Moving from Heroku to Vultr
Heroku's pricing has crept up, and you're wondering if there's a better option. Vultr offers aggressive pricing with the widest geographic coverage of any indie cloud provider, but managed databases come at a premium. Here's an honest breakdown of what you'd gain, what you'd lose, and whether the switch makes sense for your team.
Cost Comparison
Estimated Monthly Savings
~$50/month
That's approximately 25% less per month
Vultr's managed databases are significantly more expensive than competitors. A self-managed option delivers the best value if you're comfortable running PostgreSQL and Redis yourself.
What You'll Gain
Dramatic cost savings with self-management
At $48/month for a capable single-server setup, Vultr offers some of the best price-to-performance in the industry.
More resources per dollar
A High Frequency instance with 8 GB RAM and 256 GB NVMe storage costs $48/month. Compare that to a single Standard-2x dyno at $50/month with 1 GB RAM.
Widest geographic coverage
32 data centers globally, including 8 US locations (Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Miami, New Jersey, Seattle). More location options than any other indie provider.
Latest-generation hardware
The new VX1 dedicated compute line launched in October 2025 delivers dedicated vCPUs at near-shared-CPU prices.
Free snapshots
Unlike most providers, manual snapshots are free while automated backups cost extra (20% of instance cost).
What You'll Lose
Affordable managed databases
Vultr's managed database markup makes them significantly more expensive than other cloud providers. You'll want to self-manage PostgreSQL and Redis for the best value.
Integrated logging and metrics
Heroku's dashboard shows logs and metrics by default. You'll configure your own observability stack.
Built-in autoscaling
You'll monitor and scale manually, or build automation yourself.
Review apps and pipelines
Heroku's PR-based review environments don't have a direct equivalent, so you'd need to build something similar.
Add-on ecosystem
Need to send emails? Monitor errors? You'll provision and configure these services yourself.
Hands-off server maintenance
OS updates, security patches, and firewall configuration are your responsibility. Heroku handles this invisibly.
Should You Switch?
- You're paying $200+/month on Heroku and need more capacity soon
- Cost reduction is your top priority
- You need data centers in specific US locations (Vultr has 8 options)
- You want dedicated vCPUs at near-shared prices (VX1 instances)
- Your team has solid DevOps skills or wants to develop them
- Your time is worth more than the cost savings
- You want managed databases without a high markup
- You have zero interest in learning infrastructure management
- You heavily depend on Heroku add-ons that don't have easy replacements
- You need features like review apps for your development workflow
Ready to Make the Switch?
Want help with the migration? I offer a done-for-you Heroku Exit Plan service that handles the entire transition—infrastructure setup, deployment configuration, database migration, and ongoing support.
Learn more about the Heroku Exit Plan