Change the Plan of a Heroku Postgres Database

In August Heroku announced that they will discontinue free product plans. One of the consequences is that the hobby dev plan for Postgress will also be discontinued. You must update your database before the 28th of November if you want to keep your data. In this article, I will explain how to upgrade your Heroku Postgres database.

1. First, we need to create the new Postgres Database with the desired plan. Here is a list of all plans currently available. Insert your app name and the desired plan in the following command.

heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:<DESIRED PLAN> --app <APP NAME>

In my case, I chose the mini plan and my app name is example-app

heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:mini --app example-app

If successful, you will receive the following message as can be seen in the image.

2. Set the app in maintenance mode so no new data is added to the primary database.

heroku maintenance:on -a example-app

Your app is now in maintenance mode and will not be accessible.