Heroku DX: The New Heroku Developer Experience

I like the new Ember.js based UI! Nice.<p>I have periodically used Heroku a lot, but I do have one gripe about them:<p>I tend to run a lot of low traffic web apps, apps that run well on Heroku&#x27;s free tier (and not minding the occasionally loading request delay). However, I just don&#x27;t feel comfortable using a service a lot that is free: being a freeloader. (Compare to Google: they make money off of me because I click on interesting looking ads.)<p>If Heroku had a cheap $10&#x2F;month 1 dyno tier (that might have a perk, like staying resident, not swapped out) that was restricted to a lower number of requests per day, then they would get a lot of my business running my experimental projects.<p>I have considered paying for a second dyno that I don&#x27;t really need, but $30&#x2F;month each for a lot of experimental web apps does add up. Not too off topic: I just wrote about how I create a personal Heroku-like experience on a VPS: <a href="http://blog.markwatson.com/2014/09/setting-up-heroku-like-git-push-deploys.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.markwatson.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;09&#x2F;setting-up-heroku-like-gi...</a><p>In any case, I think Heroku provides a great developer experience.

Though I used Heroku in the past and enjoyed the seamless(mostly) experience, I am in the process of moving my infrastructure to docker containers.<p>I dislike the proprietary nature of Heroku platform and I am betting on Docker + Flynn&#x2F;Deis as a future golden standard of PaaS. My confidence is based on the momentum of Docker and Docker hosting services (orchardup, tutum, stackdock) as evidenced by their funding&#x2F;acquisitions and tech news hype. Also digitalocean, linode and other VPS provders have easy to install docker images.<p>I am enjoying (probably false) confidence that investing now in the docker expertise, I will have my development and deployment strategies mostly set for next 3-5 years. Rvm, virtualenv, haskell platform, etc - everyting becomes easier with docker to develop AND to deploy. Heroku doesn&#x27;t solve that. New services and products would be adopted by decentralized docker ecosystem faster than by Heroku.<p>This feels really nice.<p>Am I wrong to bet on docker? Should I return back to the the poisoned fruits of Heroku walled garden or venture forth in the great ocean with Docker? Is there a consensus in HN community?

I <i>love</i> the developer experience with Heroku, just please give some of the gains of Moore&#x27;s law back to your customers. While AWS and Google drop prices and increase their offering, the 1x dyno stays exactly where it&#x27;s always been. I am completely fine with paying a premium over other services for your awesome toolset, but please just give us some of the improvements other cloud services are seeing instead of taking that as profits.

I love the developer experience that Heroku provides, however I wish the would lower their prices a little bit and&#x2F;or introduce additional pricing tiers.<p>## The dynos are quite expensive by current standards<p>AWS has been continually dropping their prices, however those savings haven&#x27;t been carried over to Heroku? Either:<p>1) lower pricing, or<p>2) improve the resource allocation for the current dynos at the same price point, e.g. 1x dyno - x1CPU + 1GB, and 2x dyno - x2CPU + 2GB.<p>## There is a big gap between 2x and Performance dynos<p>Java apps are recommended to run with 1GB RAM, so practically my only option is to continue to scale horizontally [1]. Maybe there is an opportunity for a x2 CPU and 2GB dyno at $100&#x2F;mo?<p>Notes: [1] - I would have loved to have a bit more memory at my disposal. 1.5 &#x2F; 2GB would be ideal, but upgrading from 2x to Performance is too big of a jump ($70&#x2F;mo to $570&#x2F;mo).

I like Heroku&#x27;s PostgreSQL. So far only AWS RDS can compete. Or there is any recommendation of PostgreSQL as a Service?<p>Heroku Standard 0 (1GB RAM): $50.00 per month RDS On Demand (1GB RAM): $12.96 per month RDS REserved 1 Year (1GB RAM): $9.29 per month

So far I love the new DX, I&#x27;ve been using the beta for a while now. It&#x27;s a significantly improved UX overall.<p>On an unrelated note, I think it&#x27;s time to retire the 1X tier, or just make that the free tier and bring the price of 2X in line with 1X. You just can&#x27;t do all that much with 512MB of ram and given the progression of technology this doesn&#x27;t seem like a huge ask.<p>Also in the interest of security I can&#x27;t think of any reason why encryption-at-rest should be available on the standard database tier.<p>But then maybe I&#x27;m just cheap.

How does the new Dashboard + Metrics compare to using the New Relic plugin?

No RAM for Postgres until you reach $50&#x2F;m? Talk about profit margins!

<p><pre><code> Application Metrics are currently only available for apps with two or more running dynos of any size </code></pre> Of course, I can&#x27;t be a freeloader and complain about this I guess.

I always hated the all dark design of their dashboard. I&#x27;m glad they are using some lighter colors now!!

A bit of an unfortunate choice of name if you consider the name a smiley DX

I love that Heroku has redesigned the UI, but jeeze. Ever hear the expression, &quot;too much of a good thing&quot;? Their trademark purple is neat, in small doses.<p>For instance, I REALLY REALLY love the ocean. I love SCUBA diving, and I love the color blue. However, you won&#x27;t find me living in this house <a href="http://cl.ly/3I3R2z0q1A2S" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cl.ly&#x2F;3I3R2z0q1A2S</a>. However, <a href="http://cl.ly/0R3H3k2s3Z3x" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cl.ly&#x2F;0R3H3k2s3Z3x</a> looks very appealing to me. Catch my drift?<p>It&#x27;s as if Heroku fired all of their designers and put developers in charge of the entire UI design process. I&#x27;ve seen that happen, so I don&#x27;t say that to be a troll. I&#x27;m seriously disgusted by the monotonous nature of the new UI.<p>That said, it appears to have very many useful new features, which surely outweighs most of my aesthetic concerns.