Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Heroku vs Netlify Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Heroku
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (12th)
Netlify Platform
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
4.9
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Faizan Haider - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at Aldaim Solutions
Used for server deployment and provides auto maintenance of databases
Heroku is deployed on the cloud. We can deploy our private and public projects over at Heroku. Most of the time, when we are starting any new project from scratch, we have to implement our MVP for that project or the core idea. We are unsure how our traffic flow will go or the actual production environment requirements. We don't want to spend the most on the server sites, so then we can use it with our go-to plan for Heroku, and all the resources are available in the basic plan with the minimum expenses. So, it helps us to deploy and make our features available online at the minimum cost. Once we know our needs, we can add the professional add-ons and shift it to another platform. Heroku supports any resource listed in the marketplace. We just have to deploy our AI solutions, and Heroku can also support AI projects. I would recommend the solution to other users. I advise users not to purchase extra add-ons but to make scalable resources so that they can use all the resources efficiently. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
KR
Software Developer at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Automated deployments have simplified portfolio updates and have reduced manual pipeline work
For the improvements in Netlify Platform, I think it should focus on better marketing because competitors like Vercel and others are present in the market. While Netlify Platform looks clean, neat, and enhanced, it should do better marketing, as it is actually recommended by ChatGPT for small-sized projects. I believe it should also be suggested for larger projects and promoted more so that Netlify Platform is used by multiple people; it should be the go-to cloud environment. I think the technical side of Netlify Platform can improve, especially in the documentation. They can add more information about new frameworks as they come into the platform or market. They should maintain a troubleshooting page on Netlify Platform docs that comprehensively shows all the steps. Adding more user-friendly animations or navigation would make the platform easier. Moreover, with the documentation, it currently shows all the tabs at one place, and the customer should understand what each use is without having to click into it. They should support more old frameworks as well, to increase the range of utilizations since mostly old frameworks are still in the market, prompting more users to migrate to Netlify Platform.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution's most valuable feature is the auto maintenance of databases."
"Thanks to Heroku, we don't need to do as much direct management in AWS."
"The platform is very Node.js-friendly, which is something that is important to us."
"The most valuable feature of Heroku is the continuous integration and applications it provides."
"The product is stable."
"It's easy to push a change and to deploy new things."
"I like the tool's scalability, CLI, and dashboards."
"We use Heroku to run generic data. We also use it for our customer development environment. It helps us to build and test websites."
"Netlify Platform was very feasible and we did not have to pay a very large sum of money to host our services."
"Netlify Platform has positively impacted my organization because the entire CI/CD pipeline in place becomes very easy to manage using Netlify."
"Netlify Platform has positively impacted my organization and personal projects by making it easy for me to deploy my personal portfolio website without doing all the DevOps and CI/CD pipeline myself."
"The best thing Netlify Platform has done for me is that it gives me velocity, taking away all the burden and time-consuming processes so I can move fast."
"My main reason for preference over competitors like GitHub Pages and Vercel is its seamless integration with GitHub, where I can deploy directly from my development IDE using CLI commands, making it more efficient without having to manually link things."
 

Cons

"We don't find the pipelines intuitive. The user experience could be better. Having to set up multiple apps, then a pipeline, seems like an overkill on the amount of work to do."
"The tool's configuration is complex."
"They could flesh out some of their analytics a little more."
"We have to do daily restarts of some processes, which is annoying, and the support for custom CI could be better."
"Their support is good, but they can improve their response time."
"Heroku doesn't support Docker images on the CI infrastructure."
"We would like to be notified when something goes wrong in the process. When something is not working, we should get an alert."
"The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly."
"The pricing of Netlify Platform is acceptable for beginners but can become costly for intermediate users, as it can be high when CPU usage goes beyond a certain amount."
"Netlify Platform could be improved if they hosted their independent services apart from GitHub."
"While it also helps with backend deployment, it is not as scalable as AWS or Azure, and I would love to see and explore more features in the future around it."
"I think the technical side of Netlify Platform can improve, especially in the documentation."
"I think Netlify Platform can be improved if it has the functionality to have a full back-end as well."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a standard fee for a processing unit, they call them "dynos," and then you pay for add-ons."
"The price of Heroku could be less expensive."
"Its price is very good."
"The tool is free."
"I rate the tool's pricing a three out of ten."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which PaaS Clouds solutions are best for your needs.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Educational Organization
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
30%
Government
21%
University
12%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Heroku?
I like the tool's scalability, CLI, and dashboards.
What needs improvement with Heroku?
I don't like that the web server crashes every day, every 24 hours. The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly. The Docker features are not great. You cannot use any ...
What is your primary use case for Heroku?
We use the solution for web applications and web APIs.
What needs improvement with Netlify Platform?
Netlify Web Development Cloud does have limitations as it is not suitable for back-end heavy or long-running server applications, and its free tier imposes usage limits on bandwidth, build minutes,...
What is your primary use case for Netlify Platform?
My main use case for Netlify Web Development Cloud is deploying my applications, such as deploying my personal applications so that everyone can access my made application through a link. I use Net...
What advice do you have for others considering Netlify Platform?
My advice for others looking into using Netlify Web Development Cloud is to highly recommend it for beginners and front-end developers wanting to understand modern deployment and CI/CD workflows, t...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, UrbanDictionary, Code for America, Mailchimp, Rapportive, GitHub, TED, and Lyft.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Red Hat and others in PaaS Clouds. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.