The Heroku Alternative That Deploys Into Your Own AWS Account
Heroku is convenient until it isn't. The free tier is gone. Costs compound fast. And everything runs on Heroku's infrastructure — not yours. When you leave, you leave with nothing.
NoahOps takes a different approach. We deploy production AWS infrastructure directly into your own AWS account. You get ECS Fargate, VPC-isolated environments, managed RDS PostgreSQL, ElastiCache Redis, and auto-rolling deploys — with Noah AI to run it all in plain English. No DevOps hire. No YAML. No lock-in.
problem_section
Why startups outgrow Heroku
Heroku works well for prototypes. It stops working well when your startup needs:
- VPC isolation between staging and production — Heroku doesn't support it
- Managed RDS for PostgreSQL — Heroku's add-on pricing is steep and the database runs on their infra, not yours
- SSH access to your instances — not available on standard Heroku dynos
- SOC 2 or compliance readiness — hard to get from a platform that abstracts your entire infrastructure
- Predictable costs at scale — Heroku charges 3–5x what AWS costs for the same compute once you're past a hobby workload
When you hit those walls, the obvious move is AWS. But raw AWS requires a DevOps engineer — and you don't have one. That's the gap NoahOps fills.
comparison_table
| Feature | Heroku | NoahOps | |---|---|---| | Deployment target | Heroku's infrastructure | Your own AWS account | | Vendor lock-in | High (you own nothing) | Zero (you own every resource) | | VPC isolation | ✗ | ✓ (per environment) | | Managed PostgreSQL (RDS) | Add-on, on their infra | ✓ Native RDS in your account | | Managed Redis | Add-on, on their infra | ✓ ElastiCache in your account | | SSH access | ✗ | ✓ | | Zero-downtime deploys | Paid tiers only | ✓ ECS rolling deploys | | Auto-rollback | ✗ | ✓ | | Compliance readiness | Limited | SOC 2 ready | | Plain-English deployments | ✗ | ✓ Noah AI | | GitHub / Bitbucket CI/CD | ✓ | ✓ | | Pricing at scale | 3–5x AWS cost | You pay AWS rates directly |
features_section
Everything you needed from Heroku — on AWS infrastructure you own
VPC-isolated environments Every stage — production, staging, preview — gets its own isolated VPC. One-click provisioning. No networking expertise required.
ECS Fargate deployments Your containers run on AWS Fargate via ECS. Docker builds → ECR → rolling deploys. NoahOps handles the orchestration. You get the AWS-native infrastructure.
Managed RDS + ElastiCache PostgreSQL on RDS and Redis on ElastiCache, provisioned inside your account. Credentials are auto-injected into your ECS environment variables. No copy-pasting secrets.
Noah AI — deploy in plain English Tell Noah what you want: "Deploy my Node.js app to production on AWS." Noah handles the execution. No YAML. No manual ECS task definitions. No staring at the AWS console.
Zero-downtime rolling deploys GitHub or Bitbucket push → Docker build → ECR → ECS rolling deploy with health checks and auto-rollback if the new version fails to start.
SSH access Need to debug something in production? SSH directly into your instances. This is your infrastructure — you have full access.
Slack notifications Deploy success and failure notifications sent directly to your Slack channel. No dashboard-watching required.
faq_section
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q: "Is NoahOps a managed service? Do you run my infrastructure?" a: "No. NoahOps deploys directly into your AWS account. You own every resource — EC2 instances, ECS clusters, RDS databases, VPCs, everything. We provision and manage the setup, but the infrastructure is yours. If you ever stop using NoahOps, your AWS resources stay exactly where they are."
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q: "Do I need to know AWS to use NoahOps?" a: "No. NoahOps is designed for startup engineering teams without dedicated DevOps. Noah AI lets you describe what you want in plain English and handles the AWS execution. You don't need to know ECS task definitions, security groups, or IAM roles to ship production deployments."
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q: "How is this different from Railway or Render?" a: "Railway and Render are great for side projects, but they run on their own infrastructure. NoahOps deploys directly into your own AWS account — you own all the resources. That means zero vendor lock-in, real VPC isolation, compliance readiness, and AWS pricing instead of PaaS markup."
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q: "What AWS services does NoahOps use?" a: "EC2, Fargate, ECS, ECR, RDS, ElastiCache, VPC, ALB, S3, AppConfig, API Gateway, and Cost Explorer. All provisioned inside your account."
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q: "Can I migrate from Heroku to NoahOps?" a: "Yes. If you're running Docker containers on Heroku, migration is straightforward. Connect your GitHub or Bitbucket repo, configure your environment variables, and NoahOps handles the rest. Most teams migrate in a day."
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q: "Is NoahOps SOC 2 compliant?" a: "NoahOps is built to be SOC 2 compliance-ready. VPC isolation, secrets management, and audit-friendly infrastructure patterns are part of the default setup."
Request a free demo
See NoahOps deploy a production environment into your AWS account — live. No slides. No hypotheticals.