Sovereign cells vs Heroku

Name: Aspian Cloud
Brand: Aspian Cloud

Heroku is the original managed platform, now part of Salesforce. Aspian Cloud offers a similar push-to-run model with cells in Lagos, Abuja and London and evidence a regulator can check.

Checked on 7 November 2026 against Heroku’s own pages. Prices and features change; follow each source before relying on a row.

Side by side

Our column describes sovereign cells, the optional hosting add-on. Aspian Cloud’s change control works on Heroku too; see integrations.

Where apps run: Heroku
Common Runtime: US and EU only. Private Spaces: Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Montreal, Mumbai, Oregon, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, Virginia. None in Africa or Nigeria (page last updated May 2025).
devcenter.heroku.com
Aspian Cloud
Cells in Lagos, Abuja, London or the EU, or in your own data centre. Each cell holds apps, databases, logs and backups in one jurisdiction
/security
Deploy from GitHub: Heroku
Yes; the GitHub integration auto-deploys pushes to a chosen branch, with an optional 'Wait for CI to pass'.
devcenter.heroku.com
Aspian Cloud
Builds a GitHub repository at an exact commit
/docs/deploys
Builds without a Dockerfile: Heroku
Yes; buildpacks detect the language; Fir-generation apps use Cloud Native Buildpacks by default.
devcenter.heroku.com
Aspian Cloud
Not yet. Today the build needs a Dockerfile at the repository root
/docs/deploys
Preview environments: Heroku
Yes; Review Apps create a temporary app per PR within a Pipeline, billed like normal apps.
devcenter.heroku.com
Aspian Cloud
A preview for every branch
/cells
Managed Postgres: Heroku
Native Heroku Postgres, from Essential-0 at $5/month; Shield Postgres for HIPAA/PCI.
heroku.com
Aspian Cloud
Postgres 17 with three instances and synchronous replicas; point-in-time recovery; signed restore drills
/cells
Rollback: Heroku
`heroku rollback [vN]` makes a new release from an earlier slug and config vars. Databases and add-on state are not rolled back. Releases older than 30 days and outside the last 20 expire.
devcenter.heroku.com
Aspian Cloud
Release rollback is a reversible action that never waits for an approver. It never reverses a database migration
/docs/plans-and-approvals
Cheapest paid plan: Heroku
Eco dynos $5/month (sleep, personal accounts only); Basic dyno $7/month always-on. Add-ons such as Postgres are billed separately.
heroku.com
Aspian Cloud
Shared cells are billed on usage by the hour, with a spend cap; change control is priced by tier
/cells
Billing currency: Heroku
Not confirmed: prices shown in '$' only. No naira billing found.
heroku.com
Aspian Cloud
USD, GBP, EUR or naira through Paystack or Flutterwave. No dollar card needed in Nigeria
/editions
Approval before production changes: Heroku
No multi-person or passkey approval gate. Pipelines need a manual Promote from staging to production, and 'Wait for CI to pass' gates auto-deploys. Anyone with access to both apps can promote.
devcenter.heroku.com
Aspian Cloud
Passkey approval bound to the exact plan hash; two people on Business and above. The requester can never approve
/docs/plans-and-approvals
Audit trail: Heroku
Audit trails for Enterprise Accounts only: monthly JSON archives (not real-time) via Dashboard, CLI (`heroku enterprise:audits:export`) or API.
devcenter.heroku.com
Aspian Cloud
Signed, hash-chained audit trail per organisation on every edition, checkpointed outside the database
/security
MCP for AI agents: Heroku
Official remote MCP at mcp.heroku.com/mcp (OAuth) plus a local open-source MCP (`heroku mcp:start`).
devcenter.heroku.com
Aspian Cloud
MCP server where every tool has a risk class and reading customer content taints the agent key. Not yet offered as a hosted endpoint
/docs/mcp
Published SLA: Heroku
Not confirmed: no published uptime SLA percentage found on Heroku pages.
heroku.com
Aspian Cloud
Proposed per edition, in draft awaiting legal review
/legal/sla
Certifications: Heroku
SOC 1/2/3 (SOC 2 Type 2 report) and ISO 27001/27017/27018 across products. HIPAA (BAA) and PCI DSS Level 1 for Shield products in Private Spaces only.
heroku.com
Aspian Cloud
None claimed. Evidence packs map platform records to NDPA 2023, UK GDPR and ISO/IEC 27001
/trust

