Amazon EC2 vs Heroku vs PythonAnywhere

Overview

Amazon EC2

Stacks48.6K

Followers36.0K

Votes2.5K

Heroku

Stacks25.8K

Followers20.5K

Votes3.2K

PythonAnywhere

Stacks90

Followers293

Votes64

Amazon EC2 vs Heroku vs PythonAnywhere: What are the differences?

Pricing: Amazon EC2 utilizes a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where you are charged based on usage. Heroku, on the other hand, offers a simplified pricing structure with tiered plans. PythonAnywhere has free and paid plans available, making it more accessible for developers on a budget.
Customization: Amazon EC2 provides a high level of customization, allowing users to configure their virtual servers for specific needs. Heroku, on the other hand, abstracts much of the infrastructure management, limiting the level of customization available. PythonAnywhere offers a balance between the two, providing some customization options while maintaining ease of use.
Scalability: Amazon EC2 is known for its scalability, allowing users to easily adjust resources based on demand. Heroku provides automated scaling options but may not offer the same level of control as Amazon EC2. PythonAnywhere is designed for smaller applications and may not provide the same scalability options as the other two platforms.
Supported Technologies: Amazon EC2 supports a wide range of programming languages and technologies, making it versatile for various applications. Heroku is optimized for Ruby on Rails and Node.js but supports other languages as well. PythonAnywhere, as the name suggests, is specialized for Python applications, offering built-in support and tools for Python development.
Deployment Process: Heroku simplifies the deployment process with git push commands, making it easy to update applications. Amazon EC2 requires more manual configuration for deployment, but offers more control over the process. PythonAnywhere streamlines deployment for Python applications, simplifying the process for developers.
Monitoring and Management: Amazon EC2 provides extensive monitoring and management tools for tracking performance and managing instances. Heroku has built-in logging and monitoring features, but may not offer the same level of customization as Amazon EC2. PythonAnywhere offers basic monitoring tools for tracking resource usage and logs.

In Summary, Amazon EC2 offers advanced customization and scalability, Heroku simplifies deployment and pricing, while PythonAnywhere is tailored for Python applications with a balance of customization and ease of use.

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on Amazon EC2, Heroku, PythonAnywhere

Craig

Principal Consultant at Rootwork InfoTech LLC

Jul 16, 2020

Decided

We first selected Google Cloud Platform about five years ago, because HIPAA compliance was significantly cheaper and easier on Google compared to AWS. We have stayed with Google Cloud because it provides an excellent command line tool for managing resources, and every resource has a well-designed, well-documented API. SDKs for most of these APIs are available for many popular languages. I have never worked with a cloud platform that's so amenable to automation. Google is also ahead of its competitors in Kubernetes support.

200k views200k

Comments

Jerome/Zen

Software Engineer

Aug 2, 2020

Needs advice

DigitalOcean was where I began; its USD5/month is extremely competitive and the overall experience as highly user-friendly.

However, their offerings were lacking and integrating with other resources I had on AWS was getting more costly (due to transfer costs on AWS). Eventually I moved the entire project off DO's Droplets and onto AWS's EC2.

One may initially find the cost (w/o free tier) and interface of AWS daunting however with good planning you can achieve highly cost-efficient systems with savings plans, spot instances, etcetera.

Do not dive into AWS head-first! Seriously, don't. Stand back and read pricing documentation thoroughly. You can, not to the fault of AWS, easily go way overbudget. Your first action upon getting your AWS account should be to set up billing alarms for estimated and current bill totals.

264k views264k

Comments

Daniel

Senior Developer at Workfinder

Sep 22, 2020

Decided

I host my stuff with Hetzner in large part because their tools are straighforward and easy to use and they're based in a country whose laws respect privacy.

If you're hosting with a company that's US-based, you have to worry about their laws affecting your site, which isn't an acceptable requirement in my opinion.

