Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Heroku VS Azure App Service

Compare Heroku VS Azure App Service and see what are their differences

Heroku logo Heroku

Agile deployment platform for Ruby, Node.js, Clojure, Java, Python, and Scala. Setup takes only minutes and deploys are instant through git. Leave tedious server maintenance to Heroku and focus on your code.

Azure App Service logo Azure App Service

App Service is a cloud platform to build powerful web and mobile apps that connect to data anywhere, in the cloud or on-premises
  • Heroku Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05
  • Azure App Service Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-10-16

Heroku features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Heroku offers an extremely user-friendly interface and a high level of abstraction, making it easy for developers to deploy, manage, and scale applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.
  • Quick Deployment
    One of Heroku’s strongest points is the ability to deploy applications quickly using Git. Developers can push their code to Heroku with a simple command, streamlining the entire process.
  • Scalability
    Heroku provides effortless scaling options by allowing developers to add more dynos (containers) with a single command to handle increased traffic and workload.
  • Add-Ons Ecosystem
    Heroku offers a rich ecosystem of add-ons, such as databases, caching, monitoring, and more, which can be easily integrated into applications to extend their functionality.
  • Automatic Updates
    Heroku automatically handles operating system and server updates, allowing developers to focus solely on their application code rather than maintenance tasks.
  • Free Tier
    Heroku offers a free tier with sufficient resources to host small projects and learn the platform without incurring costs, making it accessible for beginners and small-scale applications.

Possible disadvantages of Heroku

  • Cost
    While Heroku offers a free tier, the costs can quickly add up for larger applications and professional use. Paid plans and additional dynos or add-ons can become expensive.
  • Performance
    Heroku’s performance can sometimes be suboptimal compared to other cloud providers, particularly when running high-performance or resource-intensive applications.
  • Limited Control
    Heroku abstracts away a lot of infrastructure management, which can be a downside for developers who need fine-grained control over their environments and configurations.
  • Dyno Sleeping
    Applications running on Heroku’s free tier experience 'dyno sleeping,' where the application goes to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity, causing a delay when it wakes up after receiving a new request.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Relying heavily on Heroku’s ecosystem and platform-specific features can lead to vendor lock-in, making it challenging to migrate to another platform if needed.
  • Add-On Costs
    The costs for add-ons can also become significant, as many useful features and integrations require paid add-ons, increasing the overall expense.

Azure App Service features and specs

  • Scalability
    Azure App Service automatically scales your apps based on demand, making it easy to handle varying traffic levels without manual intervention.
  • Managed Infrastructure
    Azure App Service takes care of the underlying infrastructure, freeing developers from server management responsibilities and allowing them to focus on code.
  • Built-in DevOps Support
    Offers integrated support for CI/CD pipelines, enabling seamless deployment and collaboration among development teams.
  • Multiple Language Support
    Supports a wide range of programming languages including .NET, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python, and Ruby, providing flexibility in technology stack choice.
  • Security and Compliance
    Provides built-in security tools and features, such as SSL certification, Azure Active Directory integration, and compliance with regulatory standards.
  • Global Reach
    With data centers around the world, Azure App Service allows apps to be distributed globally, reducing latency and improving user experience.
  • Hybrid Connectivity
    Enables secure connectivity between cloud applications and on-premises systems, facilitating hybrid cloud solutions.

Possible disadvantages of Azure App Service

  • Cost
    Can become expensive, especially when scaling applications for high traffic or using additional services that incur extra charges.
  • Cold Start Latency
    Applications may experience higher latency during initial requests due to 'cold start' issues inherent to serverless architectures.
  • Complex Configuration
    Configuring and managing intricate application settings can be complex, requiring a deep understanding of Azure portal and services.
  • Limited Customization
    Some limitations in terms of the customization of the server environment compared to managing infrastructure at a lower level, such as virtual machines.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Reliance on specific Azure services and APIs can increase the risk of vendor lock-in, making it difficult to migrate to other platforms without rework.
  • Performance Variability
    Performance can vary depending on the chosen pricing tier, with lower tiers possibly affecting application response times.

Heroku videos

What is Heroku | Ask a Dev Episode 14

More videos:

Azure App Service videos

Azure App Service (Web Apps) Tutorial

More videos:

  • Review - Getting Started with Azure App Service Web Apps
  • Review - Build and deploy Node.js and React apps with Visual Studio Code, Azure App Service and Cosmos DB

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Heroku and Azure App Service)
Cloud Computing
96 96%
4% 4
Cloud Hosting
93 93%
7% 7
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Web Service Automation
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Heroku and Azure App Service

Heroku Reviews

  1. mark-mercer
    Useful Cloud Platform

    Great service to build, run and manage applications entirely in the cloud!

