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Heroku vs PythonAnywhere: What are the differences?

Introduction:

In this article, we will compare the key differences between Heroku and PythonAnywhere, two popular platforms for deploying and hosting web applications.

  1. Deployment Process: The deployment process on Heroku involves pushing code to a Git repository, which then triggers a build and deployment process. On the other hand, PythonAnywhere supports deployment through various methods such as uploading code directly, syncing with Git repositories, or pulling from popular version control systems.

  2. Supported Languages: Heroku supports multiple programming languages including Python, Ruby, Java, PHP, and Node.js, allowing developers to choose the language that best suits their project. PythonAnywhere, as the name suggests, primarily focuses on Python, providing a specialized environment and additional features specific to Python programming.

  3. Server Configuration: Heroku offers a high level of abstraction, automatically managing the underlying infrastructure and server configuration. It provides a platform as a service (PaaS) approach, allowing developers to focus solely on the application development. On the contrary, PythonAnywhere offers more control over the server configuration, enabling users to customize settings such as server software, database configuration, and file permissions.

  4. Pricing Structure: Heroku follows a pay-per-usage pricing model, where users are billed based on the resources consumed by their applications, such as dyno hours, database usage, and add-on services. PythonAnywhere, on the other hand, offers tiered pricing plans that are more focused on the number of web applications, storage space, and computing resources allocated to each account.

  5. Integration with Third-party Services: Heroku provides seamless integration with a wide range of third-party services and add-ons, such as logging, monitoring, email delivery, and database solutions. PythonAnywhere also supports integration with certain third-party services but has a more limited selection compared to Heroku.

  6. Scalability and Performance: Heroku is known for its scalability and can easily handle high traffic and resource-demanding applications. It offers features like horizontal scaling and load balancing to ensure optimal performance. PythonAnywhere, while capable of handling moderate traffic, may have limitations in terms of scalability and performance, particularly for complex or highly concurrent applications.

In summary, Heroku provides a more abstracted and versatile platform, supporting multiple languages and offering seamless integration with third-party services. PythonAnywhere, on the other hand, specializes in Python hosting, providing more control over server configuration but having more limited scalability options.

Decisions about Heroku and PythonAnywhere

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.

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Pros of Heroku
Pros of PythonAnywhere
  • 703
    Easy deployment
  • 459
    Free for side projects
  • 374
    Huge time-saver
  • 348
    Simple scaling
  • 261
    Low devops skills required
  • 190
    Easy setup
  • 174
    Add-ons for almost everything
  • 153
    Beginner friendly
  • 150
    Better for startups
  • 133
    Low learning curve
  • 48
    Postgres hosting
  • 41
    Easy to add collaborators
  • 30
    Faster development
  • 24
    Awesome documentation
  • 19
    Simple rollback
  • 19
    Focus on product, not deployment
  • 15
    Natural companion for rails development
  • 15
    Easy integration
  • 12
    Great customer support
  • 8
    GitHub integration
  • 6
    Painless & well documented
  • 6
    No-ops
  • 4
    I love that they make it free to launch a side project
  • 4
    Free
  • 3
    Great UI
  • 3
    Just works
  • 2
    PostgreSQL forking and following
  • 2
    MySQL extension
  • 1
    Security
  • 1
    Able to host stuff good like Discord Bot
  • 0
    Sec
  • 15
    Web apps
  • 11
    Easy Setup
  • 8
    Great support
  • 8
    Shell access
  • 8
    Free plan
  • 7
    Super-easy to use
  • 5
    Libraries
  • 2
    Many things like Python are pre-installed

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Cons of Heroku
Cons of PythonAnywhere
  • 27
    Super expensive
  • 9
    Not a whole lot of flexibility
  • 7
    No usable MySQL option
  • 7
    Storage
  • 5
    Low performance on free tier
  • 2
    24/7 support is $1,000 per month
  • 1
    No root access
  • 1
    Really small community

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What is Heroku?

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.

What is 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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What companies use Heroku?
What companies use PythonAnywhere?
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What are some alternatives to Heroku and 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.
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.
Firebase
Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications. Simply add the Firebase library to your application to gain access to a shared data structure; any changes you make to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.
Docker
The Docker Platform is the industry-leading container platform for continuous, high-velocity innovation, enabling organizations to seamlessly build and share any application — from legacy to what comes next — and securely run them anywhere
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.
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