Five reasons why Heroku is great after all

After moving a small utility application from Heroku to Digital Ocean last week, it became blatantly obvious (again) why Heroku is an amazing service.

Note, I don’t regret moving away from Heroku, as there was a specific case why I needed my application running on Digital Ocean. It’s only in doing so, that I was able to truly appreciate Heroku.

One: the toolbelt

Heroku’s toolbelt gives users the leverage to perform powerful feats of strength. While it’s not difficult to shell into your own servers and tail a logfile, just being able to perform heroku log from the comfort of your development box is an example of such time-saving greatness.

Two: modularity

The complexity of installing software escalates with every passing year it seems. Having Heroku already beaten a path to make available database drivers and other useful things can save countless hours for anyone managing 3rd-party software from scratch.

Three: quick scaling

Being able to scale web-workers & other resources with the click of a mouse is a life-saver. Getting pounded from web-traffic due to some breakout press release could prove fateful for anyone who hasn’t planned scaling quickly from day one. Elastic services with Heroku could save your day.

Four: hardening a box

Hardening a server is not automatic, and the landscape shape-shifts daily. For such an important area, having a service that puts focused energy into this behind the scenes means you can spend time thinking more about your product, and less time worrying about all the security details.

Five: 1,000 one-offs

Configuring a server takes oodles of small decisions. Whether it’s choosing where to keep your logs, sym-linking Nginx files, or what-have-you, these many niggles constitute the long-tail of an admin’s ‘TODOs’ ; and man, do they ever add up. Heroku has done all this so you don’t have to. This is one area you’ll appreciate only after you’ve gone and done it yourself.