Coming from Heroku
Move a Heroku app to a server you own — Dockerfile or buildpacks, Procfile, config vars, Postgres and Redis — with no downtime and no lock-in.
Why teams leave Heroku
The bill grows with every dyno, every add-on, and every teammate — and it is priced in a currency you may not earn in. The free tier is gone. Salesforce sets the roadmap. And when you leave, you take your code and nothing else: the platform was never yours to move.
Railyard gives you the same git push workflow on a Linux server in your own cloud account. Your provider bills you directly, at their price. Cancel Railyard and the app keeps running.
What comes with you
- Your repo, unchanged. Railyard builds from a Dockerfile or from Cloud Native Buildpacks — the same buildpacks Heroku uses — so most apps need no changes.
- Your Procfile.
web,worker,releaseand any other process types are read as-is. - Your config vars. Paste them in; they become the app’s environment.
- Heroku Postgres and Heroku Data for Redis map to managed Postgres and Redis addons. Railyard provisions them and injects
DATABASE_URL/REDIS_URLfor you. - Custom domains and automatic TLS.
The move
- Point Railyard at a server. Attach one you already have, or have Railyard provision one in your DigitalOcean / Hetzner / AWS account.
- Add your repo and pick your build method. If your app already deploys on Heroku with buildpacks, choose buildpacks and change nothing.
- Bring your config. Paste your config vars. Attach Postgres and Redis; Railyard wires the URLs in.
- Deploy. Watch the build stream. Open the temporary URL and click through the app.
- Move your data.
heroku pg:backups:capturethenpg:backups:download, and restore the dump into the managed Postgres addon. Same for Redis if you persist it. - Cut DNS over. Your Heroku app keeps serving until the record flips. There is no window where nothing is up. Then
heroku apps:destroyand cancel the add-ons.
What’s genuinely different
You are responsible for a server now — but Railyard provisions it, keeps Docker patched, runs the deploys, and handles TLS, backups and rollbacks. What you buy with that: no markup on compute, no vendor lock-in, and a box you can point at any cloud you like.