Couldn’t agree more. That “git push and you’re live” moment removed a huge amount of accidental complexity, and it’s been the guiding experience behind what we’re building at Build.io.
Even when you build cool things it's respectful not to plant them in HN comments :)
I think the usual solution to this is to talk about cool stuff you've done that is only incidentally relevant to the product you're selling. For example, some detail on how you built a technical system or solved a problem, etc...
Build.io came out of this exact problem a few years ago (I joined in 25Q4) - trying to be what Heroku could have been if it had continued to evolve.
We offer the same default simplicity/speed, but with the ability to go deeper once teams hit scale, cost, or workflow limits. Plus a pricing model that stays understandable and improves as teams scale rather than punishing them for it.
Fair warning: the website is pretty light right now. It’s mostly a placeholder while we prep a broader push over the few months. Happy to answer questions here if helpful.
Do you care to show prices? The true benefit of heroku for me was really predictable pricing model. Build.io website doesn’t have it on mobile site at all. I don’t want to look at demo, i want to hook up my credit card, set a monthly budget and explore
llIIllIIllIIl & runako give me an email on steven[at]build.io and I'll share. As mentioned, we stripped the site back while we overhaul and we certainly didn't expect this today!
You’re right - reading that back, it comes across as a “no,” and that wasn’t my intent.
We should show pricing, and we will. We temporarily stripped the site back while overhauling positioning and pricing, which is why it’s missing right now. That’s on us, not a stance against transparency.
In the meantime, I’m more than happy to share pricing directly.
At a high level on our pricing:
- Current customers are on a mix of usage-based and fixed monthly plans, depending on their needs. We've found many of our customers love the fixed plan as it's a whole new level of predictability.
- We’re generally architected to land well below Heroku’s Enterprise pricing and to be competitive with a IaaS.
- We want pricing to get out of your way as you scale, so no big steps in pricing as you add services.
- Databases are HA by default and support replication.
- Pipelines and review apps don’t require hacks to avoid per-review-app database costs.
Happy to answer specifics here or over email if helpful.
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