Dokku on top of a Digital Ocean droplet is a pretty cheap and easy option if you're OK with a single-server solution (i.e. small side project) and you're looking for something Heroku-like.
What about DO App Platform? I was thinking of trying that next. I’ve read a lot about slow build times and random build failures, but at the same time they at least seem to be actively developing the service.
Re:Heroku: We’ve Heard Your Feedback
by SonOfLilit on Saturday May 07, 2022 @05:39PM
(#31298848)
Elsewhere in this thread is a link to a blogpost comparing it to doing things manually with GCP and quickly dismissing it as extremely limited, so I didn't delve further.
I next looked at fly.io, which seem ok for the first two apps, assuming they use the same database. If I ever want more than two apps, it seems I will need to start hosting different apps together, which is the opposite of the headache-free experience I'm looking for.
Porter runs on my own cloud account, so I can't trust it to not cost too much.
Maybe I can get a Kubernetes cluster somewhere (DigitalOcean?) and deploy all my small apps to it, but it sounds like a headache.
I'm staying with heroku.