The Heroku Stack
I stumbled on this tweet this morning (please excuse the language)...
We get asked all the time what tech stack we use, and I always find my self justifying Heroku. For many people, Heroku doesn't feel like a "serious" hosting provider.
But the fact is that Heroku is the safest and least risky tech stack for startups.
When startups bleed money, they usually do it in two ways:
Overspending on technology.
Overbuilding the product.
I'll talk about overbuilding the product another time - that's a huge issue.
Overspending on technology is tempting because, well let's face it, entrepreneurs are notorious optimists. You wouldn't be doing this if you didn't expect customers to bang down your door for access to your product. The temptation is to overbuild in anticipation of this overwhelming traffic.
The trouble comes from overspending on technology before you've achieved.
Server resources are expensive, but Human Resources are even more so. Provisioning AWS servers, Docker clusters, and Kubernetes instances can easily become a full-time job for more than one person.
It is true that once you do achieve product-market fit and the floodgates do open, Heroku may become unsustainably expensive. In the meantime, Heroku allows you to scale your server usage up and down based on demand. But most importantly, it allows you to launch and grow a fully-fledged and professional web product without devoting expensive engineering resources to managing the details of your tech stack.
~ Ryan
P.S. Do you have questions about your app's tech stack? Book a time on my calendar for a free strategy session: https://boosterstage.net/strategy/, and we can talk through your questions and product strategy.