Heroku vs Kubernetes Comparison

This article will compare Heroku and Kubernetes according to their features, pricing, and featured customers.

About Heroku

Heroku is a cloud application that makes it easy to develop and deploy web applications in several languages.

It offers a scalable runtime along with a varied set of tools that can be implemented in less time whilst minimising risk. Heroku lets you run, deploy, and manage applications written in Node.js, Ruby, Clojure, Python, Java, and PHP.

It is a developer-centric application that allows users to focus on coding whilst managing the servers for use in the cloud. Heroku runs applications through virtual containers, also known as Dynos.

This is ideal for hosting proof of personal projects, concepts and offers different services for a varied range of processes.

Features of Heroku

• Sets up configuration variables

As the app grows, it will need several pieces of configuration data to run. The data will be either too sensitive or might also change frequently to be able to store it in source control.

Heroku allows store configuration variables so that the app can easily get configured in production mode. 

• Heroku Add-ons

The category offers several additional functions that extend the platform’s capabilities. The focus of add-ons is to embrace the development of apps, improve the operation, and offer better control. 

• Heroku buttons

This is a combination of source code and a short set of commands designed to deploy code to Heroku.  The deployment is made from the repository with a click from a web browser window.

Creating such code packages is easy, and hence developers can make a required button and select the ideal one to simplify the actions further. 

• Heroku buildpacks

The elements are custom scripts that offer the essential dependencies for app compilation. The primary benefit of buildpacks is the liberty of developers to use any framework or language pertaining to their needs.

Heroku support as many as 8 programming languages, offering a separate build pack for each of them. It makes it easier for developers to create a custom build pack and choose from the marketplace. 

Pricing

• Free and Hobby | $0 and above, each month | The plan is suitable for non-commercial applications, proof of concepts, and personal projects. It is only available until Nov 28, 2022.

• Production | $25 and above per month | This is ideally for business-focused applications, such as internal web apps, customer-facing apps, and APIs. 

• Advanced | $250 and above per month | This is apt for mission-critical apps that offer complex functionality requiring high availability, low latency, and handling a high volume of requests. 

• Enterprise | Custom pricing | Lastly, custom pricing includes applications that meet the needs of large-scale organizations.

About Kubernetes

Kubernetes, also known as an open-source container orchestration platform, automates the manual task of deploying, managing, and scaling containerised applications.

The container-centric management software is inspired by the internal cluster management system of Google and creates everything associated with deploying and managing the application.

By improving your reliability and reducing the time and resources needed in daily operations, Kubernetes is a go-to platform for several developers.

It automates container management tasks whilst including built-in commands for deploying applications, scaling the applications up and down to comply with the changing needs, monitoring the applications, and facilitating easy management. 

Features of Kubernetes

• Automated operations

Kubernetes comprises built-in commands to handle the heavy lifting of your application management. It allows users to automate daily operations easily and lets the applications run the way you intend them to. 

• Infrastructure abstraction

When you install Kubernetes, it handles networking, computing, and storage to reduce the workload off you. Furthermore, this allows developers to focus on applications without worrying about the underlying environment. 

• Service health monitoring

Kubernetes runs dedicated health checks against the services and monitors the health of the containers. 

• Custom controllers

Controllers are loops that regulate the state of the system or the resources. With custom controllers, it can be easier to accomplish tasks that are not included with the standard controllers.

For example, the application configurations can be dynamically reloaded. Custom controllers can be essentially used with native or custom resource types. The controllers are an easy way to manage deployments as compared to toolchains. 

• Custom scheduling

It offers a default scheduler for assigning the newly created pods to nodes. When the scheduler does not fit your needs appropriately and wants to run several schedulers, a custom scheduler can be created.

For example, you can use custom scheduling to embrace cloud bursting, wherein the workload is moved to the cloud to meet the higher traffic requirements.

In addition to this, it can also be useful when you want special pods to be handled separately from others. The schedulers can be set according to the requirement. 

Pricing

The Kubernetes platform is open-source and there is no cost to use it.

Kubernetes vs Heroku Comparison

Conclusion

Heroku enables app developers to spend most of the time on the application code and is a new way of developing and deploying web apps.

It helps the app developers manage servers, control ongoing operations, deployment, or scaling. If you are searching for the simplest path to getting the apps to the market, Heroku is the ideal choice.

On the other hand, Kubernetes manages a cluster of Linux containers as a single system for accelerating Dev and simplifying Ops. It is ideal for those looking for hosting cloud-native applications requiring rapid scaling.

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