European-only alternative to Heroku (Salesforce).

Heroku is the original developer-first PaaS, acquired by Salesforce in 2010 and now part of Salesforce.com Inc. Salesforce is a US corporation, Heroku's default region is in the US, and the EU "Common Runtime" lives in AWS Ireland - meaning your Heroku app is on AWS infrastructure with Salesforce as the contractual processor. Both layers are US-jurisdictional. The sovereign alternative is straightforward: a self-hosted PaaS like Coolify or Dokku on EU infrastructure, or a fully-managed equivalent operated by an EU partner.

United States EU-only replacement stack 11 services mapped
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Provider
Heroku (Salesforce)
Headquarters
San Francisco, CA (Salesforce)
Jurisdiction
United States
Legal regime
CLOUD Act, FISA 702

"EU region" is not sovereignty. Four questions decide it.

Data residency tells you where the bits sit. Sovereignty tells you which legal system can compel access. The answer must hold on all four - or the stack is not sovereign.

Residency

Where is the data physically stored?

Not "in the cloud" - which datacenter, in which country, under which jurisdiction.

Subprocessors

Who else is in your data path?

Every vendor that touches the data: the CDN, the email relay, the error tracker, the analytics pipe.

Jurisdiction

Whose laws can compel disclosure?

A US-headquartered provider falls under FISA 702 and the CLOUD Act - even when the bits sit in Frankfurt.

Key custody

Who actually holds the encryption keys?

If the cloud provider holds both the data and the keys, the data is readable by them - regardless of any DPA.

Fails AWS · Azure · GCP · EU region

Fails on jurisdiction and key custody.

EU bits, US-headquartered parent, US subprocessors in the default path, provider-managed keys.

Passes Binadit managed stack

Passes on all four.

EU-hosted on EU-headquartered infrastructure. Zero US subprocessors in the default path. Customer-held or EU-KMS keys. Listed by name in your Article 28 DPA.

Why teams are exiting Heroku (Salesforce)

Heroku exits we have run come from three triggers: a customer audit (B2B SaaS) flagging the AWS-Ireland-via-Heroku data path as Schrems II-exposed, the discontinuation of free dynos in 2022 forcing a cost reassessment, or a strategic decision to remove the double provider chain (Salesforce → AWS) which complicates DPA management. Heroku's value is the developer experience; open source alternatives like Coolify, Dokku and Caprover reproduce most of that experience on EU infrastructure.

Heroku (Salesforce) services and their EU-only equivalents

A migration is not "swap one box for another". The mapping below is what we run for clients leaving Heroku (Salesforce) on Schrems II grounds - full EU jurisdiction, no US parent in the data path.

Dynos (web/worker)

What we run instead
Binadit Managed Cloud Platform. Docker images built in GitLab CI and deployed to Kubernetes, with review environments per branch.
Engineering note
Coolify gives near-identical Heroku DX (git push deploys, one-click apps) on EU infrastructure. Bills typically 60-80% lower than Heroku for equivalent compute.

Heroku Postgres

What we run instead
Binadit Managed Cloud Platform. PostgreSQL or MySQL with Patroni for failover and pgBackRest for point-in-time recovery.
Engineering note
Logical replication enables zero-downtime cutover. Heroku Postgres backups can be downloaded as standard pg_dump and restored anywhere.

Heroku Redis

What we run instead
Binadit Managed Cloud Platform. Redis or Valkey, with Sentinel for failover.
Engineering note
Standard Redis API; migration via SLAVEOF or RDB transfer.

Heroku Connect (Salesforce sync)

What we run instead
Binadit DevOps & Support. Integration workers running on your own infrastructure, talking to the vendor API directly.
Engineering note
For teams keeping Salesforce CRM, the sync layer rebuilds; for teams replacing Salesforce, this concern goes away.

Add-ons marketplace

What we run instead
Binadit DevOps & Support. The components you actually use, deployed and operated as part of your stack.
Engineering note
Heroku's add-on convenience is the biggest DX loss; direct vendor management is the trade-off for sovereignty.

Pipelines (review apps, CI/CD)

What we run instead
Binadit DevOps & Support. Per-branch review environments on Kubernetes, created and destroyed by GitLab CI.
Engineering note
Coolify supports preview environments per branch.

