Marginal cost. For MailChimp, WP Engine, etc, their code is running regardless. Heroku and other PaaS providers have to commit real resources (RAM, CPU time) that have a much greater cost than running some free work through your existing data pipeline.
It doesn't seem to be a problem for Linode to give me the virtual hardware at a reasonable price. Why would Heroku's software on top of that virtual hardware cost so much more? Is their deployment/management software using that much extra resources?
Linode owns the underlying hardware. Heroku is renting it from AWS. When you own your resources, you have more control over your margins (traditionally).
Comments
Marginal cost. For MailChimp, WP Engine, etc, their code is running regardless. Heroku and other PaaS providers have to commit real resources (RAM, CPU time) that have a much greater cost than running some free work through your existing data pipeline.
It doesn't seem to be a problem for Linode to give me the virtual hardware at a reasonable price. Why would Heroku's software on top of that virtual hardware cost so much more? Is their deployment/management software using that much extra resources?
Linode owns the underlying hardware. Heroku is renting it from AWS. When you own your resources, you have more control over your margins (traditionally).