Ah I see. That's a fair point. With Heroku you delegate both (1) the server management and (2) the deployment aspects of an application. Dokku seems to solve (2), I hope someone will come up with an automated solution to turn a linux box into a secured application runtime.

I use digital ocean apps and can't help but feel grifted, the price for what you're getting in specs is terrible compared to a VPS or a bare metal. The same is true with Render or Fly. But I just don't have the time or confidence to run my own server.

I feel like there is an opportunity for huge savings here, I just need that fictional piece of software.