Heroku vs Red Hat OpenShift comparison

Heroku and Red Hat are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. Heroku is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.0, while Red Hat is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.3. Heroku holds a 3.4% mindshare in PSP, compared to Red Hat’s 12.0% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of Heroku users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Heroku

Read 29 Heroku reviews

2,066 Views
609 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Red Hat OpenShift

Read 62 Red Hat OpenShift reviews

8,342 Views
2,419 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Heroku

Red Hat OpenShift

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Heroku and Red Hat OpenShift are competing in the cloud platform space, focusing on application hosting and management. Heroku excels in ease of use and competitive pricing, while Red Hat OpenShift has an edge due to its robust feature set appealing to enterprises.

Features: Heroku is valued for its simplicity, seamless integration with Salesforce, and a diverse add-on marketplace. Red Hat OpenShift shines with its scalability, advanced security, and support for hybrid cloud deployments, offering flexibility with comprehensive features suitable for complex enterprise needs.

Room for Improvement: Heroku could improve by offering more advanced deployment options, enhancing its enterprise-level features, and providing more comprehensive customer support. Red Hat OpenShift would benefit from simplifying its deployment model, reducing initial setup costs, and enhancing its user interface for less tech-savvy users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Heroku provides a streamlined deployment process with a user-friendly interface, making it ideal for developers. However, its customer service is somewhat basic. Red Hat OpenShift offers a more intricate deployment model but compensates with strong enterprise-level support, catering to organizations needing solid infrastructure and comprehensive deployment options.

Pricing and ROI: Heroku is cost-effective for small to medium projects with transparent pricing models, offering good ROI. Red Hat OpenShift, while involving higher setup costs, delivers significant ROI for large enterprises, providing comprehensive capabilities justifying its investment for businesses with extensive scalability needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Heroku vs. Red Hat OpenShift Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Heroku vs. Red Hat OpenShift

June 2025

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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

Heroku

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

14th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Red Hat OpenShift

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Virtualization Software (10th), Container Management (12th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (7th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Heroku is 3.4%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 12.0%, up from 11.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

Cristian-Molina

Senior Developer at Go Coeupas

Has a quick development cycle and continuous integration

The initial setup is straightforward. Heroku integrates well. You only have to push the code, and it automatically deploys the new version. Whether you have permission depends on the application. Currently, I have one application that I deploy myself. I rate the initial setup a nine out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

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Pratul Shukla

Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Adopting a flexible and efficient approach with noticeable improvements in operational costs and continued challenges in job management

Currently, one of the biggest challenges we face is with services and jobs. For spawning batches, although it has crons, it is not easy to integrate with enterprise systems such as Autosys. The entire company uses Autosys, but we are not able to integrate it effectively. We need intermediate servers to run OC utility commands and initiate the cron job. We have to do a lot of modifications to ensure our batches work properly. With physical or virtual servers, even in AWS, we are able to write and manage multiple jobs. Managing batches in Red Hat OpenShift has been a significant challenge. Integrating third parties is a challenge with Red Hat OpenShift. For example, with Elasticsearch, onboarding itself was difficult, running file beats and dealing with routing issues. It is not straightforward, especially since we have some components in AWS as. AWS has many capabilities that come out of the box and are easier to work with compared to Red Hat OpenShift. Red Hat OpenShift's biggest disadvantage is they do not provide any private cloud setup where we can host on our site using their services. The main reason we went with Red Hat OpenShift was because it is a private cloud, and we have regulatory requirements that prevent us from using public cloud.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is stable."

"It is easy to deploy applications, and we don't need to bother about software updates on the server. We don't need to bother about machines, servers, and hardware. We only need to care about the system and functionality that we need or want to develop. They take care of everything else. It provides high availability. It is a pretty good solution that provides everything that we need. It has everything that we need to run our applications. We have many different applications, and we generate three million bills for a company in Brazil. We see more than a billion requests per day in another application. Everything works just fine, and it is very good."

