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High latency in Heroku Connect can be a major roadblock for any business that relies on up-to-the-minute data between Salesforce and Heroku Postgres. For mission-critical applications like customer-facing portals, internal tools, and real-time analytics, delays of minutes or even hours are simply not acceptable. These disruptions can lead to poor user experiences, operational inefficiencies, and decisions based on stale information.
If you're tired of grappling with Heroku Connect high latency, there is a purpose-built solution. Stacksync is designed to eliminate these delays by offering true real-time, two-way synchronization, ensuring your data is always current, accurate, and available when you need it most.
Heroku Connect is a data synchronization service that creates a bridge between your Salesforce data and a Heroku Postgres database [5]. While useful, its architecture has inherent limitations that often lead to significant latency. Understanding these issues is the first step toward solving them.
At its core, Heroku Connect was originally designed to use a polling mechanism to check for changes, which by default runs every 10 minutes. While the service later evolved to use the Salesforce Streaming API for a more event-driven approach [3], the underlying architecture can still introduce delays. Even with newer features like Accelerated Polling using Salesforce Change Data Capture (CDC), the system is fundamentally reactive rather than instantaneous and may not deliver the true real-time performance modern applications require [7].
Performance issues with Heroku Connect often go deeper than its sync cycle. The service can be forced to use the slower SOAP API instead of the much faster Bulk API for certain types of record changes, dramatically increasing sync times [4].
Furthermore, performance can be limited by the Heroku Postgres database itself. Factors like network latency between the user and the database server, as well as variable I/O throughput on the underlying infrastructure, can create significant slowdowns [8]. For engineering teams, diagnosing these complex and overlapping issues is a time-consuming and often frustrating process [1]. A deeper analysis reveals that these challenges are inherent to the Salesforce-Postgres sync model that Heroku Connect employs.
Stacksync is a modern alternative designed from the ground up for speed, reliability, and scalability. It replaces the problematic polling model with a sophisticated event-driven architecture that captures and syncs data changes in milliseconds, not minutes.
This real-time capability sets Stacksync apart from traditional ETL/ELT tools and direct competitors, providing a clear advantage for operational use cases where speed is critical. You can explore a more detailed comparison of Stacksync vs. Heroku Connect and Fivetran to see how our architecture delivers superior performance.
For teams looking for a robust and affordable solution, Stacksync is an ideal replacement for Heroku Connect that scales with your business.
The differences in architecture lead to significant gaps in performance and reliability. Here’s a clear comparison:
This table only scratches the surface. For a more comprehensive review, check out our 2025 Heroku Connect comparison on cost, speed, and scalability.
While Heroku Connect was a functional tool for its time, its architectural limitations create significant Heroku Connect high latency issues that have become a liability for modern, data-driven businesses. Waiting for data is no longer an option.
Stacksync provides a faster, more reliable, and scalable alternative that empowers your teams to build robust, real-time applications with confidence. By eliminating sync delays and providing powerful management tools, Stacksync ensures your data is always where it needs to be, right when it's needed.
Ready to cut latency and unlock real-time data?
Book a demo with a Stacksync expert today.
