Remote Ruby Heroku, Hosting, and the AI Era
Mar 13, 2026
Adam McCrea, founder of Judoscale and autoscaling/platform ops expert, reflects on waking to the Heroku news during a founders retreat. He discusses whether Heroku is in maintenance mode, migration tradeoffs like databases, self-hosting versus managed platforms, and why framework-aware autoscaling matters. Conversation also covers hosting pricing, Render and PaaS positioning, and building durable developer businesses in the AI era.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Announcement Hit During A Founders Retreat
- Adam McCrea received Heroku's announcement while at a small founders retreat and it immediately changed his plans for the year.
- He'd given a business update the day before and woke up to news that potentially altered customer and product strategy overnight.
Dyno Sizes Create Costly Jumps
- Heroku's dyno sizing and pricing remain coarse, forcing large cost jumps (e.g., $50 to $250) that misalign with typical Rails needs.
- Adam notes missing mid-tier RAM options and odd jumps between Performance M and L as signs of stagnation.
Venture-Backed PaaS Will Chase Heroku Migration Traffic
- Venture-backed PaaS providers (Render, Railway) are aggressively positioning to capture Heroku migrations with capital and marketing.
- Render raised $100M and added public messaging like "migrate from Heroku" right after Heroku news.