"What I found most valuable about this solution is that it's easy to use and integrate with GitHub actions."

"Valuable for us was the fast deployment. This means the time to market is improved without pain for developers."

"It's easy to push a change and to deploy new things."

"Thanks to Heroku, we don't need to do as much direct management in AWS."

"The most valuable feature of Heroku is the continuous integration and applications it provides."

"The platform is very Node.js-friendly, which is something that is important to us."

More Heroku pros

"OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins."

"OpenShift's superior dashboard is a notable strength, especially when compared to Kubernetes."

"What I like best about OpenShift is that it can reduce some of the costs of having multiple applications because you can just move them into small container applications. For example, applications don't need to run for twenty days, only to be used up by Monday. Through OpenShift, you can move some of the small applications into any cloud. I also find the design of OpenShift good."

"The concept of containers and scaling on demand is a feature I appreciate the most about Red Hat OpenShift."

"Valuable features include time to market, avoiding vendor lock-in, and the ease of working in a multi-cloud environment."

"The security is good."

"We want to build a solution that can be deployable to any cloud because of client requirements and OpenShift allows us to do this."

"I love to automate everything and OpenShift was been born for that. It takes care of the network layer itself and I don't need to dive into it; I can work on a top level. Our project has numerous services designed to run in Docker containers, and we have run almost all pieces in OpenShift."

More Red Hat OpenShift pros

Cons

"They could flesh out some of their analytics a little more."

"Their support is good, but they can improve their response time."

"The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly."

"Heroku had an authentication problem a few months ago, but they solved it."

"Heroku doesn't support Docker images on the CI infrastructure."

"We have to do daily restarts of some processes, which is annoying, and the support for custom CI could be better."

"Heroku should increase its slug size limits."

"I think this solution would be improved if free demos were available indefinitely."

More Heroku cons

"One of the features that I've observed in Tanzu Mission Control is that I can manage multiple Kubernetes environments. For instance, one of my lines of business is using OpenShift OKD; another one wants to use Google Anthos, and somebody else wants to use VMware Tanzu. If I have to manage all these, Tanzu Mission Control is giving me the opportunity to completely manage all of my Kubernetes clusters, whereas, with OpenShift, I can only manage a particular area. I can't manage other Kubernetes clusters. I would like to have the option to manage all Kubernetes clusters with OpenShift."

"The latest 4.0 version of OpenShift disabled a few of the features we previously made use of, although this wasn't a huge deal."

"The GUI could have more capabilities, particularly around virtualization."

"The platform's documentation could be more comprehensive to cover the full spectrum of user needs. Sometimes, achieving specific goals is challenging due to a lack of detailed guidance."

"Documentation and technical support could be improved. The product is good, but when we raise a case with support—say we are having an image issue—the support is not really up to the mark. It is difficult to get support... When we raise a case, their support people will hesitate to get on a call or a screen-sharing session. That is a major drawback when it comes to OpenShift."

"We experienced issues around desktop security, that stopped us implementing a new feature that had been developed."

"The GUI could have more capabilities, particularly around virtualization. Some features are missing, such as storage migrations, when compared with VMware."

"The area for improvement is mostly in support for legacy applications."

More Red Hat OpenShift cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Heroku could be less expensive."

"There is a standard fee for a processing unit, they call them "dynos," and then you pay for add-ons."

"Its price is very good."

"The tool is free."

"I rate the tool's pricing a three out of ten."

"The licensing cost for OpenShift is expensive when compared to other products. RedHat also charges you additional costs apart from the standard licensing fees."

"Pricing of OpenShift depends on the number of nodes and who is hosting it."

"It's expensive. It may be cheaper to invest in building Vanilla Kubernetes, especially if security is not the number one motivation or requirement. Of course, that's difficult, and in some business areas, such as banking, that's not something you can put as a second priority. In other situations, a Vanilla Kubernetes with a sufficiently strong team can be cheaper and almost as effective."

