Open-source alternatives / Heroku
Dokku — free open-source Heroku alternative
32,158 GitHub stars
A docker-powered PaaS that helps you build and manage the lifecycle of applications
Replaces: Heroku — the paid alternative. Dokku does the same job and the licence is $0: you pay only for the server it runs on.
Why teams switch to Dokku
- $0 licence. The paid tool charges per seat every month. Dokku is free forever, including commercial use under its open-source licence.
- Your data stays yours. Dokku is self-hosted — it runs on your own server, so no third party holds your records.
- Proven at scale. 32,158 GitHub stars and an active contributor base mean real companies run this in production, not just hobbyists.
Trade-off, honestly: open-source means you (or an IT person) install and maintain it. If nobody on your team can run a server, the paid alternative may still be the right call — that is what it is charging for.