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Docker vs Portainer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Docker
Ranking in Container Management
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Development Platforms (1st), Software Supply Chain Security (6th)
Portainer
Ranking in Container Management
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Docker is 3.6%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Portainer is 5.7%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Sunny Nair - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers application conversion to Docker image and a mature environment
The learning curve with Docker is huge and extensive. Adopting Docker is a bit difficult because it requires a lot of expertise and background, including an understanding of networking and security concepts. Many professionals are facing issues with the different architectures that interact with each other in Docker. Whenever in our company, we are working with the production environment, professionals are hesitant to adopt Docker due to the extensive learning curve, and most of the team members in our company are more accustomed to an environment like VMware instead of Docker. Docker runs on scripts, so if AI can automate most of the scripting process in Docker, it would be a great advantage in the future version of Docker. As of now, we can create scripts utilizing most of the functions within Docker, but that initial planning phase wherein to understand exactly how you will plan for the resources, how you will convert applications into a Docker-based image, and similar tasks needs to be simplified so that more professionals can adopt Docker.
EB
A GUI solution that helps to administer a docker using a browser
The first time using Portainer involves a learning curve. It takes longer as you're unfamiliar with the processes and might be lazy to consult the manual. Initially, you may rely on intuition within the GUI. However, after repeating the same tasks three or four times, the process becomes much quicker.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Docker is highly scalable."
"The current version is quite good with our application."
"Docker's containerization property is its main selling point."
"Docker is easy to understand and follow. It provides good scalability to the application."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the Dockerfile, which makes the life of developers easy. Developers get a real understanding of container creation."
"Docker packages up an application as a single item that you can then run without the need to install or configure it to work on any specific machine."
"Containerization is the most valuable feature. I can communicate to the Docker containers using other containers."
"In our line of work, we've been involved in various sectors, such as industrial products, transportation, client engineering, telecom, and medical. For instance, we're currently developing an IT platform. One key use case we're tackling is device management."
"Portainer comes with the ability to take the information of docker definition. Using it, I can visually observe how the container has been created. It allows me to create networks. I can also visually generate volumes and working stacks."
 

Cons

"The Kubernetes blocks need improvement since Docker has many holes in it."
"Stability is an area with a shortcoming."
"There is always room for improvement. I often refer to forums such as StackOverflow to learn from other developers' experiences and the challenges they have faced while using Docker."
"The product does not have an extensive documentation. The tool does not have good scenarios. We have to go through the GitHub repository and investigate similar scenarios. Also, if you are copying multiple things, then you can jeopardize the copy number. The copying aspect also lacks a UI part. We also need to limit the memory."
"I would like to see a more UI-based tool so that students can easily understand it rather than memorizing all of the Docker commands."
"There are elements of stability that are problematic. One of the most recent upgrades created a major incident on our cloud, whereby the containers were not restarting automatically."
"The solution is not easy to manage and it is one of the reasons why people introduce orchestration tools to manage it."
"We would like to see improvement in adding the node into the Docker Swarm cluster, as at present it is a little tricky and requires a lot of manual steps."
"Portainer needs to be more intuitive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is not expensive."
"Docker has made some changes and there is an enterprise version that is affordable."
"Docker is a free open-source solution."
"The solution is an open-source technology and not a commercial product. However, you will have to pay sometimes. The tool's pricing depends on the vendor."
"Docker is open source. To use a Docker enterprise model, we would need to pay for it."
"It's free."
"Customers pay for the license through a yearly subscription model, where they pay per license. This means that the license is based on a subscription, and the customer pays annually for each license they use."
"Docker is a free-to-use solution. However, Docker Enterprise is not free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Docker?
We are using Docker to host applications.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Docker?
Regarding the cost, Mirantis Container Cloud is cheaper than other solutions like Red Hat. The license costs around 10,000 Indian rupees per year.
What needs improvement with Docker?
Mirantis Container Cloud should have AI integration tools, which are not available right now. These tools should assist in app scalability and deployment error handling.
What do you like most about Portainer?
Portainer comes with the ability to take the information of docker definition. Using it, I can visually observe how the container has been created. It allows me to create networks. I can also visua...
What needs improvement with Portainer?
Portainer needs to be more intuitive.
What is your primary use case for Portainer?
The tool is a GUI that helps to administer a docker using a browser.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Amazon Web Services (AWS), VMware and others in Container Management. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.