[amzans]

Heroku is a great product if you want development speed right from the start. I have used them in the past, and it was a very nice experience overall.

For many projects this is more than enough. However, in my case I would be paying 2-3x more if I was using Heroku.

With Kubernetes, in case I wanted to deploy new projects or even spin up a "testing" env, I can use the same stack/cluster, and not have my costs increase.

I do realize that this is not for everyone. But for me it just made sense, and enabled me to work on new features faster than before.

[jaggederest]

I just wonder how much you're spending per month. Going from $200 to $600 in exchange for not having so many moving parts would be 1000% worth it to me. Usually the margin on SaaS businesses is in the 60% range, most of which isn't infrastructure, so it's a rounding error until you get to the size where you have full time people working on infra.

[amzans]

In my case it's more that learning Heroku would take me longer than using what I already know well, Kubernetes on AWS.

So it wouldn't make sense for me to use Heroku (a tool I don't have much experience with), and pay more.

In terms of use of my time, to be honest I currently spend way more time sending emails, updating docs, and on "marketing" than on devops :)

[p_l]

Taking my first GKE project (done essentially as two man team in the side, and then maintained at quite low level of work most the time)...

The vendor whom we replaced = somewhere above $5000/mo (just infra)

Our final, most costly, GCP spend, including support contract = about $2000/mo (this involves a bunch of inefficiencies caused by developers unable to live with container - or dynos)

Expected Heroku cost, based on their online calculator= starts at $3000/mo, probably more

Expected lower time needed developing on Heroku = negligible