An Update on Heroku

2026-02-06 · Source: Simon Willison's Weblog · Field: Technology & Digital — Software Development & Engineering, Cloud Computing & IT Infrastructure · Depth: Intermediate, quick

Summary

Heroku announced a transition to a "sustaining engineering model" as of February 6, 2026, prioritizing stability, security, reliability, and customer support over new feature development. This strategic shift indicates Heroku will focus on maintaining its existing platform quality and operational excellence, rather than expanding its feature set. The company stated this change allows it to reallocate product and engineering investments towards areas like enterprise-grade AI development and deployment, aiming for greater long-term customer value. This announcement has led to speculation that Heroku will essentially operate in maintenance mode, prompting existing users to consider migrating their applications to alternative platforms.

Key takeaway

For engineering leaders overseeing cloud deployments, Heroku's shift to a sustaining engineering model signals a need to re-evaluate its suitability for future projects requiring active feature development. You should assess your current Heroku-hosted applications for potential migration to platforms with more active development, such as Fly, to ensure long-term strategic alignment and access to evolving capabilities.

Key insights

Heroku is shifting to a maintenance-focused model, ceasing new feature development to prioritize stability and security.

Principles

• Prioritize core stability over new features.
• Reallocate resources to strategic growth areas.

In practice

• Evaluate platform's long-term feature roadmap.
• Plan for potential application migrations.

Topics

• Heroku Platform
• Sustaining Engineering
• Platform Migration
• Salesforce Strategy
• Enterprise AI

Best for: CTO, VP of Engineering/Data, Director of AI/ML, Software Engineer, DevOps Engineer, IT Professional

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by Simon Willison's Weblog.