In the competitive startup landscape, scalability and cost control are critical factors for success. This is a real-world case of a startup that successfully migrated from Heroku to AWS without an in-house DevOps team, using SleakOps as its infrastructure management platform.
Why Do Startups Leave Heroku? Limitations and Costs
Our client, a startup, began its journey on Heroku—a platform that allowed them to quickly launch their MVP to market. However, as they scaled, they encountered several challenges:
- Exponentially scaling costs: Increased traffic had a direct impact on their monthly bill, making the business model difficult to sustain.
- Limited configuration flexibility: Platform restrictions prevented them from tailoring the infrastructure to their real operational needs.
- High dependency on external services: Key components such as databases or Redis required paid add-ons with significant costs.
- Lack of granular control: There was no way to optimize specific resources or precisely adjust infrastructure usage.
The Challenge: Migrating Without a DevOps Team
The company had a strong development team but lacked in-house DevOps and cloud infrastructure specialists. The main challenges included:
Technical complexity
- AWS VPC and private network configuration
- SSL certificate and domain management
- High-availability RDS database setup
- CI/CD pipeline implementation
Security requirements
- Data encryption in transit and at rest
- Secure management of secrets and environment variables
- Monitoring and logging
Business continuity
- Zero-downtime migration
- Immediate rollback in case of issues
- Performance stability during the transition
Smart Migration to AWS with SleakOps: Infrastructure as a Service
The client needed to migrate to AWS to gain greater control and reduce costs but lacked in-house DevOps expertise. SleakOps provided the necessary abstraction so the development team could migrate to AWS while maintaining the operational simplicity they were used to with Heroku.
Implemented Architecture
With SleakOps, we designed a robust and scalable architecture that included:
- EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service): Container orchestration
- RDS MySQL: High-availability primary database
- ElastiCache Redis: Caching layer to improve performance
- Application Load Balancer: Intelligent traffic distribution
- Auto Scaling Groups: Automatic scaling based on demand
The Step-by-Step Migration Process
Phase 1: Preparation and Initial Setup + Staging Environment (Weeks 1–2)
Using SleakOps, the team was able to set up the entire staging environment:
- Configure the EKS cluster using a simple wizard
- Deploy workloads (web services, workers, cron jobs, hooks)
- Set up MySQL database dependencies
- Implement Redis for caching and session management
- Configure variable groups (Vargroups) for secure secrets management
- Deploy services (web services, workers, cron jobs)
- Configure CI/CD pipelines
- Perform extensive testing in the staging environment
Phase 2: Production Setup and Migration (Week 3)
The production environment was implemented by replicating the staging setup created the previous week, followed by migrating production data. A temporary domain was used to assemble and test the system.
- Full backup of the Heroku database and import into RDS using Docker and Jobs within SleakOps
- Extensive testing in the production environment
- Performance and functionality validation
Once everything was validated, on migration day the data was updated again (repeating step 1), and DNS records were switched so the primary domain pointed to the environment created with SleakOps.
Results Achieved
✅ Significant Cost Reduction
The results were impactful:
| Metric | Heroku | AWS + SleakOps | Savings / Improvement |
| Monthly cost | $4,500 | $1,800 | 60% |
| Response time | 450 ms | 180 ms | 60% |
| Uptime | 99.5% | 99.9% | +0.4% |
Performance and Scalability Improvements
- Response time: 60% reduction in average latency
- Scalability: Ability to handle 10× more concurrent traffic
- Availability: Uptime improved from 99.5% to 99.9%
- Flexibility: Ability to customize resources based on specific needs
Key Benefits of Using SleakOps
✅ No DevOps Expertise Required
SleakOps enabled a development team without deep DevOps knowledge to:
- Manage complex AWS infrastructure
- Automatically implement security best practices
- Set up monitoring with minimal effort
- Maintain high availability across both database and application
✅ Simplified Dependency Management
The platform streamlined the management of:
- Databases: MySQL with automatic backups and read replicas
- Cache: Redis configured for high performance
- Secrets: Vargroups for secure credential management
- Networking: VPCs, subnets, and security groups automatically configured
Lessons Learned
Planning Is Key
While SleakOps greatly simplifies the process, proper planning remains essential:
- Complete inventory: Map all dependencies and services
- Extensive testing: Validate functionality in the staging environment
- Rollback plan: Keep Heroku active during the transition
- Communication: Coordinate migration windows with stakeholders
Monitoring From Day One
Implementing monitoring from the start made it possible to:
- Detect performance issues early
- Optimize resources based on real metrics
- Maintain SLAs during the transition
- Generate cost and usage reports for stakeholders
The Future: Scaling with Confidence
Six months after the migration, the startup has experienced:
- 300% growth in active users
- 60% reduction in infrastructure costs
- 40% improvement in development time for new features
- Zero downtime over the last four months
“SleakOps allowed us to focus on what truly matters: building innovative products. Infrastructure is no longer a headache—it’s an enabler of our growth.”
— Startup CEO
Conclusion: Democratizing AWS
This case shows how SleakOps is democratizing access to enterprise-grade infrastructure on AWS. Startups and growing companies no longer need specialized DevOps teams to take full advantage of the power and flexibility of AWS.
Are You Ready for Your Migration?
If your company is facing similar limitations with Heroku or other platforms, consider these questions:
- Are your infrastructure costs growing faster than your revenue?
- Do you need greater control over your technology stack?
- Would you like to improve your application performance?
- Do you want to implement more robust architectures without added complexity?
SleakOps may be the solution you need to take the next step in your technology journey—without the traditional friction of an AWS migration.
Want to learn more about how SleakOps can help your company migrate to AWS with ease? Discover how SleakOps can help you optimize your AWS infrastructure without compromising performance or budget.
👉 Start your migration today. Schedule a free SleakOps demo and see how to automate your AWS infrastructure with confidence.
