Extend Salesforce to a Fully Managed App Platform | Heroku

The Power of Salesforce. The Flexibility of Heroku.

You don’t have to choose between the world’s #1 AI CRM and the developer tools and languages you love. Heroku securely connects both, enabling developers to build custom, scalable applications that leverage the best of each platform without compromise.

Bring open-source to Salesforce with Heroku

Solve complex integration and data challenges across the Salesforce ecosystem, from Agentforce to Data 360, by giving developers the freedom to build with thousands of open-source libraries, add-ons, and frameworks.

In the agentic era, Agentforce provides the trusted AI for every agent interaction. To bring the most ambitious ideas to life, developers need creative flexibility. Heroku delivers that freedom, letting them use any language to build deeply integrated, data-driven solutions. This creates a true partnership between the Heroku AI Platform as a Service (AI PaaS) and the world’s #1 AI CRM.

Use your preferred developer tools to solve complex integration, data, and AI challenges.

Streamlined Salesforce integrations

Securely connect your custom apps to any Salesforce Cloud, like Agentforce and Data 360, with ease. Heroku tools, like AppLink and Connect, provide a streamlined integration, letting you safely trigger custom logic and seamlessly synchronize your data for a unified experience.

Bring any AI model to Salesforce

Build powerful agentic solutions that bring your Salesforce data to life. Heroku AI lets you leverage a wide range of modern frameworks, such as LangChain and LlamaIndex, and includes the pgvector extension to power truly context-aware applications.

Sync Salesforce data seamlessly

Keep your Heroku Postgres database in perfect, bi-directional sync with your Salesforce objects. Heroku Connect eliminates the need for complex, custom-built APIs, giving developers direct access to CRM data in a familiar SQL environment.

Build with any language

Innovation thrives when developers can use the best tool for the job. Heroku supports the languages and frameworks developers know and love, like Node.js, Python, .NET, and Java. This flexibility unlocks greater creativity and accelerates development for any application integrated with Salesforce.

Scale with confidence

From seasonal traffic spikes to mission-critical business operations, scale your custom applications and agents automatically. Heroku’s managed infrastructure handles the complexity, letting you focus on your code while ensuring both high performance and reliability.

Built on trust & security

Keep your Salesforce CRM data secure and compliant at the infrastructure level. Heroku’s managed platform offers Private Spaces for complete network isolation, while Heroku Shield provides the advanced controls needed to meet complex compliance requirements like HIPAA and PCI.

We’ve built our platform to move fast, and Agentforce fits right into that mindset. It’s not just answering questions—it’s actually taking action, using real-time data from Heroku and Salesforce to help us support customers more intelligently.

Unlock your data and applications on Salesforce with Heroku

When standard tools hit their limits, you need a way to unlock your Salesforce data to build truly differentiated customer experiences. Heroku provides an essential toolkit for safely and easily connecting apps, syncing data, and even expanding AI capabilities.

Heroku AppLink

Dramatically streamline the integration of custom applications into Salesforce. Heroku AppLink securely exposes your Heroku apps as manageable APIs that respect and apply Salesforce’s robust permission model, giving you granular control over data access. Use familiar tools like Salesforce Flows and Apex to safely add custom logic to your Agentforce agents. This brings the power and flexibility of the entire open-source ecosystem to Salesforce, all within a trusted and secure framework.

Heroku Connect

Seamless sync Salesforce data bi-directionally with a Heroku Postgres database. Heroku Connect eliminates the need to write and maintain fragile, custom-built integration APIs. Instead, developers can work with Salesforce data as if it were native to their Heroku application, using the power and familiarity of standard SQL. This allows you to build data-driven applications or create a powerful data hub with confidence in your data’s integrity.

What will you build with Heroku and Salesforce?

Stop stretching automation tools to their breaking point. To solve your most complex business challenges, combine the intelligence of Agentforce with the creative freedom of Heroku and build the custom solution you actually need.

Automated lead enrichment and smart routing

Create a powerful, automated sales pipeline. When a new lead enters Salesforce, trigger a Heroku application to enrich it with third-party data services or a custom AI model. Score and route leads in near real-time based on a complete data picture, ensuring your sales team always has the context they need to close deals faster.

Heroku Managed Inference and Agents
Heroku Connect

AI-Powered Personalized E-Commerce

Build a high-performance e-commerce site on Heroku, deeply connected to your Salesforce product and customer data. Integrate multiple AI models for real-time recommendations and fraud detection, creating a personalized experience for customers while providing a complete data picture for your support agents in Agentforce.

Heroku Managed Inference and Agents
Heroku AppLink
Heroku Connect

Personalized, real-time customer loyalty

Deliver personalized customer experiences that drive engagement and retention. Build a high-scale customer loyalty application on Heroku that syncs directly with your Salesforce data. Surface AI-driven offers and recommendations based on customer behavior, ensuring every interaction is relevant, timely, and impactful.

Heroku Managed Inference and Agents
Heroku AppLink
Heroku Connect

Heroku success stories

Oktana Builds Scalable Apps with Heroku and Salesforce

Oktana on Building Scalable Apps with Heroku and Salesforce - YouTube

The Salesforce Data Migration Team Reached 99.8% Data Accuracy for M&A with Heroku

Using Heroku, the Salesforce Data Migration Team replaced bespoke customer solutions with a single, reusable platform, which drastically increased the speed and accuracy of their work. This transformation reduced integration times from weeks to minutes and boosted data accuracy to 99.8%.

