Heroku is Salesforce's managed platform as a service that runs apps on dynos with add-ons such as Heroku Postgres; these pages cover replacing it with self-hosted Dokku or Coolify on your own servers.
Compares Heroku's managed dynos and add-ons with Dokku, the MIT-licensed single-server PaaS that accepts Heroku-style git push deploys, buildpacks, Procfiles and app.json: build compatibility, datastore plugins, scaling past one host with the k3s scheduler, and who handles patching and backups.
Compares Heroku with Coolify, the Apache-2.0 self-hosted PaaS with a web dashboard that deploys from Git, Dockerfiles or Docker Compose to servers it manages over SSH: Nixpacks and Dockerfiles in place of Heroku buildpacks, one-click databases and backups, preview deployments, and multi-server limits.
Moving a Heroku app to Dokku: recreating apps with git push, carrying over buildpacks, the Procfile and app.json, exporting Heroku Postgres with pg:backups and loading it with the dokku-postgres plugin, re-creating config vars, and cutting over DNS.
Moving a Heroku app to Coolify: choosing Nixpacks, Railpack or a Dockerfile in place of Heroku buildpacks, restoring a pg:backups dump into a Coolify-managed PostgreSQL, re-creating config vars as Coolify environment variables, and the staged DNS cutover Coolify documents.
Cost of ownership by component: Heroku dyno, Postgres and Private Space fees against Dokku or Coolify on servers you rent, the optional paid Dokku Pro and Coolify Cloud, database backups and upgrades, patching and on-call time, with line items to check in a quote.
What can be exported from Heroku and how: Heroku Postgres backups with pg:backups in pg_dump custom format, direct pg_dump for large or partial exports, config vars through the CLI, app metadata through the Platform API, and the size, retention and URL-expiry limits that shape an exit plan.
Why EU data residency changes the Heroku decision: the Common Runtime has one Europe region, Private Spaces add Dublin, Frankfurt and London, and pg:backups snapshots are stored in the U.S. whatever the database region, against Dokku or Coolify on servers in an EU data center you choose.
Comparing Heroku with Dokploy, an open-core platform built on Docker, Traefik and Docker Swarm that builds with Heroku buildpacks among other options: deployment model, databases and backups, clustering, which features sit in the source-available enterprise code, and cost.
For teams that outgrow a single-server PaaS: moving Heroku apps to Kubernetes by building container images with Cloud Native Buildpacks, translating Procfile process types and release phase to Deployments and Jobs, moving config vars to Secrets and replacing add-ons.
Replacing Heroku Postgres plans from Essential to Premium and Shield with PostgreSQL you run: the Dokku Postgres plugin or Coolify databases on one server, CloudNativePG or Patroni for high availability, and what you take on for backups, failover and upgrades.
Replacing Heroku's managed Redis add-on with Valkey or Redis you host: Dokku's official Redis plugin or Coolify's one-click Redis, persistence and backup gaps to plan for, and sizing for caches, queues and sessions.
Heroku Scheduler runs jobs every 10 minutes, hourly or daily in one-off dynos, on a best-effort basis. This page covers cron tasks in Dokku's app.json and Kubernetes CronJobs, and how to make scheduled jobs reliable and observable.
Replacing Heroku Review Apps, which spin up a disposable app per GitHub pull request through Pipelines and app.json, with Coolify preview deployments for GitHub, GitLab, Gitea and Bitbucket or Dokploy previews, including wildcard DNS and preview databases.
What Heroku's February 2026 shift to a sustaining engineering model, with no new Enterprise Account contracts, means for existing customers, why it is not a shutdown, and how to plan a timed move to Dokku, Coolify or Kubernetes around renewal dates.
For teams on Heroku Shield dynos and Shield Postgres for HIPAA or PCI workloads: what the Shield tier covers, why Fir is not yet certified for any compliance program, and the controls you own when running Dokku, Coolify or Kubernetes in your own audited environment.
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