For more than a decade, Heroku has provided free hosting services. Initially, the cloud platform supported Ruby apps only but it evolved with time to support Python, Node JS, Java, PHP, and Go applications as well.
Eliminating free plans
This week, Heroku announced the termination of its free hosting plans as its next chapter. The company’s General Manager Mr. Bob Wise says, “Starting November 28, 2022, we plan to stop offering free product plans and plan to start shutting down free dynos and data services”.
As a result, the free plan for Heroku Dynos and a free plan for Heroku Postgres will be phased out. Free Heroku Data for Redis will also be affected as well.
Additionally, Heroku will be deleting inactive accounts in order to “focus resources on delivering mission-critical capabilities” for its customers. All accounts with more than a year old dormancy will be deleted starting October 26, 2022.
Heroku GM also cites ‘abuse’ as one of the reasons for the demise of free services. He says, “Our product, engineering, and security teams are spending an extraordinary amount of effort to manage fraud and abuse of the Heroku free product plans”.
New rates
According to Heroku Pricing Information, Heroku Dynos now starts at $7/month. Heroku Data for Redis will fetch $15/month while Heroku Postgres starts at $9/month.
However, Heroku will be announcing a student and non-profit program at Salesforce’s upcoming Dreamforce conference in September.
Where to get free hosting plans
Currently, there are tens of Heroku alternatives where you can host your apps for free. You may try the following platforms:
- Firebase
- Netlify
- Github pages
- Vercel
- Dokku
- AWS(Elastik Beanstalk)
- Superbase
- Scaleway
