Hostinger vs. Heroku – Which One Is Actually Better? 2024

Hostinger is a traditional hosting company that offers a wide array of hosting services. In contrast, Heroku is a container-based cloud PaaS (Platform as a Service) that focuses on developers and helps them deploy, manage, and scale contemporary apps. This just shows how different these two providers are. But there’s more that you should be aware of.

To help you decide between Hostinger and Heroku, I evaluated both on key parameters like features, performance, and pricing.

In this comparison, Hostinger comes out the clear winner. Check Hostinger’s latest deals here1 or read on to know how Hostinger wins this Hostinger vs. Heroku contest.

1. Plans and Pricing

Hostinger is for beginners; Heroku is for developers

Hostinger offers a wide range of hosting services starting from shared, WordPress, and email hosting to cloud hosting and VPS.

In contrast, Heroku’s container-based cloud PaaS supports multiple programming languages such as Java, Ruby, PHP, Python, Scala, Node.js, Go, and Clojure. Heroku also offers data services and private spaces.

For this comparison, I’ve focused on the Heroku Postgres cloud DBaaS (Database-as-a-Service). These are available in 5 types – Hobby, Standard, Premium, Private, and Shield with each having a varying price range. Though the cheapest plan begins free (with 10K rows), Heroku pricing rises sharply as you need higher resource allocations and have to scale up your resources.

Due to their different nature, it’s difficult to compare these plans directly to Hostinger’s shared hosting plans as you can’t call the latter Heroku alternatives. Still, it’s important to know that Hostinger’s starting shared plan is available at an almost free price. Its cloud hosting plans (available in 3 categories) cost cheaper overall (considering you opt for the longest quadrennial term).

Hostinger gives you a 30-day money-back guarantee. Heroku doesn’t offer any refunds though.

Overall cheaper prices plus features that are more beginner-friendly and offer better value for money let Hostinger outperform its competitor in this round.

2. Features

Better resource allocations and several user-friendly features tilt the scales in favor of Hostinger

Hostinger’s cloud plans offer CloudLinux OS, free SSL, SSD storage, a free domain for 1 year, 1X-4X speed boost, free CDN, 1-click app installer with 100+apps, custom-made and pioneering hPanel, free automated daily backups, free migration, and multiple PHP version (5.2-7.4) support, among others.

With Heroku’s Postgres cloud DBaaS, you’ll get database forks (for load testing, cloning your database with a single command, or testing new schema migrations), followers (read-only replicas of a database for horizontal scalability), dataclips (for data-backed business decisions), automated database health checks, data rollback with a single command, seamless integration in a Private/Shield Space with mutual and compliant TLS, full control and custody with BYOK (bring your own key), and Edge AWS CDN (as a paid add-on).

You can compare these two web hosts by checking this comparison table.

A wide variety of hosting plans, better resource allocations, and several user-friendly features help Hostinger win.

3. Performance

Hostinger delivers on its uptime guarantee SLA where Heroku doesn’t even offer one

Hostinger uses Tier-3 datacenters spread across 7 different global regions. It also utilizes 100% isolated VMs/containers for each customer, Cloudflare CDN, and SSD drives with RAID-10.

Heroku uses ISO 27001 and FISMA-certified datacenters managed by Amazon and benefits from the AWS (Amazon Web Service) technology. It also uses burstable vCPU and disk space (plan-dependent), EBS-optimized instances, and higher availability through automatic failover (for Premium and above tiers).

Despite its impressive downtime, Heroku loses out to Hostinger’s superb performance.

4. Security

Robust security matters to both Hostinger and Heroku

Hostinger uses SSL certificate, automated daily backups, RAID-10, isolated resources, LVE containers, Cloudflare CDN, Bitninja/Imunify360 (WAF), Wanguard anti-DDoS protection, and prognostic server monitoring and maintenance.

With Heroku, you’ll get firewalls, DDoS mitigation techniques, spoofing and sniffing protection, customer application isolation, vulnerability management, and automatic recovery of failed platform components (including databases and customer applications), among others.

Thanks to comparable security measures, picking a clear winner in this round is difficult.

5. Support

Hostinger doesn’t charge for its splendid support; Heroku makes you pay if you need fast support

Hostinger offers splendid support via 24/7 live chat, ticket, and email (logged-in users only). Those ready to pay an additional amount can even use its faster “Priority Support”. I received instantaneous replies when I used Hostinger’s live chat.

Heroku offers free support (with 1-day response times) and extremely pricey premium support (with 1-hour response SLA) via tickets (for logged-in users) and emails. However, my pre-sales questions submitted via email (through an online form) went unanswered.

If you lean towards self-help, Hostinger provides a range of tutorials, a blog, and a knowledge base. On the flip side, Heroku offers a community forum, blog, Help Center, Dev Center, Getting Started Guides, and podcasts for your assistance.

Hostinger offers splendid support for free, which helps it win over Heroku’s support (both its free and sluggish as well as pricey but faster versions).

And…Hostinger Wins

Except for the security round where both these providers finish clinching a tie, Hostinger races ahead in all the other rounds – from features and performance to pricing and support. As a result, my vote goes to Hostinger. Choosing Hostinger is a wise option as it also features amongst​ the best web hosting services.

But if you’re a developer or a student planning to test, deploy, manage, and scale apps, Heroku’s fully-managed container-based cloud PaaS could be worth a try.

Comparison Table

FAQ

Is ​Hostinger better than Heroku?

Yes, it gives you better value for money (overall) and also features amongst ​​the best web hosting services​.

Does Heroku offer WordPress hosting?

​No, it doesn’t. But you can choose from managed WordPress hosting providers by using this list of the best managed WordPress hosting providers​.

Does Heroku offer VPS hosting?

No, it doesn’t but it isn’t the lone hosting provider in the market. You can take a look at the best cheap VPS hosting services  to get trustworthy and reasonably-priced VPS​.