Heroku product here: the Essential 0 and 1 plans replace the older row-limited Heroku Postgres mini/basic plans at the same price points but better perf in a lot of scenarios and a storage instead of row limit - forcing people to denormalize for row count wasn't ideal under old mini/basic limits. The Essential-2 plan is a new option for a larger pre-prod/test/small-scale DB option above what we offered before.

We're expanding the Aurora-backed offerings to include larger dedicated DBs in the relatively near future as well.

Gail Frederick our CTO talked a bit more about it at high-level during re:Invent 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZLcv7rwj7Y&t=1955s

Why did I think you were leading the Apex product team?

I was for quite a few years - moved to Heroku in Q3 last year for an interesting opportunity. Apex is in good hands with Daniel Ballinger (and I stay in touch with a bunch of team if that helps).