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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Platform as a Service
  4. Platform As A Service
  5. Heroku vs SoftLayer

Heroku vs SoftLayer

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Heroku
Heroku
Stacks25.8K
Followers20.5K
Votes3.2K
SoftLayer
SoftLayer
Stacks100
Followers59
Votes61

Heroku vs SoftLayer: What are the differences?

Heroku: Build, deliver, monitor and scale web apps and APIs with a trail blazing developer experience. 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; SoftLayer: SoftLayer provides on-demand IT infrastructure, dedicated servers and cloud resources. SoftLayer dedicated servers give you options from entry-level single processor servers to quad proc, hex-core, and even GPU-powered workhorses. They're all deployed in real time via our portal or API.

Heroku can be classified as a tool in the "Platform as a Service" category, while SoftLayer is grouped under "Dedicated Cloud Hosting".

Some of the features offered by Heroku are:

  • 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.

On the other hand, SoftLayer provides the following key features:

  • 5TB public outbound bandwidth, standard
  • 100Mbps network uplinks, standard
  • More starting RAM in most servers

"Easy deployment" is the primary reason why developers consider Heroku over the competitors, whereas "Dedicated hardware" was stated as the key factor in picking SoftLayer.

According to the StackShare community, Heroku has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1504 company stacks & 962 developers stacks; compared to SoftLayer, which is listed in 45 company stacks and 8 developer stacks.

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Detailed Comparison

Heroku
Heroku
SoftLayer
SoftLayer

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.

SoftLayer dedicated servers give you options from entry-level single processor servers to quad proc, hex-core, and even GPU-powered workhorses. They're all deployed in real time via our portal or API.

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.
5TB public outbound bandwidth, standard;100Mbps network uplinks, standard;More starting RAM in most servers;More starting storage in most servers;Reduced RAM upgrade pricing;More bandwidth in upgrade packages
Statistics
Stacks
25.8K
Stacks
100
Followers
20.5K
Followers
59
Votes
3.2K
Votes
61
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
  • 24
    Dedicated hardware
  • 17
    Great support
  • 12
    Good pricing
  • 8
    Many upgrades
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
Cloudability
Cloudability
Cloudant
Cloudant
CopperEgg
CopperEgg
Compose
Compose
Twilio SendGrid
Twilio SendGrid

What are some alternatives to Heroku, SoftLayer?

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.

OVH

OVH

OVHcloud is a global cloud provider that specialises in delivering industry-leading performance and cost-effective solutions to better manage, secure, and scale data. The group manages 30 data centres across 12 sites in 4 continents, man

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.

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