Will Heroku Always Be?Perfect?
During a lifespan of a startup, your company’s needs will change and flex as you grow.
At each phase of development, your business will require different tools and workflows to manage the demands you’ll face.
For example, one of those elements to consider is your project management tools. Tracking your own time or the hours of one or two people doesn’t require a lot of fancy software, but once you have freelancers, multiple SaaS accounts, layers of development schedules and an expanding customer base to manage, you’re going to need to make sure that the systems you have in place are truly supporting you.
When you’ve a small 5-developer team, a small set of Trello boards might be everything you need to effectively organize your development efforts. However, a bigger team might need a more strict workflow, in which case it might be reasonable to consider migrating to JIRA.
How do you find the best fit?
As your company grows, you can spend a lot of time trying to answer that question on every level.
How do you know what product is overkill and or which is too simple?
If your team members are avid Heroku users, it’s important to ask this question:
Will Heroku always be the best platform for us as our startup grows?
If you are turning over this question, you should also be weighing another one:
When will I outgrow Heroku and have to find an alternative?
Growing up and moving on
Most of the time, I see software companies hovering between two stages of development.
- In the early stages, nothing is clear. The product that you thought would be the cornerstone of your business might need a deep overhaul six months later. You’re a rank beginner, learning everything as you go, from the best monitoring tools to use, the details on shipping the logs, and all of the minute details that make a startup run.
- The next phase is a little more stable. Your product’s features are generally set, you’re tweaking instead of rebuilding, and loyal customers keep paying to use it. The development team is cruising along to release updates frequently, but the overall feeling is that the core of the application is well defined and settled. Now you’re working hard to keep up with demand.
Transition from one stage to the next isn’t as clear-cut as you might expect. However, most of my clients who have made the Heroku to AWS migration were in the second phase of growth. Their product was well-established, and they were ready to move to the next level.
Heroku might not be the best option anymore…
Heroku may have been affordable at the beginning, but when your company matures, you might see a bill of $2k/month or more. Saving even 30% of that cost can add up to $7k in annual savings, which is significant in a developing business. And with a clean trajectory for your business’ growth, the savings will only increase over time.
As your customer base keeps growing, security concerns may be much more important than before. Not only are you protecting an expanding array of your company’s data, but your customers’ personal information is at risk. You can’t take any chances.
Your development team has probably multiplied, which means you’re not completely consumed with product development anymore. This breathing room leaves you time to complete a successful migration without slowing momentum.
If you’re in this position, you’re probably ready to leave Heroku for one of the major cloud providers. AWS and Google Cloud both have options that will allow you to avoid setting up or maintain your own servers or to hire a full time DevOps engineer to keep you afloat.
Conclusion
Comparing Heroku to AWS is like my earlier comparison of Trello and JIRA. It’s not a question of which platform is better, it’s the question of how a company’s growth factors into the equation of cost, security and ease of use.
If your company begins to settle into a mature growth stage, above, start thinking about what will happen when you outgrow Heroku. Fortunately, there are plenty of options that serve you effectively and affordably.
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The article was originally published at opsfleet.com