Heroku
Created
Reviewed
🎸
Old rock stars.
Heroku is a polyglot PaaS — the original "git push to deploy" platform, now part of Salesforce.
About Heroku
Heroku is a rock star — the original PaaS, built for hosting Ruby on Rails web applications. It coined 'git push to deploy', and its co-founder wrote the twelve-factor app methodology. Salesforce acquired Heroku in 2010, and momentum faded: the famous free tier was removed in November 2022, so entry now starts with Eco dynos at $5/month that sleep after 30 minutes without traffic. A next-generation runtime named Fir is generally available, but only inside Private Spaces — the standard platform still runs on the Cedar generation. PHP is officially supported on both, and Heroku runs an EU region in Dublin next to the US default.
Today, more modern PaaS-like providers fill the gap: Render, Fly.io and Railway compete for former Heroku clients.
Why fortrabbit
Consider fortrabbit another alternative for a higher grade of abstraction. PHP runs in our veins — the mission is to bring PHPower to the PHPeople. fortrabbit was one of the first PHP PaaS providers (alongside cloudControl and PHP Fog, both long gone) with native Composer integration — and ran PHP before Heroku officially supported it. Heroku has to run Ruby, Java, Python, Node and PHP alike; polyglot support comes with trade-offs, while fortrabbit concentrates on PHP alone. Heroku's house database is Postgres — MySQL only comes via third-party add-ons — while MySQL is an integrated component on fortrabbit.
Both platforms are managed — focus on code instead of servers — and both deploy with git push. Heroku's pricing points at larger teams: production Standard dynos start at $25/month for 0.5 GB of RAM, before the database. fortrabbit aims at freelancers, digital agencies and startups, with plans from €2.50/month, direct human support and a 7-day free trial without credit card.
Looking to switch? See our Heroku alternative for PHP hosting comparison — features, pricing, and migration notes.