	Heroku	Aspian Cloud
Where apps run	Common Runtime: US and EU only. Private Spaces: Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Montreal, Mumbai, Oregon, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, Virginia. None in Africa or Nigeria (page last updated May 2025). devcenter.heroku.com	Cells in Lagos, Abuja, London or the EU, or in your own data centre. Each cell holds apps, databases, logs and backups in one jurisdiction /security
Deploy from GitHub	Yes; the GitHub integration auto-deploys pushes to a chosen branch, with an optional 'Wait for CI to pass'. devcenter.heroku.com	Builds a GitHub repository at an exact commit /docs/deploys
Builds without a Dockerfile	Yes; buildpacks detect the language; Fir-generation apps use Cloud Native Buildpacks by default. devcenter.heroku.com	Not yet. Today the build needs a Dockerfile at the repository root /docs/deploys
Preview environments	Yes; Review Apps create a temporary app per PR within a Pipeline, billed like normal apps. devcenter.heroku.com	A preview for every branch /cells
Managed Postgres	Native Heroku Postgres, from Essential-0 at $5/month; Shield Postgres for HIPAA/PCI. heroku.com	Postgres 17 with three instances and synchronous replicas; point-in-time recovery; signed restore drills /cells
Rollback	`heroku rollback [vN]` makes a new release from an earlier slug and config vars. Databases and add-on state are not rolled back. Releases older than 30 days and outside the last 20 expire. devcenter.heroku.com	Release rollback is a reversible action that never waits for an approver. It never reverses a database migration /docs/plans-and-approvals
Cheapest paid plan	Eco dynos $5/month (sleep, personal accounts only); Basic dyno $7/month always-on. Add-ons such as Postgres are billed separately. heroku.com	Shared cells are billed on usage by the hour, with a spend cap; change control is priced by tier /cells
Billing currency	Not confirmed: prices shown in '$' only. No naira billing found. heroku.com	USD, GBP, EUR or naira through Paystack or Flutterwave. No dollar card needed in Nigeria /editions
Approval before production changes	No multi-person or passkey approval gate. Pipelines need a manual Promote from staging to production, and 'Wait for CI to pass' gates auto-deploys. Anyone with access to both apps can promote. devcenter.heroku.com	Passkey approval bound to the exact plan hash; two people on Business and above. The requester can never approve /docs/plans-and-approvals
Audit trail	Audit trails for Enterprise Accounts only: monthly JSON archives (not real-time) via Dashboard, CLI (`heroku enterprise:audits:export`) or API. devcenter.heroku.com	Signed, hash-chained audit trail per organisation on every edition, checkpointed outside the database /security
MCP for AI agents	Official remote MCP at mcp.heroku.com/mcp (OAuth) plus a local open-source MCP (`heroku mcp:start`). devcenter.heroku.com	MCP server where every tool has a risk class and reading customer content taints the agent key. Not yet offered as a hosted endpoint /docs/mcp
Published SLA	Not confirmed: no published uptime SLA percentage found on Heroku pages. heroku.com	Proposed per edition, in draft awaiting legal review /legal/sla
Certifications	SOC 1/2/3 (SOC 2 Type 2 report) and ISO 27001/27017/27018 across products. HIPAA (BAA) and PCI DSS Level 1 for Shield products in Private Spaces only. heroku.com	None claimed. Evidence packs map platform records to NDPA 2023, UK GDPR and ISO/IEC 27001 /trust

When Heroku fits better

The most mature PaaS (Salesforce-owned), with a long-established add-on marketplace and Salesforce integration (AppLink, Heroku Connect).
A London Private Space region plus Shield (HIPAA, PCI DSS L1) suits UK-regulated workloads that need neither Nigeria residency nor a newer vendor.
Pipelines with review apps, staging and manual promotion give a well-understood release flow for conservative teams.

Moving from Heroku

Take your things out of Heroku

Config vars: heroku config lists them. heroku config --shell > .env and --json are standard CLI flags, but the article itself does not document them (from CLI knowledge). devcenter.heroku.com
Postgres: heroku pg:backups:capture then heroku pg:backups:download (pg_dump custom format, up to about 20 GB), or pg_dump -Fp --no-acl --no-owner <DATABASE_URL>. devcenter.heroku.com
Procfile and buildpacks move with the repo; Cloud Native Buildpack builds can be reproduced elsewhere with pack. Add-ons each need their own export. devcenter.heroku.com

Bring them to Aspian Cloud

Add a Dockerfile at the repository root if you do not have one, and make the server listen on the port in $PORT. See Deploy with a Dockerfile.
Export your environment variables to a file on your machine. Secret values go into Aspian Cloud as write-only secrets and are never shown again.
Take a pg_dump of each database. We restore it into your cell and run a restore drill, so the first Trust Page fact about the new database is a tested restore.
Deploy to a preview first. Low-risk changes like previews never wait for an approver.
Point your domain at the new app with a domain_change plan. It is an irreversible action, so it needs a passkey approval.

We plan the move with you. Talk to us.