"It's important to start small because the solution is scalable. We can build our cluster and look at the bundle option, not the external subscriptions. Talking to the people at Red Hat can save us money."

"The cost is quite high."

"The price depends on the type and the nature of the organizations, along with the types of projects that are of considerable range."

"The pricing is standard; the solution isn't particularly expensive or affordable."

"The product has reasonable pricing."

More Red Hat OpenShift pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Educational Organization

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

30%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Heroku?

I like the tool's scalability, CLI, and dashboards.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Heroku?

I don't like that the web server crashes every day, every 24 hours. The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly. The Docker features are not great. You cannot use any ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Heroku?

We use the solution for web applications and web APIs.

See all answers

How does OpenShift compare with Amazon AWS?

Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderful dashboard mechanism to alert us in case the application is over-committing or ...

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Which would you recommend - Pivotal Cloud Foundry or OpenShift?

Pivotal Cloud Foundry is a cloud-native application platform to simplify app delivery. It is efficient and effective. The best feature is how easy it is to handle external services such as database...

See all answers

What do you like most about OpenShift?

OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure vs Heroku

Compared 24% of the time

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Heroku

Compared 12% of the time

AWS Fargate vs Heroku

Compared 10% of the time

Google App Engine vs Heroku

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon Lightsail vs Heroku

Compared 5% of the time

More Heroku Competitors

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 15% of the time

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 14% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 13% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 8% of the time

Google Cloud vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 7% of the time

More Red Hat OpenShift Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Heroku

June 2025

Download Heroku product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat OpenShift

June 2025

Download Red Hat OpenShift product report

Overview

Established in 2007, Heroku is a cloud application platform providing a streamlined, efficient place for web app developers to create and deploy their applications. Heroku is designed to maximize developer productivity. With the entire web application development process available on the Herokucloud, creating and rolling out web apps has been made more efficient, convenient, and cost-effective than ever before.

Heroku

Red Hat OpenShift offers a robust, scalable platform with strong security and automation, suitable for container orchestration, application deployment, and microservices architecture.

Designed to modernize applications by transitioning from legacy systems to cloud-native environments, Red Hat OpenShift provides powerful CI/CD integration and Kubernetes compatibility. Its security features, multi-cloud support, and source-to-image functionality enhance deployment flexibility. While the GUI offers user-friendly navigation, users benefit from its cloud-agnostic nature and efficient lifecycle management. However, improvements are needed in documentation, configuration complexity, and integration with third-party platforms. Pricing and high resource demands can also be challenging for wider adoption.

What are the key features of Red Hat OpenShift?

Security: Comprehensive security features ensure safe deployments and operations.
Scalability: Auto-scaling and monitoring capabilities cater to high-demand environments.
CI/CD Integration: Seamless integration for efficient continuous deployment processes.
Cloud Compatibility: Supports multi-cloud and on-premise solutions with ease.
GUI: Simplifies platform management and enhances usability.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Improved Efficiency: Streamlined operations reduce time and resource investments.
Enhanced Flexibility: Adapt quickly to changing demands and environments.
Quick Deployment: Fast application deployment supports agile project timelines.
Robust Support: Access to dependable customer support services.

Red Hat OpenShift is strategically implemented for diverse industries focusing on container orchestration and application modernization. Organizations leverage it for migrating applications to cloud-native environments and managing CI/CD pipelines. Its functionality facilitates efficient resource management and microservices architecture adoption, supporting enterprise-level DevOps practices. Users employ it across cloud and on-premises platforms to drive performance improvements.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

Facebook, UrbanDictionary, Code for America, Mailchimp, Rapportive, GitHub, TED, and Lyft.

UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton

Buyer's Guide

Heroku vs. Red Hat OpenShift

June 2025

Free Report: Heroku vs. Red Hat OpenShift

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