Amazon Lightsail vs Heroku comparison

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Amazon Lightsail

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Heroku and Amazon Lightsail compete in the cloud hosting market. Amazon Lightsail has the upper hand due to its extensive features and superior value for money.

Features: Heroku is known for its user-friendly interface, automated deployments, and a robust set of add-ons that appeal to developers looking for ease of use. Amazon Lightsail offers virtual servers, storage, and databases, providing a comprehensive package attractive for its versatility and integration with other AWS services.

Room for Improvement: Heroku could enhance its scalability options and provide more competitive pricing for larger deployments. It could also offer a wider array of support options. Amazon Lightsail might improve its ease of use compared to more straightforward services and bolster its customer support response times. It could also expand its feature set for small-scale developers.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Heroku simplifies deployment with its platform-as-a-service model, offering reliable support. Amazon Lightsail provides intuitive deployments using predefined configurations, benefitting from integrated AWS support and a variety of services for comprehensive customer assistance.

Pricing and ROI: Heroku features a transparent pricing model, attractive for predictable costs, but scaling can impact ROI. Amazon Lightsail provides cost-effective solutions, starting as low as $5, which are scalable and offer better long-term ROI, especially suitable for projects anticipating growth.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Lightsail vs. Heroku Report (Updated: July 2025).

Amazon Lightsail vs. Heroku

July 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Lightsail

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

10th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Heroku

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

14th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Amazon Lightsail is 2.0%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Heroku is 3.3%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

Atul Chauhan

DevOps engineer at Tech Mahindra Limited

Auto-manage features optimize server management and reduce costs

In terms of features, Amazon Lightsail can auto-manage the server with capabilities such as Auto Scaling and Placement Groups. They can auto-manage, and the billing cost is reduced because they have limited technology, which helps to optimize our cost billing for AWS. The benefit of using Amazon Lightsail over the AWS console management is that it is a small platform that is easy to understand, as it has only the instance, DNS, Route 53, snapshots, backups, and load balancing network. Amazon Lightsail has five technologies, and because it's easy to use and everyone can understand it, anyone can manage the server or add anything to that server, making it easy to understand. The initial setup is easy to do.

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Cristian-Molina

Senior Developer at Go Coeupas

Has a quick development cycle and continuous integration

The initial setup is straightforward. Heroku integrates well. You only have to push the code, and it automatically deploys the new version. Whether you have permission depends on the application. Currently, I have one application that I deploy myself. I rate the initial setup a nine out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The instances optimized for WordPress are very lightweight and straightforward in configuration."

"Amazon Lightsail is easy to use and very cost-effective compared to other services such as Azure and Google."

"The initial setup is pretty easy."

"In Lightsail, they simplified to do it in as few clicks as possible. So, around ten clicks, I have a virtual machine deployed."

"We use Amazon Lightsail for hosting security components in-house and AI modules."

"The most valuable features are the usability and customer service."

"One of the product's most valuable features is its fixed pricing, which makes it ideal for small projects and websites that do not require scaling."

"Implementations are completed with a few clicks, allowing efficient transitions to other development stages, and setup is easy whether for online support or basic business requirements."

More Amazon Lightsail pros

"What I found most valuable about this solution is that it's easy to use and integrate with GitHub actions."

"One of the best things about Heroku is that it is very easy and straightforward to deploy an application."

"Thanks to Heroku, we don't need to do as much direct management in AWS."

"Valuable for us was the fast deployment. This means the time to market is improved without pain for developers."

"I like the tool's scalability, CLI, and dashboards."

"The platform is very Node.js-friendly, which is something that is important to us."

"It's easy to push a change and to deploy new things."

"We use Heroku to run generic data. We also use it for our customer development environment. It helps us to build and test websites."

More Heroku pros

Cons

"The disadvantage I see is data storage; if any data crash occurs in the cloud server, that will lead to significant losses for the customer."

"Amazon Lightsail needs more security in the networking because hackers can attack in application layers three and four."

"The solution could be smoother than it is."

"When you need to add some custom rules to Amazon Lightsail, the auto scaling feature is a bit difficult."

"To improve, I feel the disk management is too basic. I can't easily partition the disk for the operating system. I have to follow the main configuration that is already set up in the template. To partition the disk, I would need to deploy the operating system first and then make changes, but it's not an ideal method. I would recommend improving the disk management."

"Currently, there is limited support available while installing or configuring it, and resources are primarily available through community-contributed articles."

"The main area for improvement in Lightsail is the difficulty in scaling down resources."

"I don't see this solution as enterprise-ready, for bigger companies like banks."

More Amazon Lightsail cons

"Heroku doesn't support Docker images on the CI infrastructure."

"They could flesh out some of their analytics a little more."

"We have to do daily restarts of some processes, which is annoying, and the support for custom CI could be better."

"The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly."

"I think this solution would be improved if free demos were available indefinitely."

"Heroku should increase its slug size limits."

"Heroku had an authentication problem a few months ago, but they solved it."

"We don't find the pipelines intuitive. The user experience could be better. Having to set up multiple apps, then a pipeline, seems like an overkill on the amount of work to do."

More Heroku cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"A few months ago, Lightsail's pricing increased, likely due to the addition of the new VPC feature."

"It's very cheap."

"The affordability of starting at five dollars makes it an attractive option for startups and medium-sized companies, aligning with budget considerations while offering essential cloud services."

"The prices are better than EC2 machines, for instance, because they are simplified management, but it works well, and I am able to run everything that I need on it."

"Amazon Lightsail is a bit cheaper than Amazon EC2."

"Lightsail is available at an affordable cost starting from five dollars per month."

"The services that it provides are good for the price."

"Its price is very good."

"The price of Heroku could be less expensive."

"I rate the tool's pricing a three out of ten."

"The tool is free."

"There is a standard fee for a processing unit, they call them "dynos," and then you pay for add-ons."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

11%

University

10%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

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?

Amazon Lightsail needs more security in the networking because hackers can attack in application layers three and four. The networking layer is basically the hacker's target to break the network, s...

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.

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Product Reports

Download Amazon Lightsail product report

PaaS Clouds

July 2025

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August 2025

Overview

Lightsail is ideal for simpler workloads, quick deployments, and getting started on AWS. It’s designed to help you start small, and then scale as you grow.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Established in 2007, Heroku is a cloud application platform providing a streamlined, efficient place for web app developers to create and deploy their applications. Heroku is designed to maximize developer productivity. With the entire web application development process available on the Herokucloud, creating and rolling out web apps has been made more efficient, convenient, and cost-effective than ever before.

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Facebook, UrbanDictionary, Code for America, Mailchimp, Rapportive, GitHub, TED, and Lyft.