    🏁 Competitors: Amazon AWS, Dokku on Digital Ocean, Firebase
    👍 Pros:    Easy user interface|Good customer service|Multi-language cloud application platform
    👎 Cons:    Limitation with some addons|Low network performance
  2. jamestelford
    · Full Stack Developer at OutDev ·
    🏁 Competitors: Docker, Amazon AWS
    👍 Pros:    Powerful development environments|Great value for the money|Great customer support|Paas

10 Top Firebase Alternatives to Ignite Your Development in 2024
Heroku’s focus on simplicity and developer experience makes it a perfect fit for those who want to focus on building their apps, not babysitting servers. Startups and small businesses, in particular, can benefit from Heroku’s ability to accelerate development and deployment, allowing them to get their ideas to market faster.
Source: genezio.com
2023 Firebase Alternatives: Top 10 Open-Source & Free
Heroku Postgres – Majority of businesses like Heroku because of its SQL database support. Yes, PostgreSQL as a service is an appealing product of this PaaS vendor with quick deployment approaches.
5 Free Heroku Alternatives with Free Plan for Developers
Koyeb is a decent alternative to Heroku that you can consider for hosting or deploying your web apps and APIs. It has all the features of Heroku that you will need for your projects. So far, I have not encountered an importer tool for migrating Heroku deployments but I am sure doing that manually will not be that hard. Just like Heroku it offers you an intuitive web UI as...
Choosing the best Next.js hosting platform
However, there are a few disadvantages to Heroku. First of all, despite its build pack, Heroku will run your project as a Node.js application. As a result, you will lose some of Next.js’ most interesting features, such as Incremental Static Regeneration. Analytics are replaced by metrics and measured throughput, response time, and memory usage (only on paid plans).
Top 10 Netlify Alternatives
Heroku is another alternative to Netlify that doesn’t only host static websites but has the ability to host dynamic websites. This PaaS platform was launched in 2007 and conferred highly scalable features to deploy, host and launch applications.

Azure App Service Reviews

We have no reviews of Azure App Service yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Heroku seems to be a lot more popular than Azure App Service. While we know about 73 links to Heroku, we've tracked only 1 mention of Azure App Service. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Heroku mentions (73)

  • How to deploy your web application? 3 different approaches to consider (+1 bonus)
    Providers include Digital Ocean, Heroku or Render for example. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Heroku Reviews Apps prevent delivering bugs on production
    Review Apps run the code in any GitHub PR in a complete, disposable Heroku application. Review Apps each have a unique URL you can share. It’s then super easy for anyone to try the new code. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • How to keep an HTTP connection alive for 9 hours
    The app is deployed to Heroku and when it came time to switch the mode to email-on-account-creation mode, it was a very simple environment change:. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • How to Process Scheduled Queue Jobs in Node.js with BullMQ and Redis on Heroku
    Heroku is a cloud platform that makes it easy to deploy and scale web applications. It provides a number of features that make it ideal for deploying background job applications, including:. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • I made a Bot.. How do I use it?
    Once you've created it you can host it locally (this means leaving the program running on your computer) or host it through a service online. I haven't personally tried this yet, but I believe you can use a site like heroku.com or other similar services. Source: almost 2 years ago
View more

Azure App Service mentions (1)

  • Please help us to choose the right service
    Azure App Service (can be a Linux based on Windows Based). You will declare here what type of machine strength you need (cpu, memory, disk) - Note that you do not have access to the machines themselves , this is not a VM. You do have access of course to the folders where the application will be stored. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/products/app-service. Source: over 2 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Heroku and Azure App Service, you can also consider the following products

DigitalOcean - Simplifying cloud hosting. Deploy an SSD cloud server in 55 seconds.

Google App Engine - A powerful platform to build web and mobile apps that scale automatically.

Linode - We make it simple to develop, deploy, and scale cloud infrastructure at the best price-to-performance ratio in the market.

AWS Lambda - Automatic, event-driven compute service

Amazon AWS - Amazon Web Services offers reliable, scalable, and inexpensive cloud computing services. Free to join, pay only for what you use.

Dokku - Docker powered mini-Heroku in around 100 lines of Bash