The OP undervalues that bit in the TLDR: "stress-free deployment". For us, hiring or contracting a DevOps guy with 1/10th the chops of the heroku crew would cost 10x what we are paying them, and I don't think we'd have a better quality of life.
Heroku is only expensive if your time has no value.
Yes, maintenance (upgrades, security patches, scaling up instances...) if you're going DIY on AWS is also significant. The time needed for setup + maintenance varies greatly depending on the developer(s) as well as the exact project needs, but at a minimum, Heroku needs to be at least as expensive as AWS minimum costs + bare minimum setup costs before switching to AWS could be considered cost-effective.
Comments
The OP undervalues that bit in the TLDR: "stress-free deployment". For us, hiring or contracting a DevOps guy with 1/10th the chops of the heroku crew would cost 10x what we are paying them, and I don't think we'd have a better quality of life.
Heroku is only expensive if your time has no value.
Yes, maintenance (upgrades, security patches, scaling up instances...) if you're going DIY on AWS is also significant. The time needed for setup + maintenance varies greatly depending on the developer(s) as well as the exact project needs, but at a minimum, Heroku needs to be at least as expensive as AWS minimum costs + bare minimum setup costs before switching to AWS could be considered cost-effective.