7.44k views7.44k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Amazon EC2	Heroku	PythonAnywhere
It is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.	Heroku is a cloud application platform – a new way of building and deploying web apps. Heroku lets app developers spend 100% of their time on their application code, not managing servers, deployment, ongoing operations, or scaling.	It's somewhat unique. A small PaaS that supports web apps (Python only) as well as scheduled jobs with shell access. It is an expensive way to tinker and run several small apps.
Elastic – Amazon EC2 enables you to increase or decrease capacity within minutes, not hours or days. You can commission one, hundreds or even thousands of server instances simultaneously.;Completely Controlled – You have complete control of your instances. You have root access to each one, and you can interact with them as you would any machine.;Flexible – You have the choice of multiple instance types, operating systems, and software packages. Amazon EC2 allows you to select a configuration of memory, CPU, instance storage, and the boot partition size that is optimal for your choice of operating system and application.;Designed for use with other Amazon Web Services – Amazon EC2 works in conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon SimpleDB and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) to provide a complete solution for computing, query processing and storage across a wide range of applications.;Reliable – Amazon EC2 offers a highly reliable environment where replacement instances can be rapidly and predictably commissioned. The Amazon EC2 Service Level Agreement commitment is 99.95% availability for each Amazon EC2 Region.;Secure – Amazon EC2 works in conjunction with Amazon VPC to provide security and robust networking functionality for your compute resources.;Inexpensive – Amazon EC2 passes on to you the financial benefits of Amazon’s scale. You pay a very low rate for the compute capacity you actually consume.;Easy to Start – Quickly get started with Amazon EC2 by visiting AWS Marketplace to choose preconfigured software on Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). You can quickly deploy this software to EC2 via 1-Click launch or with the EC2 console.	Agile deployment for Ruby, Node.js, Clojure, Java, Python, Go and Scala.;Run and scale any type of app.;Total visibility across your entire app.;Erosion-resistant architecture. Rich control surfaces.	-
Statistics
Stacks 48.6K	Stacks 25.8K	Stacks 90
Followers 36.0K	Followers 20.5K	Followers 293
Votes 2.5K	Votes 3.2K	Votes 64
Pros & Cons
Pros 647 Quick and reliable cloud servers 515 Scalability 393 Easy management 277 Low cost 271 Auto-scaling Cons 14 Ui could use a lot of work 6 High learning curve when compared to PaaS 3 Extremely poor CPU performance	Pros 703 Easy deployment 459 Free for side projects 374 Huge time-saver 348 Simple scaling 261 Low devops skills required Cons 27 Super expensive 9 Not a whole lot of flexibility 7 No usable MySQL option 7 Storage 5 Low performance on free tier	Pros 15 Web apps 11 Easy Setup 8 Free plan 8 Great support 8 Shell access Cons 1 Really small community 1 No root access
Integrations
No integrations available	Mailgun Postmark Loggly Papertrail Redis Cloud Red Hat Codeready Workspaces Nitrous.IO Logentries MongoLab Gemfury	Python

What are some alternatives to Amazon EC2, Heroku, PythonAnywhere?

DigitalOcean

We take the complexities out of cloud hosting by offering blazing fast, on-demand SSD cloud servers, straightforward pricing, a simple API, and an easy-to-use control panel.

Clever Cloud

Clever Cloud is a polyglot cloud application platform. The service helps developers to build applications with many languages and services, with auto-scaling features and a true pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Microsoft Azure

Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any language, tool or framework. And you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment.

Google App Engine

Google has a reputation for highly reliable, high performance infrastructure. With App Engine you can take advantage of the 10 years of knowledge Google has in running massively scalable, performance driven systems. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow.

Red Hat OpenShift

OpenShift is Red Hat's Cloud Computing Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. OpenShift is an application platform in the cloud where application developers and teams can build, test, deploy, and run their applications.

Google Compute Engine

Google Compute Engine is a service that provides virtual machines that run on Google infrastructure. Google Compute Engine offers scale, performance, and value that allows you to easily launch large compute clusters on Google's infrastructure. There are no upfront investments and you can run up to thousands of virtual CPUs on a system that has been designed from the ground up to be fast, and to offer strong consistency of performance.

Linode

Get a server running in minutes with your choice of Linux distro, resources, and node location.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Once you upload your application, Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring.

Scaleway

European cloud computing company proposing a complete & simple public cloud ecosystem, bare-metal servers & private datacenter infrastructures.

Render

Render is a unified platform to build and run all your apps and websites with free SSL, a global CDN, private networks and auto deploys from Git.

Related Comparisons

Amazon EC2 vs Heroku vs PythonAnywhere: What are the differences?

Pricing: Amazon EC2 utilizes a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where you are charged based on usage. Heroku, on the other hand, offers a simplified pricing structure with tiered plans. PythonAnywhere has free and paid plans available, making it more accessible for developers on a budget.
Customization: Amazon EC2 provides a high level of customization, allowing users to configure their virtual servers for specific needs. Heroku, on the other hand, abstracts much of the infrastructure management, limiting the level of customization available. PythonAnywhere offers a balance between the two, providing some customization options while maintaining ease of use.
Scalability: Amazon EC2 is known for its scalability, allowing users to easily adjust resources based on demand. Heroku provides automated scaling options but may not offer the same level of control as Amazon EC2. PythonAnywhere is designed for smaller applications and may not provide the same scalability options as the other two platforms.
Supported Technologies: Amazon EC2 supports a wide range of programming languages and technologies, making it versatile for various applications. Heroku is optimized for Ruby on Rails and Node.js but supports other languages as well. PythonAnywhere, as the name suggests, is specialized for Python applications, offering built-in support and tools for Python development.
Deployment Process: Heroku simplifies the deployment process with git push commands, making it easy to update applications. Amazon EC2 requires more manual configuration for deployment, but offers more control over the process. PythonAnywhere streamlines deployment for Python applications, simplifying the process for developers.
Monitoring and Management: Amazon EC2 provides extensive monitoring and management tools for tracking performance and managing instances. Heroku has built-in logging and monitoring features, but may not offer the same level of customization as Amazon EC2. PythonAnywhere offers basic monitoring tools for tracking resource usage and logs.

Amazon EC2 vs Heroku vs PythonAnywhere

Overview