[Wilya]

People are talking about the cost of Heroku, but it doesn't seem that outrageous to me.

I mean, $180/month for a running app, that is making money, isn't that much. Once the traffic grows, and you're spending $500 or $1000 per month, yes, it becomes worth it to look into alternatives (because $1000 on Heroku can probably be replaced by $150-200 on more powerful hardware). But moving from Heroku to a less managed option just to save $80/month doesn't seem particularly worth it.

[hackerboos]

As long as you can factor in Heroku's costs on your per customer acquisition and it doesn't eat a lot of your profit, then Heroku is a good choice.

[jarfil]

Heroku is not 100% management-free, and if you know how to deploy the same infrastructure they provide, using VMs, dedicated servers and whatever, then there is little reason to use them at all. You get better flexibility, lower costs and very little more management requirements over what you get at Heroku.

Of course if you don't know how to do that, then you pay them to do it for you, until you can hire someone to do it on your own.