Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Heroku VS Docker Desktop

Compare Heroku VS Docker Desktop and see what are their differences

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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.

Docker Desktop logo Docker Desktop

Docker Desktop is a one-click-install application that lets you to build, share, and run containerized applications and microservices.
  • Heroku Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05
Not present

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.

Docker Desktop features and specs

  • Cross-Platform Compatibility
    Docker Desktop is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux, allowing developers to work in their preferred environment with a consistent toolset.
  • User-Friendly Interface
    Docker Desktop provides a graphical user interface that simplifies the process of managing containers, making it accessible to both new and experienced developers.
  • Integrated Tools
    It includes Docker Compose, Docker CLI, Kubernetes, and other useful tools bundled in one package, streamlining the workflow for container management and orchestration.
  • Easy Installation
    Docker Desktop offers a straightforward installation process that abstracts away the complexity of setting up Docker and its components from scratch.
  • Consistent Development Environment
    It helps maintain consistency between development, testing, and production environments, reducing potential discrepancies and deployment issues.

Possible disadvantages of Docker Desktop

  • Performance Overhead
    Running Docker Desktop can introduce performance overhead, especially on Windows and macOS, due to the virtualization layer required by these operating systems.
  • Resource Usage
    Docker Desktop can be resource-intensive, consuming significant amounts of CPU and memory, which might impact the performance of other applications.
  • Licensing Costs
    For businesses, Docker Desktop may require a paid subscription depending on the company size, which can be a financial consideration.
  • Limited in Headless Environments
    Docker Desktop is primarily designed for development environments with a graphical interface and may not be suitable for headless server environments.
  • System Integration Issues
    Some users might face integration issues with specific system setups, especially on less common or older platforms.

Heroku videos

What is Heroku | Ask a Dev Episode 14

More videos:

Docker Desktop videos

Docker Desktop Overview

More videos:

  • Review - Docker Desktop for macOS Setup and Tips

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Heroku and Docker Desktop)
Cloud Computing
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
94 94%
6% 6
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 Docker Desktop

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.

Docker Desktop Reviews

We have no reviews of Docker Desktop yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Heroku seems to be a lot more popular than Docker Desktop. While we know about 73 links to Heroku, we've tracked only 1 mention of Docker Desktop. 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

Docker Desktop mentions (1)

  • Getting Started with .NET and Docker Tutorial
    First, you need to download and install Docker Desktop from the Docker website. You can leave all of the default options checked during the installation process. Once it’s downloaded, sign in using your Docker Hub account. If you don’t have an account, you can sign up at hub.docker.com. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Heroku and Docker Desktop, you can also consider the following products

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

Portainer - Simple management UI for Docker

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