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Heroku Connect is a data synchronization service that links Salesforce with a Heroku Postgres database. While it serves a purpose, sync failures often require time-consuming heroku connect manual fixes from engineers.
This necessary but tedious intervention pulls developers away from their main job: building and improving your core product. Fortunately, Stacksync offers a modern solution that automates issue resolution, eliminating the need for most of these manual repairs.
While Heroku Connect can be useful, its limitations become clear the moment an error occurs. Developers often have to stop what they're doing and dive into technical logs and documentation just to figure out what went wrong [1]. These fixes are always reactive, meaning you're fixing problems after they've already happened, which can lead to significant data gaps and application downtime. The engineering hours spent troubleshooting, writing temporary scripts, and making manual database changes add up quickly. These are just symptoms of the broader Salesforce-Postgres sync challenges that many teams face.
When using Heroku Connect, developers often run into a handful of common errors that stop data from flowing and require hands-on fixing. While Heroku provides general troubleshooting guides, the solutions are often complex and take valuable time to implement [2].
Errors like InvalidDatabaseException and DatabaseValidationFailed are a major roadblock. They usually mean that critical metadata tables Heroku Connect needs to function are missing from your database, causing the connection to fail [3]. The official manual fix recommended by Heroku is to delete and completely recreate the connection from scratch—a disruptive process. Other common write errors also demand manual investigation, forcing you to search through logs to find the root cause of the failure [4].
Another frequent problem is the value too long for type character varying(...) error. This typically happens when a field in Salesforce has its length shortened, but some existing data is longer than the new limit. When Heroku Connect tries to sync this oversized data, the database rejects it [5]. The manual process to fix this involves finding the exact record and field in Salesforce and either shortening the text or changing the database schema.
Sometimes, a mapping will get stuck with the status "Altering DB schema," which completely freezes the data sync. This can be caused by long-running database queries that are locking tables or by foreign key constraints that prevent schema changes [6]. The manual steps to resolve this are complex and risky, involving connecting to the database, finding and killing the blocking queries, or even dropping database constraints. These diagnostic steps add yet another layer of technical work for your team to manage [7].
Instead of constantly patching a fragile system, engineering teams have a better option. You can replace Heroku Connect with an affordable solution that is designed from the ground up for reliability, scale, and ease of use. Stacksync is that robust, automated alternative that ends the cycle of manual firefighting.
Stacksync features an Issue Management dashboard that gives you a clear, centralized view of all sync issues, which helps you avoid the silent failures that can happen with Heroku Connect. It empowers your team to retry or revert a failed sync with a single click—no manual scripting or database changes required. With real-time alerting and notifications, your team is proactively informed of any problems through tools like Slack or email, allowing you to address them before they affect your operations.
Many of the data drift and mismatch issues in Heroku Connect's batch-based system simply don't happen with Stacksync. Our platform's real-time, bidirectional sync architecture prevents these problems from occurring in the first place. By ensuring data changes are propagated instantly and consistently between systems, Stacksync dramatically reduces the likelihood of schema conflicts and "value too long" errors. This is a fundamental difference in the Heroku Connect vs. Stacksync showdown for ops teams.
Hitting API rate limits is a frequent cause of sync failures. Stacksync's Smart API Rate Limits feature automatically manages your API usage to avoid hitting these caps. This is a huge improvement over the manual performance tuning often needed for Heroku Connect, which can involve complex diagnostics just to keep data flowing smoothly [8].
The manual fixes required by Heroku Connect represent a hidden cost that drains valuable engineering resources and slows down your roadmap. Stacksync offers a robust, automated, and modern alternative for Salesforce-Postgres synchronization that frees your team from reactive, low-value maintenance tasks. By adopting a proactive and reliable data sync solution, you empower your engineers to focus on what they do best: building the features that drive your business forward.
Ready to put an end to manual sync fixes? Learn more about why Stacksync is the ideal Heroku Connect alternative and book a demo with our team today.
