Migrate from Heroku to Sevalla

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Why migrate to Sevalla

• Lower costs - Competitive pricing with no surprise add-on fees. Databases, object storage, CDN, and DDoS protection are integrated into the platform rather than sold as third-party add-ons.
• Built-in CDN and edge caching - Powered by Cloudflare’s global network spanning 260+ cities in 100+ countries. Enabled with a single click, no add-on required.
• DDoS protection included - Enterprise-level Cloudflare DDoS protection on every application at no extra cost.
• Private networking - Internal connections between your applications and databases stay within the network, with no exposure to the public internet.
• Flexible build options - Choose between Nixpacks (20+ languages), Heroku Buildpacks, or your own Dockerfile.
• Preview environments - Automatically generated for pull requests through pipelines, making it easy to test changes before promoting to production.
• Persistent storage - Attach disks directly to your application pods, something Heroku doesn’t natively support.
• Modern analytics - Built-in compute and web analytics with request metrics, country-level breakdowns, response times, and zoomable charts.

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Feature mapping

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Compute

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Deployment

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Networking

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Datastores

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Storage and assets

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Observability

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Platform

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Enterprise and security

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Phase 1: Prepare to migrate

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Create a Sevalla account

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Catalog your Heroku resources

1. Procfile processes - List every process type and its command. Each one maps to a Sevalla process:
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   web: npm run start
   worker: npm run worker
   release: npm run migrate
   
   • web becomes your web process
   • worker becomes a background worker
   • release becomes a job process with a “Before deployment” start policy
2. Config vars - Export all environment variables. You can import these into Sevalla via the dashboard or by uploading a .env file.
3. Add-ons - Identify your Heroku Postgres, Redis, and any third-party add-ons. Many third-party services (like SendGrid, Mailgun, or Sentry) continue working after migration since they connect via environment variables.
4. Custom domains - Note all custom domains and their DNS configuration.

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Phase 2: Recreate your app on Sevalla

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Step 1: Create datastores first

1. In the Sevalla dashboard, go to Databases > Create database
2. Select the database type and version (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Redis, or Valkey)
3. Configure the database name, user, and password
4. Select a data center location - this must match the location you choose for your application to enable internal connections
5. Choose a resource size and click Create database

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Step 2: Create your application

1. In the dashboard, go to Applications > Create > Application
2. Connect your Git provider (GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket) and select your repository, or deploy from a Docker image
3. Choose the same data center location as your databases
4. Select a process size

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Step 3: Configure environment variables

1. Go to your application’s Environment variables tab
2. Add your Heroku config vars - you can paste key=value pairs in bulk or import a .env file
3. Set each variable’s availability to Runtime, Build, or both

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Step 4: Set up internal connections

1. Go to your application’s Networking tab
2. Under Connected services, click Add internal connection
3. Select the database and check Add environment variables to the application to auto-populate connection details (e.g. DATABASE_HOST, DATABASE_PORT, DATABASE_USER, DATABASE_PASSWORD, DATABASE_NAME)
4. Click Add connection

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Step 5: Set up processes

1. Go to your application’s Processes tab
2. Update the web process start command if needed
3. Click Create new process to add background workers, cron jobs, or jobs as needed

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Step 6: Configure build settings

1. Go to Settings > Build strategy > Update build strategy
2. Select Buildpacks and choose the appropriate Heroku builder

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Phase 3: Migrate data and go live

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Step 1: Enable maintenance mode on Heroku

heroku maintenance:on --app YOUR_HEROKU_APP_NAME

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Step 2: Export your Heroku database

heroku pg:backups:capture --app YOUR_HEROKU_APP_NAME
heroku pg:backups:download --app YOUR_HEROKU_APP_NAME

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Step 3: Import data into Sevalla

pg_restore --verbose --no-acl --no-owner -d "SEVALLA_EXTERNAL_CONNECTION_STRING" latest.dump

mysql -h HOSTNAME -u USERNAME -P PORT -p DATABASE_NAME < export.sql

• PostgreSQL import/export
• MySQL import/export
• MariaDB import/export

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Alternative: Server-to-server migration without downloading

1. Create a new Sevalla application with a Dockerfile that includes the database client tools you need (e.g. postgres:17 or mysql:9 images already have them)
2. Add environment variables for both the Heroku source and Sevalla target connection strings
3. Set the start command to pipe the export directly into the import:

pg_dump --no-acl --no-owner -d "$SOURCE_DATABASE_URL" | pg_restore --no-acl --no-owner -d "$TARGET_DATABASE_URL"

mysqldump --no-tablespaces -h $SOURCE_HOST -u $SOURCE_USER -P $SOURCE_PORT -p$SOURCE_PASSWORD $SOURCE_DB | mysql -h $TARGET_HOST -u $TARGET_USER -P $TARGET_PORT -p$TARGET_PASSWORD $TARGET_DB

4. Deploy the application and monitor the logs to track progress
5. Once the migration completes, delete the migration application

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Step 4: Deploy your application

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Step 5: Update DNS records

1. Go to your application’s Domains tab and add your custom domain
2. Add the TXT record for domain verification at your DNS provider
3. Add the CNAME record for SSL certificate provisioning
4. Update your A record to point to the IP address provided by Sevalla
5. Allow time for DNS propagation

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Step 6: Verify and disable Heroku

1. Test all critical functionality
2. Verify database data integrity
3. Check that background workers and cron jobs are running as expected
4. Disable external connections on your Sevalla database if you enabled them for import
5. Scale down or delete your Heroku resources

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What’s next

• Pipelines - Set up dev/staging/production environments with preview apps
• CDN and edge caching - Enable the built-in Cloudflare CDN for faster delivery
• Analytics - Monitor performance with built-in compute and web analytics
• Auto-scaling - Configure automatic horizontal scaling based on CPU usage
• Webhooks - Get notified about deployment events and resource lifecycle changes