Understanding Heroku Redis Pricing - In-Depth Guide

Heroku Redis is a popular fully-managed Redis service used by developers. With its seamless integration into the Heroku platform, it provides a fast in-memory data store for applications.

Understanding the pricing and plans for Heroku Redis is key when considering it for your apps. This guide provides an in-depth guide to Heroku Redis pricing to help you choose the right plan based on your needs and optimize costs.

What is Heroku Redis?

Heroku Redis is a hosted version of the open-source Redis data store provided as an add-on service on Heroku. It handles the setup and management of Redis servers so developers don't have to.

Some key features and benefits:

• Fully compatible Redis implementation with data structures like strings, hashes, lists, sets etc.
• Persistent storage - data is saved to disk to avoid loss.
• High availability with replication and failover.
• TLS encryption between Heroku Redis and your app.
• Daily backups and rollback capability.
• Management dashboard for monitoring health metrics.

Heroku Redis relieves developers from Redis admin tasks so they can focus on building applications.

Why Choose Heroku Redis?

There are several advantages to using Heroku Redis:

• Optimized performance with low latency when hosted on Heroku infrastructure.
• Scale instantly as app needs grow.
• Pay only for what you use with flexible pricing tiers.
• Cost effective compared to running self-managed Redis at scale.

For Heroku apps needing a fast and robust in-memory database, Heroku Redis provides huge advantages over self-hosted open source Redis.

An In-Depth Look at Heroku Redis Pricing Plans

Heroku Redis has various pricing tiers based on the memory size and features required. Here is a detailed look at the available plans:

Mini Plan

• Memory: 25MB
• Connections: 20
• Price Per Month: $3

This tiny plan is best suited for trying out Redis on Heroku or very small workloads.

Premium Plans

The Premium plans provide scalable memory tiers from 50MB to 100GB of RAM:

Plan	Memory	Connections	Price Per Month
Premium 0	50MB	40	$15
Premium 1	100MB	80	$30
Premium 2	250MB	200	$60
Premium 3	500MB	400	$120
Premium 5	1GB	1000	$200
Premium 7	7GB	10,000	$750
Premium 9	10GB	25,000	$1,450
Premium 10	25GB	40,000	$3,500
Premium 12	50GB	65,000	$6,500
Premium 14	100GB	65,000	$12,500

These plans are suitable for the majority of production workloads. Network latency is reduced by hosting in Heroku's infrastructure.

Private Spaces

For larger scale needs and tenant isolation, Private Spaces provide dedicated Redis servers:

Plan	Memory	Connections	Price Per Month
Private 7	7GB	10,000	$900
Private 9	10GB	25,000	$1,750
Private 10	25GB	40,000	$4,000
Private 12	50GB	65,000	$7,500
Private 14	100GB	65,000	$14,000

Private Spaces add private connectivity and reduce multi-tenancy.

Shield Plans

For high availability, Shield plans provide replicated read-only nodes:

Plan	Description	Price Per Month
Shield 7	7GB HA cluster	$1,100
Shield 9	10GB HA cluster	$2,100
Shield 10	25GB HA cluster	$4,800
Shield 12	50GB HA cluster	$9,000
Shield 14	100GB HA cluster	$19,600

Shield plans cost 2X the equivalent Premium plan but add redundancy and failover.

This covers the wide range of pricing tiers available based on memory, connections, high availability needs and tenant isolation.

Cost-Benefit Analysis of Heroku Redis Pricing

Heroku Redis plans offer different value depending on your use cases:

• Mini and lower Premium plans are ideal for development, testing and smaller workloads.
• Larger Premium plans from 2 to 12 serve most production workloads.
• Premium 14, Private Spaces and Shield Plans are for memory intensive production apps.
• Private Spaces provide tenant isolation for larger teams and companies.
• Shield plans add HA redundancy for mission critical data.

When evaluating plans, assess your memory needs, traffic expectations, and high availability requirements. Though Heroku Redis costs more than self-managed Redis, the benefits often outweigh the premium especially at scale.

Region Availability

Heroku Redis is available in the US and Europe on Common Runtime. For Private Spaces, it can be provisioned in Virginia, Oregon, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Sydney, and Dublin.

Tips to Optimize Your Heroku Redis Usage

Follow these tips to minimize costs:

• Start with lower plans and scale up as needed instead of over-provisioning.
• Use Redis efficiently - expiration to clear stale data, limiting keys, etc.
• Optimize data structure usage - hashes vs lists, memory optimization, etc.
• Enable client-side caching to reduce load.
• Monitor usage regularly and right-size based on metrics.
• Use Shield only if HA is truly needed for your workload.
• Leverage add-ons like Heroku Scheduler to scale down during non-peak times.
• Use Redis best practices like pipelining commands and avoiding small frequent queries to reduce overhead.
• Choose appropriate expire times so unused stale data gets cleared from memory.
• Prefer hashes, strings and other memory efficient data structures over lists or sets when possible.
• Compress large values using LZF to reduce memory footprint.
• Take advantage of Heroku add-ons like Papertrail for monitoring metrics and optimizing usage.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, understanding Heroku Redis pricing enables efficient planning and optimal utilization for your application. The cost-effectiveness of the various plans depends on individual project needs, making it crucial to study and make an informed decision.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a free trial for Heroku Redis?

No free trials are available. You must signup for a paid plan.

What happens if I exceed my allotted resources on a Heroku Redis plan?

Your app will start seeing errors if you go over the memory size or connection limit. You will need to upgrade to the next size plan to resolve.

Can I change (upgrade or downgrade) the Heroku Redis plan at any time?

Yes, you can instantly change plans without downtime at any time based on your application's needs.

Is there a free tier available for Heroku Redis?

No, all plans require a paid subscription. The free Heroku app tier cannot include Redis.

How does Heroku Redis pricing compare to AWS ElastiCache?

Heroku Redis starts at 13/month for comparable memory cache node. Heroku may be more expensive at lower tiers, but costs are comparable at higher tiers. Heroku simplifies setup but AWS provides more flexibility.

What are the pricing differences between Heroku Redis and self-managed Redis?

Heroku Redis eliminates server management costs but has monthly pricing for the service. Self-managed open source Redis avoids monthly costs but requires maintaining your own servers and infrastructure.

How does Heroku Redis compare to other fully managed services like Redis Labs Cloud?

Redis Labs Cloud has comparable pricing to Heroku Redis for their basic plans. But Redis Labs offers more flexibility like custom databases and cross-cloud support. Heroku is simpler to use but has fewer advanced configurations.

How does Heroku Redis pricing compare to in-memory databases like AWS DynamoDB?

DynamoDB pricing follows pay-per-request model rather than Heroku's fixed monthly pricing. It may be more cost efficient at very low usage levels. Heroku Redis provides specialized Redis data structures compared to DynamoDB's key-value store.