Stacktape vs. Heroku

Heroku and Stacktape both simplify deployment, but take different approaches to cloud infrastructure and developer control.

Infrastructure ownership: Your AWS account vs. Heroku's platform

Heroku runs your applications on their managed infrastructure, while Stacktape deploys directly to your AWS account. This fundamental difference affects everything from pricing to vendor lock-in.

With Stacktape, you maintain full ownership of your infrastructure, get direct AWS billing, and can migrate away from Stacktape without losing your resources. Heroku keeps you within their ecosystem.

Infrastructure as Code vs. platform configuration

Stacktape is built around Infrastructure as Code principles. Your entire infrastructure configuration is versioned, reproducible, and can be written in YAML, JSON, or TypeScript.

Heroku uses platform-based configuration through their dashboard and CLI. While simpler initially, this approach offers less visibility and control over your infrastructure setup.

Serverless options beyond containers

Heroku focuses exclusively on containers (dynos), while Stacktape supports both containers and AWS Lambda functions. Lambda can be significantly more cost-effective for sporadic workloads and event-driven applications.

This gives Stacktape users more deployment options and better cost optimization opportunities for different application patterns.

Access to the full AWS ecosystem

Heroku provides a curated set of services (Postgres, Redis, Kafka) and third-party add-ons through their marketplace. Stacktape gives you access to the entire AWS ecosystem:

• Multiple database options: RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB
• Storage and CDN: S3, CloudFront
• Messaging: SNS, SQS, EventBridge
• Search: ElasticSearch (OpenSearch)
• And 20+ other AWS services

Cost transparency and predictability

Heroku uses their own pricing structure with dyno hours and add-on costs that can become expensive at scale. Their pricing model can lead to surprises, especially for data-intensive applications.

With Stacktape, you pay AWS directly for infrastructure costs plus a transparent percentage fee. This often results in significant cost savings, especially for larger applications, and provides better cost predictability.

Enterprise features and compliance

While Heroku offers enterprise features through Private Spaces and Shield, these come at premium pricing. Stacktape provides enterprise-grade AWS features like VPC networking, advanced security, and compliance capabilities as part of the core platform.