Scaling a Real Estate Platform, from Heroku Bottlenecks to AWS Resilience

Industry: Real Estate Software
Region: Global
Company Size: Scale-up
Use Case: Replatforming from Heroku to AWS for performance and resilience
Products Used: EKS, Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, ElastiCache, S3, Terraform, FluxCD, Helm, Github Actions

Challenge

The customer, a real estate software platform, was hitting hard limits with Heroku’s PaaS model. Scaling workloads was becoming increasingly complex and costly, and there was a growing need for more control, resilience, and automation.

They recognized AWS as the right long-term solution, but the complexity of migrating a live production environment, without disrupting customer-facing services, was a significant concern.

“We knew AWS was the right direction, but feared the unknowns of replatforming and whether downtime would affect our users.”

Why VeUP

With a history of enabling high-impact migrations for startups and scale-ups, VeUP stepped in to:

• Redesign infrastructure using AWS-native managed services
• Migrate PostgreSQL with minimal downtime
• Replace Heroku’s abstracted workflows with IaC-based pipelines
• Increase cost efficiency and performance across the stack
• Define strict controls via a secured landing zone

Our Approach

1. Strategic Replatforming

• Transitioned from Heroku to Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
• Implemented Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL for high-availability data workloads
• Migrated cache layer to Amazon ElastiCache Redis
• Enabled object storage with Amazon S3

2. Automation First

• Adopted full Infrastructure as Code using Terraform
• Defined all Kubernetes resources with Helm for reproducibility
• Automated change management with Github Actions, FluxCD, and Atlantis
• Integrated Write-Ahead Logging for PostgreSQL to allow nearly uninterrupted migration

3. Secure, Controlled Cloud Foundation

• Built out a secured AWS Organization landing zone
• Applied stringent controls for compliance and visibility
• Provided extensive documentation and knowledge transfer

Looking Ahead

The platform is now positioned to grow efficiently, launch new features faster, and handle traffic surges with ease. Replacing Heroku’s constraints with AWS’s scalability and governance has laid the foundation for long-term agility.

Inspired by This Story?

If you’re facing scaling limits on Heroku or a similar platform, VeUP’s expert-led AWS replatforming can help you modernize, automate, and grow – without slowing down your users.