Heroku stopped offering free plans and began shutting down free dynos and free data services from 28 November 2022. Free databases went with them, and accounts inactive for over a year began being deleted from October 2022. If your app ran on the free tier, you can move it to a paid Heroku plan, or move it, and any data you still have, to other hosting. If the database was deleted and there's no backup, the data may be gone, but the code can still be brought back.
What's the problem
A project that ran happily for free on Heroku stopped. Maybe you noticed straight away, maybe years later. The URL shows an error, the database has gone, and you're not sure what's left.
Why it happens
- Free plans ended. Free dynos, free Heroku Postgres and free Heroku Data for Redis were phased out from late 2022.
- Inactive accounts were deleted. Accounts inactive for over a year, and their storage, were deleted from October 2022.
- The app was built around Heroku. A
Procfile, Heroku add-ons and settings that only exist in the Heroku dashboard, so moving it isn't just copying files.
How to fix it
- Find out what survived: the code (in your repository, or Heroku's Git), the config vars, and any database backups or exports.
- Decide where it lives. A paid Heroku plan is the smallest change. Other platforms work too, and most read the same
PORTsetting. - Recreate the settings. Copy every config var to the new host's environment variables.
- Recreate the database on a managed database service, restore the backup if you have one, and run the migrations.
- Replace add-ons with equivalent services, and update their settings.
- Translate the
Procfile: thewebcommand becomes the new host's start command, and any workers need their own services. - Point your domain at the new host, and turn on HTTPS.
When to call Preventionlabs
If you have the code, the settings and a backup, the steps above are a weekend's work. Call us when the app also needs years of updates before it'll run anywhere modern, or nobody remembers what the add-ons and settings were. A resurrection gets it running in your own hosting account, on infrastructure that scales through configuration, and hands it back with notes on how to run, deploy and scale it, so it no longer depends on a free tier that can disappear.
Submit your project for a free assessmentFree assessment. $10,000 AUD flat to get it live, only if we take it on and you go ahead.
Sources
- Heroku: Heroku’s Next Chapterhosting platform announcement
Starting November 28, 2022, we plan to stop offering free product plans and plan to start shutting down free dynos and data services.
- Heroku: Heroku’s Next Chapterhosting platform announcement
Starting October 26, 2022, we will begin deleting inactive accounts and associated storage for accounts that have been inactive for over a year.
- Heroku: The Procfilehosting platform docs
A Heroku app’s web process type is special: it’s the only process type that can receive external HTTP traffic from Heroku’s routers.
- Render: Web Services: Port bindinghosting platform docs
We recommend binding your HTTP server to the port defined by the PORT environment variable.