Heroku Buildpacks

What we run instead
Binadit DevOps & Support. Dockerfiles or Cloud Native Buildpacks, built in GitLab CI.
Engineering note
Most Heroku apps deploy unchanged via Cloud Native Buildpacks on Coolify.

Logplex / Logging

What we run instead
Binadit Managed Cloud Platform. Loki for aggregation, with Grafana for querying and retention policies per stream.
Engineering note
Loki is the standard pattern; aggregates logs from all containers.

Heroku CI

What we run instead
Binadit DevOps & Support. GitLab CI with runners on your own infrastructure.
Engineering note
GitLab CI on a self-hosted EU runner is the production-grade replacement.

Heroku Private Spaces

What we run instead
Binadit Private Infrastructure. Fully isolated environment, dedicated hardware, custom network architecture.
Engineering note
The "Private Spaces" concept is a VPC by another name; standard EU networking handles it.

SSL / domains

What we run instead
Binadit Managed Cloud Platform. cert-manager with Let's Encrypt, renewing automatically.
Engineering note
Domain transfer is a registrar change; SSL is automated by all modern PaaS alternatives.

How we migrate off Heroku (Salesforce)

A typical mid-market migration runs in three phases. The numbers below assume a 6-10 person engineering team and a moderately complex application stack.

  1. Days 1-3

    PaaS choice + dependency map

    Decide on the EU PaaS (Coolify is our default for Heroku-style DX; Dokku for minimalists; managed offering from Binadit for hands-off teams). Inventory Heroku apps, dynos and add-ons.

  2. Days 4-10

    Database + add-on swap

    Heroku Postgres replicated to EU managed PostgreSQL with logical replication. Each add-on replaced with EU equivalent (one-by-one to control risk). Logging migrated to Loki.

  3. Weeks 2-4

    Application cutover

    Apps redeployed on Coolify with the same buildpacks. DNS cutover with low TTL window. Heroku app archived after a verification period.

5-year TCO on Heroku exits: 60-85% cheaper. Heroku's pricing model (per-dyno, per-add-on, per-database tier) compounds quickly; a self-hosted PaaS on EU infrastructure replaces a typical $500-2000/month Heroku bill for a fraction of that in raw infrastructure, plus our managed fee if you do not want to operate it yourself.

Frequently asked questions

View all frequently asked questions

Is Heroku's EU region sufficient for GDPR?
Residency only. Heroku's "Common Runtime" EU region runs in AWS Ireland - that is two layers of US-controlled processors (Salesforce as the immediate contracting party, AWS as the underlying infrastructure). The CLOUD Act analysis applies to both. For Schrems II-strict workloads, Heroku EU is not sufficient.
Will we lose the Heroku DX?
Coolify reproduces git-push deploys, one-click app templates, preview environments per PR, automated SSL, environment variables, and per-branch deploys. The DX is genuinely close. The main loss is the add-on marketplace; you swap that for direct vendor relationships, which is more manageable than Heroku marketing suggests.
What about Heroku Connect for Salesforce sync?
If you're keeping Salesforce CRM, Heroku Connect needs to be rebuilt (REST/Bulk API + queue). If you're also moving off Salesforce - which is increasingly common in Schrems II-driven exits - this concern disappears.
Can we use Coolify ourselves or do we need help?
Many teams self-host Coolify successfully on a single VM. For multi-tenant production scenarios - multi-environment, blue-green, secrets management - a managed-partner setup makes sense. We deploy and operate Coolify clusters for clients.
How long does a Heroku exit take?
For a small workload (1-3 apps, 1 Postgres, a few add-ons): 1-2 weeks. For a multi-app enterprise Heroku setup with Private Spaces and Heroku Connect: 6-10 weeks. Heroku's app surface is intentionally simple, which makes the migration mostly a choreography exercise.
What about the newer Heroku-style platforms?
They reproduce the developer experience well, and if that is all you need they are a reasonable landing. Check two things before you commit: which jurisdiction the platform and its database sit under, and what the exit looks like in two years. A platform that builds from your Dockerfile onto infrastructure you could run yourself is a much shorter conversation later than one with a proprietary build and runtime.

Plan your exit from Heroku (Salesforce).

30-minute scoping call. We map your stack against EU-only alternatives, estimate the migration effort, and tell you whether it is the right call.

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