Heroku

Heroku, Inc. is a cloud platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that lets developers build, run and scale applications in the cloud. In development since June 2007, it originally supported only the Ruby programming language and later added Java, Node.js, Scala, Clojure, Python, PHP and Go, making it a polyglot platform. It has operated as a wholly owned subsidiary of Salesforce.com since December 2010.

The platform runs customer code in virtual Linux containers called dynos, which are distributed across a "dyno grid" of servers and coordinated by a dyno manager that restarts failed containers and relocates workloads when underlying hardware fails. Applications receive a unique domain used to route HTTP requests to the correct container, and a Heroku Git server handles application repository pushes. All Heroku services are hosted on Amazon EC2. Product lines include the Heroku Platform, Heroku Postgres (managed PostgreSQL with continuous protection, rollback, high availability, forks, followers and data clips), Heroku Redis, Heroku Teams, Heroku Enterprise (fine-grained access controls, identity federation, private spaces), Heroku Connect (data synchronization between Heroku Postgres and Salesforce orgs), Heroku Elements (add-ons, buildpacks and buttons) and Review Apps. More recent additions include AI-oriented tooling such as pgvector support in Heroku Postgres, a Managed Inference and Agents service, and Heroku AppLink.

Founding story

Heroku was founded in 2007 by James Lindenbaum, Adam Wiggins and Orion Henry, initially to support projects compatible with the Ruby platform Rack. Prototype development took around six months. The company participated in Y Combinator's Winter 2008 batch. Early on it struggled to find market customers because many app developers used their own tools and environments; in January 2009 a new platform, rebuilt almost from scratch over about three months, was launched. The name is a portmanteau of "heroic" and "haiku," with the Japanese theme a nod to Ruby creator Yukihiro Matsumoto.

Business model

Heroku sells managed cloud application hosting and associated data and platform services as a subsidiary of Salesforce. Customers can purchase via credit card in the Heroku dashboard or, historically, through Enterprise Account contracts; enterprise contracts are no longer sold to new customers as of February 2026, though existing ones continue and may be renewed.

Paid subscriptions and usage-based platform services, billed either by credit card through the Heroku dashboard or via enterprise account contracts. Free plans were discontinued in August 2022.

Traction

Y Combinator's profile reports the platform continuously delivers millions of apps with more than 6 million container deployments, more than 60 billion routing requests and more than 10 terabytes of application logs per day, with a team size of 300.

Latest developments

On February 6, 2026, Heroku Chief Product Officer Nitin Bhat announced that Salesforce would stop offering Enterprise Account subscriptions to new customers and scale back development of new Heroku features, redirecting product and engineering investment toward other areas including enterprise AI. Security and reliability updates will continue, as will a previously announced revamp of the managed PostgreSQL service. Salesforce stated there is no change for current customers: existing enterprise subscriptions and support contracts are honored and renewable, credit-card customers face no changes to pricing, billing or service, and core functionality including applications, pipelines, teams and add-ons is unaffected. Commentators in the Salesforce community characterized the move as the end of an era for Heroku's enterprise offering.