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Amazon Lightsail vs Heroku comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.3
Amazon Lightsail support is mixed; it's helpful for AWS partners, costly for complex issues, and often bypassed via forums.
Sentiment score
6.5
Heroku's technical support is generally effective, but customer opinions vary on response times and community contributions aid resolutions.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
4.6
Amazon Lightsail is less scalable with sizing limitations, instability under heavy traffic, and lacks specific functionalities like Lambda.
Sentiment score
7.8
Heroku is praised for its easy scalability, handling millions of users efficiently with robust performance and cost-effective resource management.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Amazon Lightsail is highly reliable, with a 99.9% uptime, though some switch to EC2 during WordPress attacks.
Sentiment score
7.4
Heroku's stability is generally highly rated, despite occasional AWS-related issues and rare unresolved concerns among some users.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon Lightsail needs better integration, support, and flexibility to improve enterprise readiness and user experience.
Heroku faces challenges with slow restarts, high costs, and limited features, prompting user demand for better scalability and support.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon Lightsail provides affordable, predictable cloud pricing ideal for startups, with a free trial and adjustable sizing options.
Heroku's pricing includes dynos and add-ons, with monthly or annual billing, and offers a free tier to attract users.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon Lightsail provides user-friendly, cost-effective hosting with pre-configured templates, secure isolation, automation, and straightforward application setup.
Heroku streamlines app deployment with easy scalability, Node.js support, GitHub integration, and extensive plugins for efficient development.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Lightsail
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Heroku
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Amazon Lightsail is 1.6%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Heroku is 2.8%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Vitor Gabriel Reis Lux Barboza - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides preconfigured templates for common setups and allows for easy configuration of firewall settings directly from the console
There were templates for Ubuntu, for instance, that I used. I used it if I remember, going to 20.04, I guess. It was ready, and I just used the template and it worked well. There is a template for Windows Server, but I didn't test them. Also, the configurations over the firewall in the console work very good for the purpose that we need to isolate it from the internet but allow the connection from specific IP addresses in specific ports. So the filtering in the Lightsail Firewall works good. And I am able to isolate the virtual machine well from the internet in order to avoid DDoS attacks and stuff like that.
Faizan Haider - PeerSpot reviewer
Used for server deployment and provides auto maintenance of databases
Heroku is deployed on the cloud. We can deploy our private and public projects over at Heroku. Most of the time, when we are starting any new project from scratch, we have to implement our MVP for that project or the core idea. We are unsure how our traffic flow will go or the actual production environment requirements. We don't want to spend the most on the server sites, so then we can use it with our go-to plan for Heroku, and all the resources are available in the basic plan with the minimum expenses. So, it helps us to deploy and make our features available online at the minimum cost. Once we know our needs, we can add the professional add-ons and shift it to another platform. Heroku supports any resource listed in the marketplace. We just have to deploy our AI solutions, and Heroku can also support AI projects. I would recommend the solution to other users. I advise users not to purchase extra add-ons but to make scalable resources so that they can use all the resources efficiently. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Educational Organization
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Educational Organization
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Lightsail?
In Lightsail, they simplified to do it in as few clicks as possible. So, around ten clicks, I have a virtual machine deployed.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Lightsail?
Lightsail is available at an affordable cost starting from five dollars per month. This cost may increase with additional features like a static IP.
What needs improvement with Amazon Lightsail?
The main area for improvement in Lightsail is the difficulty in scaling down resources. While it is easy to scale up, scaling down is not straightforward and involves additional complexities.
What do you like most about Heroku?
I like the tool's scalability, CLI, and dashboards.
What needs improvement with Heroku?
I don't like that the web server crashes every day, every 24 hours. The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly. The Docker features are not great. You cannot use any ...
What is your primary use case for Heroku?
We use the solution for web applications and web APIs.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Facebook, UrbanDictionary, Code for America, Mailchimp, Rapportive, GitHub, TED, and Lyft.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Lightsail vs. Heroku and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.