The free single dyno per app is really for development purposes. If you're not actively developing/testing, then the dyno sleeps after an hour of inactivity. The free dyno isn't meant for running a production site 24/7.<p>The proper way to "fix" the 30 second delay is to run a second dyno. The 'ping' solution just seems like cheating Heroku out of payment for a service.
"Fix".<p>Oh yeah, because there's something to "fix" about a free product. Is this seriously what we're coming to? Being so cheap that we can't accept that our quick hack/technology showcase/dev site/small personal website takes more about 30 seconds to spin up when it's there for FREE?<p>Well, thanks anyway for this nice article: now that I know this, I'm gonna remove NewRelic from my free dev app and I'll put it back when I'm ready to go into production and pay for it.<p>DotCloud used to be "free" too but I they reduced the free possibilities offered by their app, because of costs I guess. I hope Heroku doesn't follow because of users who think of nice "fixes".
This is a good solution for me when I'm staging a site for a client before moving to a full-on production setup. A common complaint I get, that has to be explained anew each time, is that the site "takes forever to load". New Relic (or Pingdom) helps me keep it up (sorry) so my clients don't think I built them a POS.
I don't like this at all; you're basically screwing Heroku out of what they should be paid for providing a good service.<p>Secondly, you could set up a DigitalOcean server ($5/month) in about 10 minutes with Rails and this wouldn't be a problem.
Even easier way is to use <a href="http://www.wekkars.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wekkars.com/</a><p>You sign up for free and add whichever websites you need that needs to stay awake.