Deciding Between Heroku Alternatives
I hate to spoil the end of this wonderful post for you, but:
In short, if your priority is developer experience, you won’t find a better option than Heroku.
Heroku's greatest sin wasn't in selling out (in fact, its Salesforce acquisition was one of the least disruptive in the history of SaaS), it was in well and truly solving the problem it set out to address. Then, after that, …they didn't have much new and shiny to talk about. Everything Just Worked™.
There are a handful of rough edges that they're still sanding down—HTTP 2 support was the big one, but they've recently covered that. I take the fact that I reacted to their banner about a next generation paltform with worry it might make something worse as a GOOD sign. Those among us who actually give a shit about working software should do a better job of rewarding the handful of companies that pull it off.
(And if you do use Heroku, Judoscale's founder Adam is an old friend and a Searls-certified badass and you should check them out.)