Is Heroku's Standard-2X the best deal?

Before you switch

• Heroku's Postgres Essential tier has a 99.5% SLA and no HA—verify your database reliability needs before committing to Standard-2X.
• Heroku add-on overages (Postgres row/connection limits, Redis memory) can force unplanned tier upgrades; model your peak usage carefully.
• DigitalOcean and Render are cheapest but offer half the RAM; ensure your app fits 512MB or budget for the next tier up.
• AWS Lightsail and Azure data transfer rates vary by region and can add $10-50/mo if you have high egress; request a usage estimate.
• Kinsta's $0.10/GB egress and build-time billing can exceed the $40 base if you deploy frequently or have high traffic; request a usage projection.
• Render bills by the second even for suspended services; confirm scale-to-zero behavior matches your deployment pattern.
• All alternatives except Kinsta require manual migration; factor in engineering time and downtime risk.