Heroku vs Mulesoft – Which is the best?

Salesforce is one of the top cloud-based software solutions providers in the world, offering a wide range of products for customer relationship management and app development on the cloud.

It owns two of the most renowned platform as service implementations in use today, i.e., Heroku and MuleSoft, which extend the capabilities of the Salesforce platform and can be used separately or together to achieve a different set of tasks.

Heroku is a cloud platform that can be used to develop and run modern applications easily. MuleSoft is an integration cloud platform that can be used to integrate various platforms with each other.

For instance, if you have an app on Heroku, you can seamlessly integrate it with the Salesforce database to sync appropriate information in real-time. MuleSoft can be used to extend the integration capabilities of Heroku and Salesforce by allowing you to set up API integrations with other platforms and databases.

Here, we take a brief look at some of the basic features and pricing structures of Heroku and MuleSoft. If you have been wondering about using either or both for your upcoming projects, the following information should help you get an idea of how to leverage these services to accomplish various tasks within your project.

Heroku Overview

Launched in 2007 and acquired by Salesforce in 2010, Heroku is one of the first cloud application platforms that offered a container-based platform with a wide range of tools and services for deploying and managing modern applications.

Initially supporting only Ruby, Heroku now supports a wide range of programming languages like Go, PHP, Python, Node, Scala, Java, etc. 

PaaS implementations like Heroku eliminate the need to build and manage backend infrastructure for the app, allowing developers to focus only on improving the code.

With Heroku handling most of the infrastructure in the backend, organizations can focus on writing the core of the application and improve the final product.

Heroku Features

• Add-ons: Heroku Elements is the marketplace for official add-ons that developers can use to improve the functionality of their applications. Developers can choose from a wide range of buildpacks and add-ons and implement storage, database, and security functionalities easily.

• Heroku DX: Heroku follows a developer-centric and app-centric approach to software delivery and focuses on creating and continuously deploying applications without mingling with servers or infrastructure. This is achieved with the help of direct integration to repositories like Git, GitHub, and other CI systems.

• Runtime: In Heroku, developers run their applications in specialized Linux-based containers called dynos, which contain a fully managed runtime environment. Developers simply deploy their app to this runtime and Heroku handles most of the tasks critical from production.

Heroku Pricing

Heroku offers multiple pricing tiers based on the number of resources allocated per application. It offers a free tier for developers trying their personal projects and other non-commercial applications. Here are the rest of the tiers discussed in brief:

• Standard: Starting at $25 and up a month per dyno, the standard tier is for small businesses focused on developing business-focused apps and APIs.

• Performance: Starting at $250 and up a month, this tier allows developers and organizations to build low latency apps that can handle high traffic.

• Custom: For larger organizations requiring custom support, Heroku offers a tier with network-isolated private data services and bespoke resource allocation with custom pricing.

MuleSoft Overview

If Heroku is a Paas implementation, MuleSoft can be classified as an iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) implementation.

MuleSoft offers a wide range of automated tools and services that integrate various software solutions deployed in distinct environments with each other.

It was acquired by Salesforce recently in 2018 and has become one of the leading integration platforms for multiple industries.

MuleSoft’s Anypoint platform offers several components which can be used to accomplish different tasks.

These include the Mule runtime engine, which connects the cloud with on-premises enterprise applications, a centralized web interface Anypoint Management Center, and the Anypoint Design Center for developers to build and test APIs.

MuleSoft makes it easy for organizations to unify data and deliver a single view of the customer and build connected experiences.

MuleSoft Features

• MuleSoft Robotic Process Automation: The RPA solution captures and automates workflows across the organization instantly, allowing IT and business teams to function seamlessly.

• MuleSoft Composer: The no-code composer allows business teams to add powerful transformations to workflows and monitor them with proactive email alerts.

• DevOps: Anypoint’s API center simplifies the implementation of some of the most popular DevOps platforms for CI/CD workflows, ensuring consistent quality and compliance across all APIs with lesser development overheads.

MuleSoft Pricing

MuleSoft’s Anypoint platform also offers wide pricing tiers, where developers pay for the capacity and capabilities of API management that the organization plans on using for their deployments.

Note that, unlike Heroku, there is no price calculator on their website, which makes it slightly difficult to get an estimate on the actual price per tier.

Developers can sign up for the free tier by providing a few basic information, which includes name, contact details, and company name.

In addition to the free tier, MuleSoft offers three pricing tiers, the features of which are discussed in brief below:

• Gold: Design APIs and collaborate on unlimited API portals, with app management and monitoring facilities. 

• Platinum: All features of the Gold tier plus enhanced deployment capabilities and increased scalability; offers high availability, flexible hybrid deployment, and container services.

• Titanium: All features of the Platinum tier plus features for getting deeper insights and real-time advanced monitoring; offers visual dependency mapping, advanced log management, and log tokenization.

Mulesoft vs Heroku Comparison

Conclusion

Heroku and MuleSoft are two of the leading platform as service implementations available in the market and offer a wide range of capabilities to the developers.  

However, they do not perform the same tasks and can either be used together or separately, depending on the functionalities required by the developers for a project.

If you cannot decide if you need one or the other, consider getting in touch with the experts at a leading app hosting company.

Tell them your requirements and they will be able to suggest the best software and RPA solutions for your upcoming projects.