Heroku or AWS

Cloud infrastructures are gradually starting to penetrate into an increasing number of areas and various businesses. And this is not surprising because such a ploy allows you to improve internal processes, protect valuable data and provide better services to your customers. While the main tasks are assigned to cloud technologies, entrepreneurs have time to pay attention to other aspects of their businesses.

The great fact is that today you don’t have to be a huge enterprise in order to afford to move your business processes to the cloud. There are many solutions on the market that can help you with this. However, the most popular is Amazon and Heroku web services. In this article, we take a closer look at these market leaders and tell you about their main differences. So, without further ado, let’s get started.

Benefits of Cloud Services

First of all, it’s worth talking about why you should use cloud technologies and services to run your business. By implementing these solutions, you will get an undeniable advantage over your competitors thanks to the following benefits:

• Flexibility. With access from any device, your internal processes gain unmatched flexibility and rely on the cloud’s computing power.
• Backups. Valuable business data is always safe, with the ability to create backup versions of data and restore them at any time.
• Collective data usage. Your employees can collaborate on the same project or share a database for collaborative business decision-making.

What Amazon Web Services Are All About?

Amazon’s cloud solutions are extremely popular among real market giants like Airbnb, Foursquare, Spotify, Ubisoft, and other large enterprises.

In general terms, AWS is a platform with many cloud-based tools to make it easier to do business. The most widely used services are Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

Elastic Compute Cloud

This service is a powerful platform for organizing cloud computing for businesses of various sizes and industries. However, configuring these services requires advanced technical knowledge, so you must configure and maintain the virtual servers that run the application yourself. In addition, you need to implement the database instances and select and configure the operating system on which the entire infrastructure will be based. DevOps specialists are mainly involved in these operations.

Elastic Beanstalk

Elastic Beanstalk is a direct competitor to Heroku as both services help businesses deploy their digital solutions and software in the cloud using various commands. In AWS, these commands can be entered through the management console or any other interface of your choice. Once you successfully deploy your solution, the entire infrastructure is under automated control by AWS, allowing you to shift your focus to other business challenges. However, if you want complete control, then AWS provides convenient control tools, analytics, and actionable information.

What Heroku Is All About?

Heroku is on the heels of AWS services, and at the moment, Heroku is used by such well-known companies as Product Hunt, Toyota, Unsplash, Facebook, and many others. Despite the fact that Heroku is based on AWS, this service is not at all similar to the solution that Amazon provides for businesses. The platform also allows for the deployment of various digital solutions in the cloud and has more than 140 different options in its arsenal for a wider choice of options for deployed processes (from simple notifications in applications to cybersecurity services). The main advantage of this service is its ease of learning, which sometimes becomes a precursor stone in the case of an AWS service.

Heroku and Amazon Web Services: What’s The Main Difference?

Now is the time to talk about the main differences between these two platforms, which may affect your choice in the future.

IaaS and PaaS

These two services differ in their philosophy. AWS is IaaS, the user gets only server power, and he has to configure the entire infrastructure himself. Meanwhile, Heroku is a PaaS that gives the user all the necessary tools to get started but does not allow them to be modified or managed in any way.

Price tag

The issue of price is extremely important for many entrepreneurs, and we simply could not help but highlight it. Amazon Web Services look extremely profitable against Heroku, as Amazon has Hourly prices ranging from $0.011/hour to $0.27/hour. Meanwhile, Heroku’s price is slightly higher at $0.05 per hour. Keep this information in mind when you budget for cloud services.

Deployment Speed

Despite the fact that both services are aimed at saving time and fast roll-out, Heroku does it much better. Heroku is a ready-made set of tools where you just enter your code, make a few configuration changes, and you are ready to go. Meanwhile, AWS is a complex system that requires you and your team to have the strong technical expertise to create your own infrastructure to which you connect AWS services.

What Service to Choose if You Are a Young Startup?

Do not forget about bold startups who may also face the choice of cloud technologies to implement their ideas.

You should implement AWS if:

• You need maximum flexibility
• You do not yet have your own digital solution that requires deployment
• You and your team have the technical knowledge to set up and manage your infrastructure
• You are not limited in time for deployment
• You need a lot of computing power

You should implement Heroku if:

• You have your own digital product that needs to be tested in real conditions
• Your solution is under constant development, and new features are being introduced
• Your financial situation does not support hiring a team to manage the infrastructure
• You don’t need a lot of computing power

Wrapping Up

So, we have discussed the main differences between these two cloud solutions, and as you can see, each of them will be suitable in a special situation. AWS is most suitable for large enterprises with a technical team to manage, while Heroku is more friendly to start-up businesses and does not require a large investment of time in deployment. However, both of these services represent excellent solutions for the implementation of cloud technologies in businesses of various industries.

By Yuliya Melnik