AWS vs Heroku vs something else for scalable platform?

Question

Considering you're a startup with no funds for own server farm. Which existing solution can give you peace of mind that any sudden increase in traffic won't bring everything down?

I know it's not just up to hardware, so we plan to have at least a load balancer, Memcache and few DB servers.

Is it possible to have a setup on AWS that would automatically add instances and bandwidth if the traffic increases?

What other advice you could give to deployment noobs?

Answer 1

AWS is an IaaS and Heroku is a PaaS. To be simple, if you have enough time then choose AWS, launch, install and configure whatever you need and save money. Or if you can spend enough money then choose Heroku. They will take care of all the sysadmin's job, and you will just have to concentrate on your application.

To be more detailed, choosing Herko as you are a startup is a better option. Just work on your application rather worrying about the architecture. Heroku takes care of installing necessary patches to your infrastructure. And also Heroku will not scale automatically for you, do your own monitoring and for a startup, I think this would be a better option considering expenditure.