Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Heroku VS Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Compare Heroku VS Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) 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 Kubernetes Service (AKS) logo Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Container Management
  • Heroku Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05
  • Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-23

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 Kubernetes Service (AKS) features and specs

  • Managed Service
    AKS is a managed Kubernetes service, which means Azure handles critical tasks such as health monitoring and maintenance, reducing the operational overhead for development teams.
  • Integration with Azure Services
    AKS offers seamless integration with a wide range of Azure services such as Azure Active Directory, Azure Monitor, and Azure DevOps, providing a comprehensive ecosystem for building and managing applications.
  • Scalability
    AKS supports easy scaling of applications, which allows businesses to quickly adapt to changes in demand by adjusting the number of nodes or implementing autoscaling policies.
  • Enhanced Security
    With features such as Azure Policy, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), and network isolation, AKS provides robust security mechanisms to protect containerized applications.
  • Cost Effective
    AKS does not charge for the Kubernetes control plane, so users only pay for the resources (VMs, storage) they use, which can make it cost-effective for many applications.

Possible disadvantages of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

  • Complex Setup for Beginners
    For organizations or individuals new to Kubernetes, the initial setup and configuration of AKS can be complex and may require a steep learning curve.
  • Limited Customization
    As a managed service, AKS abstracts away some of the low-level control over Kubernetes components, which might not be ideal for all use cases that require extensive customization.
  • Regional Availability
    AKS is not available in all Azure regions, which may limit its use for globally distributed teams or applications that require specific regional deployments.
  • Dependency on Azure Ecosystem
    While tight integration with Azure services is an advantage, it can also be a limitation for organizations preferring multi-cloud or hybrid cloud strategies.

Analysis of Heroku

Overall verdict

  • Heroku is a solid choice for developers seeking a straightforward, cloud-based solution for deploying and managing applications. However, it may not be the most cost-effective option for large-scale or data-intensive applications.

Why this product is good

  • Heroku is a popular platform as a service (PaaS) due to its ease of use, fast deployment process, and robust support for multiple programming languages. It allows developers to focus on building applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. Heroku offers scaling capabilities, a wide variety of add-ons, and a strong developer community.

Recommended for

    Heroku is recommended for startups, small to medium-sized applications, hobby projects, and developers who value ease of use and quick deployment cycles. It is particularly suited for those who are developing web applications in languages such as Ruby, Node.js, Python, and others supported by the platform.

Heroku videos

What is Heroku | Ask a Dev Episode 14

More videos:

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) videos

Introduction To Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) | Azure Container Service | Azure Training | Edureka

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Heroku and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS))
Cloud Computing
98 98%
2% 2
Developer Tools
92 92%
8% 8
Cloud Hosting
100 100%
0% 0
DevOps Tools
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 Kubernetes Service (AKS)

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 Kubernetes Service (AKS) Reviews

We have no reviews of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Heroku seems to be a lot more popular than Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). While we know about 73 links to Heroku, we've tracked only 5 mentions of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). 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)

View more

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) mentions (5)

  • Grant Kubernetes Pods Access to AWS Services Using OpenID Connect
    Having this foundation in place, it's easy to extend this pattern to managed Kubernetes clusters such as Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) or Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). All you need from the managed Kubernetes cluster is the OIDC configuration endpoint, which in turn has the JWKs URL. With that, you can create the trust relationship in AWS or any other Service Provider and grant the relevant access to your... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Microsoft Announced Application Gateway for Containers.
    Application Gateway for Containers is the evolution of the Application Gateway Ingress Controller (AGIC), a Kubernetes application that enables Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) customers to use Azure's native Application Gateway application load-balancer. In its current form, AGIC monitors a subset of Kubernetes Resources for changes and applies them to the Application Gateway, utilizing Azure Resource Manager (ARM). Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Learn How to Dockerize Strapi v4
    Another option is to use Docker to facilitate the deployment to various cloud providers, or Kubernetes managed services such as Amazon EKS, Microsoft AKS, or others. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • How To Deploy Apache Kafka With Kubernetes
    Instructions for setting up Kubernetes to run in your cloud provider of choice can be found in the documentation for each provider (for example, AWS, GCP, or Azure), but the YAML configuration files listed below should work across all providers, with minor adjustments for IP addresses and related fields. - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago
  • Getting started with AKS
    This place will help you to get started on the Kubernetes and AKS, even if you have a piece of simple knowledge on the cloud computing concepts. - Source: dev.to / about 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Heroku and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), you can also consider the following products

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

Google Kubernetes Engine - Google Kubernetes Engine is a powerful cluster manager and orchestration system for running your Docker containers. Set up a cluster in minutes.

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

Kubernetes - Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers

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

Rancher - Open Source Platform for Running a Private Container Service