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  5. Apollo vs Heroku

Apollo vs Heroku

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Heroku
Heroku
Stacks25.8K
Followers20.5K
Votes3.2K
Apollo
Apollo
Stacks2.7K
Followers1.8K
Votes25

Apollo vs Heroku: What are the differences?

  1. Deployment Environment: One key difference between Apollo and Heroku is the deployment environment. Apollo is an open-source GraphQL server that can be self-hosted on any infrastructure, giving users complete control over the deployment process. On the other hand, Heroku is a cloud-based platform as a service (PaaS) that simplifies deployment by providing a fully managed environment for deploying web applications and services.

  2. Scalability Options: Another important difference is the scalability options offered by Apollo and Heroku. Apollo allows users to scale their GraphQL server horizontally by adding more instances as needed, giving them flexibility in handling increased traffic and workload. Heroku, on the other hand, automatically handles scaling based on the application's needs, making it easier for users to manage resources without having to intervene manually.

  3. Cost Structure: The cost structure differs between Apollo and Heroku. Apollo being open-source, has no direct cost associated with using the software itself, but users are responsible for the infrastructure and maintenance costs if self-hosted. In contrast, Heroku offers a pay-as-you-go model, where users only pay for the resources and services they use, making it a more convenient option for those who prefer a simple pricing structure.

  4. Add-on Services: Heroku provides a wide range of add-on services that can be easily integrated into applications, such as databases, caching, logging, monitoring, and more. These add-ons help enhance the functionality and performance of applications deployed on Heroku. Apollo, being a server framework, does not offer similar add-on services but can be integrated with various third-party services to supplement its capabilities.

  5. Community Support and Ecosystem: When it comes to community support and ecosystem, Apollo benefits from a large, active community contributing to its development and providing resources such as tutorials, libraries, and plugins. Heroku, being a popular PaaS platform, has a vast ecosystem of developers, partners, and integrations, making it easier for users to find solutions and resources to support their applications.

  6. Integration Flexibility: Lastly, the integration flexibility differs between Apollo and Heroku. Apollo, being a self-hosted server, offers users more control and flexibility in integrating with other tools, services, and platforms as needed. Heroku, while providing seamless integration with its own ecosystem of add-ons, may have limitations when it comes to integrating with certain external services, requiring users to find workarounds or alternative solutions.

In Summary, the key differences between Apollo and Heroku lie in the deployment environment, scalability options, cost structure, add-on services, community support, and integration flexibility.

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Advice on Heroku, Apollo

Alex
Alex

Oct 20, 2020

Decided

I'm transitioning to Render from heroku. The pricing scale matches my usage scale, yet it's just as easy to deploy. It's removed a lot of the devops that I don't like to deal with on setting up my own raw *nix box and makes deployment simple and easy!

Clustering I don't use clustering features at the moment but when i need to set up clustering of nodes and discoverability, render will enable that where Heroku would require that I use an external service like redis.

Restarts The restarts are annoying. I understand the reasoning, but I'd rather watch my service if its got a memory leak and work to fix it than to just assume that it has memory leaks and needs to restart.

101k views101k
Comments
Márton
Márton

CTO at Media4Care

Aug 31, 2020

Decided

We wanted to save as much time as possible when writing our back-end, therefore Apollo was out of the question, we went for an auto-generated API instead. Hasura looked good in the beginning, but we wanted to retain the ability to add a few manual resolvers and modifications to auto-generated ones, which ruled out Hasura. Postgraphile with its Plug-In architecture was the right choice for us, we never regretted it!

37.1k views37.1k
Comments
Raj
Raj

CTO & Founder at Novvum

Oct 5, 2020

Review

Hey Brian, it's hard to pick a best tool for any situation, however, there are tools that offer advantages dependent on use case.

Server Side

If you're looking to quickly generate a GraphQL API, you can use a Graphql As A Service like FaunaDB, Slash Graphql, or 8base.

If you want something more advanced on the server side: Prisma with Postgres, Nexus, & Apollo Server (js) is a great stack to try out. Examples here

Check out TypeORM and TypeGraphQL too

If you're have some existing data on Postgres, PostGraphile or Hasura are your best bet!

If you are using a lot of AWS services, check out Amplify and AppSync. Tutorial here

On the client side:

Check out Gatsby! Graphql is already configured and used to query static or remote information at build time. It's a great way to get your feet wet!

Apollo Client is often the choice for more advanced use cases. But URLQL and gqless are some pretty good alternatives too!

Hope this helps! 👍

294 views294
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Heroku
Heroku
Apollo
Apollo

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.

Build a universal GraphQL API on top of your existing REST APIs, so you can ship new application features fast without waiting on backend changes.

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
25.8K
Stacks
2.7K
Followers
20.5K
Followers
1.8K
Votes
3.2K
Votes
25
Pros & Cons
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
    Storage
  • 7
    No usable MySQL option
  • 5
    Low performance on free tier
Pros
  • 12
    From the creators of Meteor
  • 8
    Great documentation
  • 3
    Open source
  • 2
    Real time if use subscription
Cons
  • 1
    File upload is not supported
  • 1
    Increase in complexity of implementing (subscription)
Integrations
Mailgun
Mailgun
Postmark
Postmark
Loggly
Loggly
Papertrail
Papertrail
Redis Cloud
Redis Cloud
Red Hat Codeready Workspaces
Red Hat Codeready Workspaces
Nitrous.IO
Nitrous.IO
Logentries
Logentries
MongoLab
MongoLab
Gemfury
Gemfury
GraphQL
GraphQL

What are some alternatives to Heroku, Apollo?

Clever Cloud

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.

Google App Engine

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

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.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

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.

Render

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.

Hasura

Hasura

An open source GraphQL engine that deploys instant, realtime GraphQL APIs on any Postgres database.

Cloud 66

Cloud 66

Cloud 66 gives you everything you need to build, deploy and maintain your applications on any cloud, without the headache of dealing with "server stuff". Frameworks: Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Jamstack, Laravel, GoLang, and more.

Jelastic

Jelastic

Jelastic is a Multi-Cloud DevOps PaaS for ISVs, telcos, service providers and enterprises needing to speed up development, reduce cost of IT infrastructure, improve uptime and security.

Dokku

Dokku

It is an extensible, open source Platform as a Service that runs on a single server of your choice. It helps you build and manage the lifecycle of applications from building to scaling.

PythonAnywhere

PythonAnywhere

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.

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