Heroku
A cloud platform as a service (PaaS) for building, deploying, and scaling applications.
Acquired by Salesforce
$212 million in 2010
Official Language Support
Node.js, Ruby, Java, PHP, Python, Go, Scala, Clojure
Add-ons in Marketplace
200+
About Heroku
Heroku, a Salesforce company, is a container-based cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS). It is designed to streamline the app development lifecycle, allowing developers to deploy, manage, and scale applications without managing servers or infrastructure. Developers can push code from Git, and Heroku's build system, using 'Buildpacks', automatically detects the language, dependencies, and compiles the application. The apps run in isolated containers called 'dynos'. The platform is highly extensible through a marketplace of 'Add-ons', which provide services like databases (e.g., Heroku Postgres), caching, monitoring, and more. It's widely used by startups and large enterprises for everything from simple web apps to complex microservices.
Core Concepts
Dynos
Lightweight, isolated Linux containers that run application processes. Dynos can be scaled up (size) or out (quantity) instantly.
Buildpacks
Sets of open source scripts used for compiling apps on Heroku. They detect the language, install dependencies, and create a runnable slug.
Add-Ons
Third-party cloud services that can be easily attached to an application, providing services like databases, monitoring, caching, and more.
Slugs
A compressed and pre-packaged copy of your application and its dependencies, ready for execution on a dyno.
Developer Experience Features
Deployment Workflow
Primarily uses `git push heroku main` to trigger builds and deployments, enabling a seamless CI/CD experience.
Heroku Cli
A command-line interface to manage apps, add-ons, view logs, and run one-off processes.
Heroku Postgres
A highly popular and powerful managed SQL database service offered as a first-party add-on.
App Rollbacks
Allows for instant rollback to a previous, stable version of the application if a deployment introduces issues.