Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
Anvil vs Heroku: What are the differences?
Key Differences between Anvil and Heroku
Anvil and Heroku are both popular platforms for deploying web applications, but they have some key differences that set them apart.
Ease of use: Anvil is designed to make web app development accessible to users with little to no programming experience. It provides a visual interface for building apps using drag-and-drop components, making it easy for non-technical users to create robust applications. On the other hand, Heroku is more developer-centric and requires coding knowledge to deploy and manage applications.
Deployment process: Anvil simplifies the deployment process by automatically handling web hosting, scaling, and security. With a single click, users can deploy their app to a custom subdomain on the anvil.app domain. Heroku, on the other hand, requires users to go through a more involved deployment process, including configuring servers, domain routing, and setting up deployment pipelines.
Backend infrastructure: Anvil provides a fully managed backend infrastructure, which means users don't have to worry about servers, databases, or infrastructure maintenance. They can focus solely on building the frontend of their application. Heroku, on the other hand, offers a more flexible infrastructure where users have more control over backend components, allowing them to integrate with different services and customize their infrastructure as needed.
Integration capabilities: Anvil has built-in support for a wide range of integrations, including REST APIs, databases, and authentication providers. These integrations can be easily added to an app using drag-and-drop components. Heroku, while offering integration capabilities, requires users to handle integrations manually by adding third-party libraries or configuring APIs.
Scalability: Anvil provides automatic scalability for web applications, meaning the platform automatically handles traffic spikes and scales the app to meet demand. This eliminates the need for users to manually manage server resources or worry about capacity planning. Heroku also offers scalability features but requires users to configure and manage the scaling settings themselves.
Pricing model: Anvil offers a free tier with limited features and resources, making it an affordable option for small projects or personal use. They also have paid plans that offer more resources and additional features for businesses and professional users. In contrast, Heroku has a more complex pricing model based on usage, with different tiers and add-ons for various services. This makes Heroku a better fit for larger, more resource-intensive applications.
In summary, Anvil focuses on simplicity and ease of use, providing a visual interface and fully managed backend infrastructure. Heroku, on the other hand, is more developer-centric and offers a more flexible infrastructure with greater control over backend components. The choice between the two platforms depends on the specific requirements and expertise of the user.
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.
Pros of Anvil
- Fast dashboards deployment6
- Python everywhere4
- Open source4
- Easy to deploy3
- Drag-and-drop UI builder3
- Quickly deploy a full stack2
- Create PDFs easily1
Pros of Heroku
- Easy deployment703
- Free for side projects459
- Huge time-saver374
- Simple scaling348
- Low devops skills required261
- Easy setup190
- Add-ons for almost everything174
- Beginner friendly153
- Better for startups150
- Low learning curve133
- Postgres hosting48
- Easy to add collaborators41
- Faster development30
- Awesome documentation24
- Simple rollback19
- Focus on product, not deployment19
- Natural companion for rails development15
- Easy integration15
- Great customer support12
- GitHub integration8
- Painless & well documented6
- No-ops6
- I love that they make it free to launch a side project4
- Free4
- Great UI3
- Just works3
- PostgreSQL forking and following2
- MySQL extension2
- Security1
- Able to host stuff good like Discord Bot1
- Sec0
Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions
Cons of Anvil
Cons of Heroku
- Super expensive27
- Not a whole lot of flexibility9
- No usable MySQL option7
- Storage7
- Low performance on free tier5
- 24/7 support is $1,000 per month2