Hosting decisions tend to start with a monthly price and end with questions about backups, database access and who answers when the site fails. Put those questions in the brief before choosing a platform.
Heroku ended its free dyno and database plans on 28 November 2022, as recorded in its deprecation notice. That change prompted many teams to compare alternatives. Today, the useful comparison is the full cost of running your particular application.
Start with what the site needs
A brochure website with a few pages has different requirements from an ordering system with customer accounts and background jobs. List the application server, database, file storage, scheduled work and email service separately.
For a static website, ask whether you need a running application server at all. For a web application, confirm that the host supports the runtime, persistent connections and background tasks your code requires. Check those details against the provider’s current documentation before committing.
Compare the full bill
Request a cost estimate that includes the database, backups, storage, data transfer, logs and monitoring. Record which services are billed in rands and which are billed in a foreign currency. Use a stated exchange rate when preparing an estimate, and allow for currency changes.
Treat any free allowance as a limit to understand. Find out what happens when traffic exceeds it, whether services sleep when idle, and whether usage can be capped. A quiet month’s bill is not a forecast for a successful campaign.
Test from South Africa
Test a useful page and a database-backed action from the places your users work. Opening the homepage from the developer’s laptop is not enough. Include a mobile connection, the sign-in flow and a task such as finding an order.
A nearby server can help, but database queries, large images and external services also affect the result. Measure the complete request rather than choosing on a region name alone.
Agree who operates it
Confirm who owns the hosting account, domain and billing relationship. The business should know how to recover access if its developer is unavailable.
Ask for a demonstrated backup restore, an alert destination and a written process for releases and rollbacks. Find out whether support covers infrastructure only or also investigates application errors. These are different responsibilities.
Compare providers using the same workload and support assumptions. Keep the estimate with your project documents so you can revisit it as usage changes. Speak to webrack if you need help mapping your application to a hosting plan.