Audata Powers Global Support and Rapid Growth with Heroku and Agentforce

Audata projects a 50% revenue growth by using a scalable Heroku infrastructure and tightly integrated AI workflows to enhance operational efficiency. A key part of this strategy is its automated support system, which deflects 60% of inquiries and provides 24/7 coverage without increased staffing costs.

Heroku and Salesforce FAQs

What programming languages and frameworks are supported?

Virtually any. Heroku is a polyglot platform that supports virtually any modern programming language and framework through buildpacks. This support is delivered in two primary ways:

Officially supported: Heroku provides first-class, managed support for the most popular languages, including .NET, Node.js, Python, Java, Ruby, PHP, Go, Clojure, and Scala.
Community and custom: For any other language or framework, you can use the vast ecosystem of third-party buildpacks or create your own. This gives your development team the freedom to always use the best tool for the job.

What are the benefits of integrating Heroku with my Salesforce data?

Heroku unlocks the full potential of your Salesforce data, allowing you to build more powerful, scalable, and responsive applications. The key benefits include:

High-performance data access: By synchronizing data to a dedicated Heroku Postgres database with Heroku Connect, your applications can handle complex queries and high-traffic loads with low latency, protecting your Salesforce org’s performance and API limits.
Language and framework freedom: Your developers can build with the tools they know and love. Use Python for machine learning, Node.js for a real-time web app, or Java for enterprise-grade services, all interacting seamlessly with a continuously synced replica of your Salesforce data.
Advanced data processing: Tackle data-intensive tasks like complex analytics, ETL pipelines, and AI model training on Heroku’s scalable platform. Perform computations that would be impractical or impossible to run within Salesforce governor limits.
Simplified developer experience: Developers interact with a standard PostgreSQL database, using familiar ORMs and tools. Heroku Connect manages the complex data synchronization in the background, handling the intricacies of Salesforce APIs so your team can be more productive.

How is this different from building directly on the Salesforce Platform with Apex and Flows?

Think of Heroku as a powerful extension of the Salesforce Platform, not a replacement. While Apex and Flows are excellent for building in-CRM logic, Heroku excels when your project needs to:

Utilize a different tech stack, including popular open-source languages like Python, Node.js, Java, or .NET.
Leverage the open-source ecosystem by using specific libraries and frameworks for AI, data processing, and other specialized tasks.
Handle heavy computation, such as resource-intensive data processing or complex, long-running background jobs that exceed governor limits.
Build high-scale, public-facing apps, like customer portals.

Will Heroku Connect impact my Salesforce org's performance or API limits?

Heroku Connect is engineered to be highly efficient and to minimize its impact on your Salesforce org. It intelligently uses a combination of Salesforce APIs best suited for each task:

For ongoing updates, it uses the Streaming API to listen for changes in near real-time, an extremely efficient process.
For initial syncs and polling, it uses the Bulk API, which is optimized for processing large volumes of data without consuming standard API limits.

This dual-API model is often far more efficient than custom-built integrations and can actually help you reduce your overall API call usage.

What's the main benefit of Heroku AppLink over just building my own API?

While you can build your own API on Heroku, AppLink dramatically accelerates the process and reduces risk. AppLink is a free, managed integration that handles the hardest parts of connecting to Salesforce for you, including:

Secure authentication: Natively manages the complex OAuth flow between Heroku and Salesforce, saving significant development time.
Credential management: Securely stores and rotates tokens, eliminating the need to handle sensitive credentials in your application code.
Service discovery: Makes your Heroku apps easily discoverable within Salesforce, simplifying callouts from Apex and Flows.

Do I need Heroku to use Salesforce Agentforce?

No, you can build powerful agents for many tasks using only Salesforce’s native capabilities. However, Heroku becomes essential when you want to give your Agentforce agents additional “superpowers,” such as the ability to:

Access managed inference LLM models and use open-source libraries and frameworks, like LangChain and LlamaIndex, to build sophisticated, intelligent agents.
Execute complex business logic or data processing that exceeds governor limits.
Integrate with legacy systems or data sources that lack modern APIs.
Process massive datasets from external sources in real time.

Does Heroku support compliance requirements like HIPAA, PCI, or GDPR when integrating with my Salesforce data?

Yes, both Salesforce and Heroku are built on a foundation of security and trust, enabling you to build applications that can meet various regulatory standards. Compliance is a partnership that follows the Shared Responsibility Model:

Heroku’s responsibility: We are responsible for the compliance and security of the platform itself.
Your responsibility: You are responsible for building a compliant application on the platform, including how you configure services, manage access, and handle data.

To help you meet your responsibilities, Heroku offers the following tools and attestations:

HIPAA: You can build HIPAA-compliant applications that handle Protected Health Information (PHI) by using Heroku Shield products, which include Shield Private Spaces and Shield Dynos. A Business Associate Addendum (BAA) with Salesforce is required.
PCI DSS: Heroku is a PCI DSS Level 1 Service Provider, providing a certified environment for you to build applications that process or transmit cardholder data.
GDPR & Data residency: Heroku Private Spaces help you meet data residency requirements by allowing you to select the geographic region where your applications and data reside.

Resources

Heroku provides a wide range of technical materials to support app development on Heroku and the broader Salesforce platform.

Pocast Episodes

What’s Possible with Heroku AppLink

Jon Dodson is joined by Chris Wall, Salesforce Architect and creator of AppLink, to explore what AppLink offers developers and how it brings Heroku and Salesforce closer together.