I don't have experience with any other PaaS's so I can't recommend one, but what you say is what I commonly hear.
Your solution is: 1. move off to the competition who are offering a subpar service;
2. then wait until they eventually catch up in (how many years? who knows..);
3. then profit?
Heroku is around, because there is no other service that offers the ease and convenience. I looked at Fly.io and Render and they are nowhere close and mature to Heroku at the moment.
For example, here is Fly.io's "Solution" for Redis:
> Setting up Redis requires launching it as a separate app. ..
Or if you want something as commmon as Sidekiq.. have fun messing with configuraiton files: https://fly.io/docs/app-guides/multiple-processes/
Now let's compare this to the Heroku experience:
How to use Redis:
Step 1. Add a Redis addone
Step 2. There is no step 2.
How about Sidekiq?
Step 1. Add a worker
Step 2. Update your Procfile
Step 3. There is no step 3.
Fly.io tells me to "Just Use Bash"..
So while I kind of see where are you coming from, unfortunately all these alternatives fall short. Not to mention that Heroku has hundreds of integrations built-in.
Just because it's a slick product to get going doesn't mean that you can trust it to be a reliable and secure host—or be around for the long-term.
I think it's obvious an ecosystem without a Heroku will help the upstarts. I understand that doesn't help you get a new host today. I'm not telling you to just go to another PaaS and expect them to be the next Heroku in a couple of years—chances are they won't be.
It's not unlike Google Search. Google Search has atrophied over the years but because it's still the best in the market, it's used by almost everyone. Competition is hard to build because it has to be better than Google Search in order to bother using it.
Heroku competitors have struggled in part because Heroku is a fully featured platform. It's relatively easy to build a platform that ticks a couple of boxes really well but building something that matches Heroku in feature parity is a daunting task. In order for competition to get there they need customers and funding, and funding is way easier to get the more customers come in through the door.
Once Heroku dies (perhaps already since this incident) we'll start to see real competition in this space because their competition will be getting used. The PaaS space needs that oxygen Heroku is taking up.
