Heroku Is in Sustain Mode. Here Are Your Real Options in 2026

After 16 years, Heroku stopped building. Where do you actually go? On February 6, 2026, Salesforce moved Heroku into sustain mode. No new features. Maintenance and security patches only. The platform that taught a generation of developers to git push heroku main is done evolving. If you're still on Heroku, you need a plan. If you already left for Railway or Render, it's worth asking whether you solved the underlying problem, or just moved to a younger version of the same model. What actually happened to Heroku Salesforce acquired Heroku in 2010 for $212 million. For a while, investment continued. Then it slowed. Then it stopped. The timeline: 2022: Free tier removed. Community trust damaged. 2023 to 2025: Feature development slowed to a crawl. No significant platform updates. February 2026: Sustain mode officially announced. The Heroku team is reassigned. Platform stays running but gets no new features. Heroku isn't shutting down. Your apps will keep running. But you're now on a platfo