heroku takes a stricter view than even most development environments to the slightest syntax issue or the tiniest bug. Not to mention their engineers are unavailable on weekends, even if you are using a paid subscription, which I found quite surprising.
But, as I have before, I will again give credit to their documentation for being extremely detailed and intuitive. Additional credit goes to Mars Hall for the use of his trusty heroku-cra-node template as the baseline for the application.
At the end of the day, I still recommend Heroku for their thorough documentation, infallible uptime, and extensive plugin options.
Just be aware that if you missed anything in your code, the Heroku build engine is going to find it for you. Every. single. time. Which, from an objective point of view, is actually a good thing. Thanks for reading!
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.
Pros of Heroku
- Easy deployment704
- Free for side projects459
- Huge time-saver374
- Simple scaling348
- Low devops skills required261
- Easy setup190
- Add-ons for almost everything174
- Beginner friendly153
- Better for startups150
- Low learning curve133
- Postgres hosting48
- Easy to add collaborators41
- Faster development30
- Awesome documentation24
- Simple rollback19
- Focus on product, not deployment19
- Natural companion for rails development15
- Easy integration15
- Great customer support12
- GitHub integration8
- Painless & well documented6
- No-ops6
- I love that they make it free to launch a side project4
- Free4
- Great UI3
- Just works3
- PostgreSQL forking and following2
- MySQL extension2
- Security1
- Able to host stuff good like Discord Bot1
- Sec0
Pros of Microsoft Azure
- Scales well and quite easy113
- Can use .Net or open source tools95
- Startup friendly81
- Startup plans via BizSpark73
- High performance62
- Wide choice of services38
- Lots of integrations32
- Low cost32
- Reliability31
- Twillio & Github are directly accessible19
- RESTful API13
- Startup support10
- PaaS10
- Enterprise Grade10
- DocumentDB8
- In person support7
- Virtual Machines6
- Free for students6
- Service Bus6
- Redis Cache5
- It rocks5
- CDN4
- SQL Databases4
- Infrastructure Services4
- Storage, Backup, and Recovery4
- BizSpark 60k Azure Benefit3
- Integration3
- IaaS3
- HDInsight3
- Scheduler3
- Built on Node.js3
- Big Data3
- Preview Portal3
- Backup2
- Open cloud2
- Web2
- SaaS2
- Big Compute2
- Mobile2
- Media2
- Dev-Test2
- Storage2
- StorSimple2
- Machine Learning2
- Stream Analytics2
- Data Factory2
- Event Hubs2
- Virtual Network2
- ExpressRoute2
- Traffic Manager2
- Media Services2
- BizTalk Services2
- Site Recovery2
- Active Directory2
- Multi-Factor Authentication2
- Visual Studio Online2
- Application Insights2
- Automation2
- Operational Insights2
- Key Vault2
- Infrastructure near your customers2
- Easy Deployment2
- Enterprise customer preferences1
- Documentation1
- Security1
- Best cloud platfrom1
- Easy and fast to start with1
- Remote Debugging1
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Cons of Heroku
- Super expensive24
- Not a whole lot of flexibility7
- No usable MySQL option5
- Storage5
- Low performance on free tier4
- 24/7 support is $1,000 per month1
Cons of Microsoft Azure
- Confusing UI6
- Expensive plesk on Azure2
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