Heroku vs Fly.io Comparison

This article will compare two of the best PaaS – Platform as a Service offerings available in the market. We will explore Heroku and Fly.io platforms according to their features, pricing structure, and featured customers.

An application stack or a group of software programs works together to obtain a common goal. The typical application stacks comprise closely related software applications that aid in completing a specific task.

Enabling ease of workflow, the platforms manage tasks, reduce work time and offer the right infrastructural facilities for development. In addition, it offers minimum interaction with software and the right environment to work in.

Let us draw a comparison of two popular platforms and evaluate their features and pricing. 

About Heroku

Heroku is a Platform as a Service Platform offering users the essential services that are required to develop the software efficiently.

The cloud-based platform allows businesses and web developers to run, build and monitor web and mobile applications. It helps web developers to deploy, scale, and manage online applications with the help of several programming languages.

It comprises several built-in add-ons that ease the software’s functionality. The platform supports modern languages such as Java, Ruby, Node, Scala, Python, Go, etc.

It also supports continuous code integration by allowing applications to be easily deployed from Docker, Git, and GitHub with the help of an API.

Being built in a quick run time, the application services are available with the tool, eliminating any worry about infrastructure as the software takes care of it all. 

Features of Heroku

• Heroku Runtime

The apps operate in Dynos that are smart containers where the team patches, monitors, and regularly upgrades the system and language stacks.

For example, the Heroku platform functions inside smart containers known as dynos. Dynos work in tight coordination with the Dyno manager and offer several benefits to the app, such as isolation, security, and scalability. 

The apps operate within the smart containers and a managed runtime environment. The runtime is responsible for provisioning and orchestrating containers (Dynos).

It monitors and manages the lifecycle and offers network configuration, log aggregation, HTTP, and more. In addition, the runtime aggregates logos from output streams of the app, the backing services and system components to further send them in a single channel. 

• Heroku Postgres (SQL)

Heroku Postgres is a powerful and reliable database as a service based on PostgreSQL. It delivers a modern open-source database as a secure, trusted, and scalable service optimised for developers.

As a result, the developers can build data-driven and engaging applications and rely on the fully managed platform to operate, build, secure, and validate the compliance for the data stack. 

• Scaling

Heroku offers easy-to-use tools enabling developers to scale dynos instantly to meet the rising demands.

It scales horizontally and vertically in just a moment, helping developers operate everything from small projects to enterprise-grade e-commerce. 

• GitHub integration

Every pull request triggers a disposable Review App for testing. In addition, Heroku integrates with GitHub, making it easier to deploy the code living on GitHub along with the apps running on Heroku. Heroku automatically builds and releases when GitHub integration is successfully made for the app. 

Pricing

Heroku has four distinct pricing plans. 

• Free and Hobby: $0 and up per month. This is ideal for non-commercial applications such as MVPs, proof of concept, and personal projects. This offer is available until Nov 28, 2022.

• Production: $25 and up per month. This is ideal for business-focused applications such as customer-facing or internal web applications and APIs. 

• Advanced : $250 and up per month. This is ideal for mission-critical applications with complex functionality that needs high availability, high volume of concurrent requests and very low latency. 

• Enterprise: Custom pricing. This pricing plan is for applications that meet large-scale organisations’ compliance, control, and collaboration needs. 

About Fly.io

Fly.io is a platform for running full-stack applications and databases close to the users without any DevOps.

The platform uses a virtualization technology called Firecracker to enable micro-virtual machines closer to the end users and across the globe.

The primary aim of Fly.io is to enable developers to complicated self-service infrastructure. It furthermore tries to eliminate abstractions without causing any mess to the infrastructure. 

Features of Fly.io

• Purpose-built cloud

It runs physical servers in cities close to the users. It is the closest you can get to the metal without paying to ship. 

• Multiple frameworks

Fly.io supports multiple programming languages and frameworks. The list includes Ruby, Laravel, Python, Go, Dyno, etc. For a complete list, please check out this page.

Alternatively, the platform allows users to deploy projects using Docker, delivering higher flexibility in terms of the technological stack.

• Fly Postgres

It offers an automated creation process along with some extensions to simplify the management process.

It typically depends on building blocks available to all Fly apps such as private networking, volumes, health checks, metrics, logs and much more.

It can be used in one place or can also be split up. As a Fly.io application, the app is accessible through Fly private networking. 

The Postgres offering provides the correct amount of CPU and memory, metrics/alerts, load balancers, and SSL.

Pricing

The pricing plan of Fly.io is designed to let the small applications run for free. But, at the same time, it also allows the applications to scale costs affordably as the needs start to grow. The services are billed per organisation and based on the app’s resources. 

The organisations tend to start on the Hobby plan, a pay-as-you-go option. The free allowance is applicable to all plans, which includes the Hobby plan, with enough usage to run the small full-stack app for free. It can be kept running for free as per your own preference. 

Users can pay for the usage-based pricing when they wish to scale beyond the included free resources. Users can opt for any paid plan when they need more support or compliance options.

Free limits

The resources are included for free on all the plans: 

• Up to 3 shared CPU-1*256 MB VMs 
• 3GB persistent volume storage (total) 
• 160GB outbound data transfer 

Compute

 The pricing is affordable and starts at $1,94/month.

Persistent storage volumes

• Free: 3GB of total capacity
• $0.15/GB/month

Network prices

• Anycast IPv6 – Unlimited and free
•  One are IPv4 address is free and additional IPv4 addresses cost $2/mo
• The first 10 SSL certificates are free
• Each additional SSL certificate costs $0.1/month/certificate
• Outbound data transfer costs:
  • $0.02 in North America and Europe
  • $0.12 in India
  • $0.04 in the other regions

Fly.io vs Heroku Comparison

Conclusion

Heroku is an established cloud platform from Salesforce. It pioneered the PaaS ecosystem in 2007, helping users to deploy, manage and scale applications. The regular offerings support two geographical regions (USA/Europe), free plans are only available until Nov 28, 2022, and the company has customers like PensionBee.

Fly.io is a startup founded in 2017 that received funding from a16z, Intel Capital, etc. It offers a PaaS platform that enables users to deploy micro-virtual machines closer to the end users across multiple geographical regions and to use several frameworks/programming languages.

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