Heroku vs DigitalOcean

The advancement in technology has seen developers migrating both applications and their development platforms to the cloud. The reason is simple, these cloud development platform, often called backend as a service, makes the procedure of application development faster and less stressful.  This article focuses on Heroku vs DigitalOcean. These two platforms are among the top cloud service providers at present. The focus of comparing Heroku vs DigitalOcean is to help developers make an informed decision when selecting a platform for their next app project.

Before we delve into the comparison, let’s make a brief overview of the Heroku and DigitalOcean. 

Overview of Heroku?

Heroku is a cloud hosting platform as a service established in 2007 and acquire by Salesforce.com in 2010 for a whopping $212 million. The platform provides developers with server infrastructure, so they can focus on their attention on app development. As far as server deployment and scalability is concerned, Heroku takes care of it. Heroku has evolved over the years to support a wide range of front-end development languages such as Ruby, Scala, Node.js, Python, PHP, Clojure, Go, and Java. 

Next, in our Heroku vs DigitalOcean review, we shall take a closer look at the features of Heroku.

The Features of Heroku

Heroku has lots of excellent features for developers. A cross-section of these features are as follows:

• It supports a wide range of modern programming languages such as Java, Clojure, Go, Scala, Python, PHP, and much more.
• It makes use of a smart container called dynos, which enhances load balancing and security, among other functions.
• Heroku is a highly scalable platform.  It hosts apps with massive amounts of traffic efficiently.
• Deployment and integration are easy with several options such as GitHub, Git, or using an API. 

Heroku vs DigitalOcean: The Benefits of Heroku

Here are the unique benefits developers derive from using the Heroku Platform

• Developers can focus on coding rather than managing Infrastructure.
• A simple billing system that scales as the number of team members increases.
• It supports most of the modern opensource languages.
• Developers can have extra time at their disposal to focus on innovation rather than operations.
• It has easy to use permission and app management dashboard.
• A useful command-line interface.

The Price Structure

Heroku offers a free plan to users.  The premium plan starts at $7 per dyno per month.  Professional plans range from $25 to $500 per dyno per month

Overview of DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean is a cloud computing platform that allows businesses and developers to create applications and scale them seamlessly.  In January 2018, the company was named as one of the leading cloud hosting service providers in the USA. With this platform, developers can run several apps in their accounts across multiple could servers without degrading performance. 

Heroku vs DigitalOcean: The Features of Digital Ocean

The features of DigitalOcean cloud service is listed below:

• It allows developers to create a scalable VPS to host their apps.
• It provides the option to use a VPS with a pre-configured web app.
• Backup and server monitoring.
• Enhanced security with a cloud firewall.
• Provides an intuitive dashboard, API, and CLI for app management.
• Has a team management feature.
• Load balancers and floating IP addresses makes app management easy.

The Benefits of DigitalOcean

Next, in our DigitalOcean vs. Heroku review, we shall take a closer look at the value developers derives from DigitaOcean cloud hosting service.

• It offers the user a simple and elegant interface for performing server-related tasks.
• Developers can enjoy features such as Fast SSD-based virtual machines, IPV6, and other elements that enhance server performance.
• The comprehensive documentation allows developers to get up and running with this platform without hassles.

The Price

There are multiple price options for DigitalOcean users. The basic plan that offers up to one Terabyte transfer costs $5 only while the top-tier plan offers seven Terabyte transfer costs $160 per month. The platform also has hourly plans for personal use.

DigitalOcean vs Heroku: Comparing the Differences

Below is an overview of the differences between Heroku and Digital Ocean.

IaaS and PaaS

DigitalOcean offers infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to users that involves networking, storage, and virtualization. On the other hand, the service of Heroku can be described as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that provides software and online tools.

See this article IaaS vs Paas to appreciate the difference between these two types of platforms.

Platform Management

While Heroku takes care of server infrastructure management, the same cannot be said of DigitalOcean. The users of DigitalOcean takes responsibility for both server management and their app development.  In essence, Heroku allows developers to focus more on their app by taking care of server management.

The Cost

The price factor is another essential aspect of our Heroku vs DigitalOcean comparative review.  As you would expect, Heroku carries a higher price tag for its services because it manages server infrastructure, which DigitalOcean does not. So, DigitalOcean costs less, but users must take responsibility for server management.

Server Control

With DigitalOcean, the developer has more freedom to configure the VPS. The platform provides useful help service that allows you to solve server challenges when the need arises. You do not have such flexibility with Heroku

Conclusion

After an in-depth overview of Heroku vs DigitalOcean, it is apparent that both offer valuable services for developers around the world. However, their services are not exactly the same. If you don’t mind the hassles of managing server tasks as well as your app, you can go for DigitalOcean. Alternatively, if you can pay more to get a managed solution, then use the service of Heroku.

The managed solutions are excellent for a start. But when your app begins to mature, you would want more control over the server.