Heroku

Heroku pioneered the git-push deployment workflow that developers love, but the elimination of its free tier and rising prices ($5-25/dyno/month plus add-on costs for databases, Redis, and monitoring) have pushed developers toward self-hosted PaaS alternatives that offer the same convenience on your own infrastructure.

Coolify is the most popular open source Heroku/Vercel alternative — it deploys applications from Git repositories to your own servers with automatic HTTPS, databases, preview deployments, and a web dashboard. It supports Docker, static sites, and popular frameworks out of the box. Dokku is a lighter-weight option that mimics Heroku's buildpack-based deployment model — you git push and it builds, deploys, and manages your app with the same Heroku-like workflow, but on a single VPS you control.

The cost difference is dramatic. A basic Heroku app with a web dyno, PostgreSQL, and Redis costs $30-60/month minimum. A Hetzner VPS running Coolify ($5-10/month) can host multiple applications with databases, giving you more resources at a fraction of the price. For hobby projects and small startups, this is the difference between paying $360/year per app versus $60/year for unlimited apps.

Both alternatives support the languages and frameworks developers expect — Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, PHP, and more. Coolify adds a polished UI for managing multiple servers and applications, while Dokku appeals to developers who prefer CLI-driven workflows reminiscent of the original Heroku experience.