Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Heroku VS Scalr

Compare Heroku VS Scalr 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.

Scalr logo Scalr

Scalr is cloud management software for public & private infrastructure
  • Heroku Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05
  • Scalr Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-08-03

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.

Scalr features and specs

  • Cost Management
    Scalr provides robust cost-management features, enabling organizations to track, optimize, and reduce their cloud expenditure efficiently.
  • Policy-Driven Automation
    It offers policy-driven automation which helps enforce governance and compliance across cloud environments, ensuring consistency and security.
  • Multi-Cloud Support
    Scalr supports multiple cloud providers, allowing organizations to manage diverse cloud infrastructures through a unified platform.
  • Scalability
    The platform is designed to scale with the organization, supporting the growth and changing needs of businesses.
  • Self-Service Portal
    Provides end-users with a self-service portal to access resources quickly, streamlining operations and boosting productivity.

Possible disadvantages of Scalr

  • Complexity
    The extensive features and customization options can introduce complexity, potentially lengthening the learning curve for new users.
  • Cost
    While it helps manage cloud costs, the pricing for Scalr itself might be a concern for small organizations with limited budgets.
  • Integration Challenges
    Integrating Scalr with existing IT systems and processes might require additional time and resources, especially for legacy setups.
  • Limited Offline Support
    Certain functionalities might be less effective in environments with limited internet connectivity, impacting remote or offline operations.
  • Vendor Dependence
    Organizations relying heavily on Scalr for cloud management may face challenges if needing to switch vendors or platforms in the future.

Heroku videos

What is Heroku | Ask a Dev Episode 14

More videos:

Scalr videos

scalr review

More videos:

  • Demo - Get Started with the Scalr Basics
  • Demo - Terraform Reports in Scalr

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Heroku and Scalr)
Cloud Computing
96 96%
4% 4
Developer Tools
91 91%
9% 9
Cloud Hosting
100 100%
0% 0
Infrastructure As Code
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 Scalr

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.

Scalr Reviews

We have no reviews of Scalr yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Heroku seems to be a lot more popular than Scalr. While we know about 73 links to Heroku, we've tracked only 4 mentions of Scalr. 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

Scalr mentions (4)

  • A list of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS offerings that have free tiers of interest to devops and infradev
    Scalr.com - Scalr is a Terraform Automation and COllaboration (TACO) product used to better collaboration and automation on infrastructure and configurations managed by Terraform. Full Terraform CLI support, OPA integration, and a hierarchical configuration model. No SSO tax. All features are included. Use up to 50 runs/month for free. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Monthly 'Shameless Self Promotion' thread - 2022/01
    Scalr is a tool that was created to give the Terraform community an affordable alternative to Terraform Cloud/Enterprise. Scalr is the only product in the space that has a hierarchical model to allow for object inheritance/sharing from a top-down perspective, cross-environment/workspace visibility, and custom RBAC to accommodate any complex org standards. Scalr can operate in a centralized or decentralized way... Source: over 3 years ago
  • Free for dev - list of software (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc.)
    Scalr.com - Remote state & operations backend for Terraform with full CLI support, integration with OPA and a hierarchical configuration model. Free up to 5 users. - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago
  • How to continuously apply TF code?
    Actually, the "TACoS" term was coined by Sebastian, CTO of Scalr. Source: almost 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

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

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

Spacelift.io - Collaborative Infrastructure For Modern Software Teams

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

Morpheus - Morpheus is integration software designed to help major cloud infrastructure work in harmony. For example, if a company has assets on both Google's and Amazon's cloud services, Morpheus helps bridge the gap to improve productivity.

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

env0 - The Best Way to Manage Your Terraform and Infrastructure as Code Manage, deploy, scale, and control all your Terraform, Terragrunt, Pulumi, and related frameworks