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IBM Public Cloud vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

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

IBM Public Cloud
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
15th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
IoT Platforms (1st)
Pivotal Cloud Foundry
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
16th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of IBM Public Cloud is 3.6%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 5.0%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Public Cloud3.6%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry5.0%
Other91.4%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Premnath Jaganathan - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at Uop Ipl
Affordability and security improve our cloud experience while learning new systems
I'm not working with any AI features in IBM Public Cloud, but they are in the process of building it.I am very satisfied with the security that IBM Public Cloud provides. I would rate IBM Public Cloud eight out of ten, where one is worst and ten is the best.
reviewer2263239 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
PCF allows for fine-grained configuration, especially regarding scaling but routing limitations
Something that can be done better is canary deployment. So, right now, we're using blue-green deployment. The support for canary deployment would be nice. A few things, such as what OpenShift does better are cluster management. Like, you can manage the entire thing together. Currently, it's possible to manage all the clusters, especially when it comes to cluster management using straightforward configuration. As of now, we have to handle each application instance individually, which means servicing them one by one. It would be better if we could perform these actions as a group or in a more streamlined manner. One more downside is actually the cost of this environment. So, major downside of Pivotal, it's the cost. So, the runtime running costs are very high. Extremely high.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Regarding advice, I would recommend others choose IBM Public Cloud because it's straightforward, has a good environment, and is cost-effective."
"It is easy to deploy what you need for the initial setup"
"In terms of performance, resiliency, and availability, it is second to none."
"I don't have much experience with this solution, but I would recommend it to others."
"The stability is excellent; it's 200% stable with no bugs or glitches, it doesn't crash or freeze, and it's extremely reliable with great performance."
"The price of IBM Cloud is most valuable for us. The service is personable and gives us a good rapport. I can't say it's the best, but it was enough for our needs."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Public Cloud is the AI integrations."
"An advantage of IBM Public Cloud is the bare metal server. We can take the bare metal server. It's not shared with anyone. We can deploy our applications without sharing them with anyone. That is an advantage of IBM Public Cloud."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very easy to use compared to other cloud technologies, and it has very good performance."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring and that the deployment is easier."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."
"It provides a set of developer-friendly tools that simplify application deployment."
"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."
"The solution is stable and resilient. In our company, we do not even see any challenges with the solution."
"We find its stability and scalability valuable."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."
 

Cons

"Recently, we just faced some issues with the operating system due to the end of life of CentOS 6...So, then the client wanted to try it out under AWS instead of IBM. In short, it has some complexities."
"They do not have a very good virtual network implemented, and the VPC is the most important feature that needs to be improved."
"The IBM Cloud is less stable than AWS, Google, and Oracle."
"The deployment can be a bit of a pain. There are a lot of packages and a lot of options and it can require complex configuration to get it right."
"The initial setup and the pricing are areas that need improvement."
"An improvement that I would like to see is better configuration capability."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly deployment process in the next release of this solution."
"There is not a lot of support for this solution, which is something that needs to be improved."
"Scalability is terrible. So far we have not been able to scale it up."
"The initial setup was not easy, it was a bit complex."
"Regarding the setup phase, every step is a hurdle. With Pivotal Cloud Foundry, I won't get any proper resources for that. Even if I Google it, there is no proper solution for Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"In the next release, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience."
"In the next release, I would like to see easy integration with external tools."
"I'd like to see a larger service offering."
"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it t can take time for users to learn it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the trial version of this solution, so we have not paid anything."
"Pricing is not as fair as Amazon or Azure."
"In order to be competitive, you have to commit to a contract for at least one year, but you pay a fixed monthly fee."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a nine out of ten."
"It pretty much has a standard price. There is no hidden price with IBM Public Cloud."
"IBM has a lesser price compared to other cloud service providers like Azure and AWS."
"IBM Public Cloud is pretty cheap. They have an ongoing free tier that basically won't expire, so as long as your solution is small enough, you can have a test set that you can use for demos, which will cost you almost nothing."
"The price of IBM Cloud is very cheap compared to competitors AWS and Azure."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."
"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."
"We do pay for the licensing cost because we have opted for a private cloud setup. So, it is a cloud setup, and we have to make payments based on the cloud size. I do not consider it very costly when comparing it to the market."
"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
11%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
29%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to manage data and applications. One of the features we like is the cloud activity ...
What needs improvement with IBM Public Cloud?
The connectivity and speed of IBM Public Cloud are much lower compared to the competition.
What is your primary use case for IBM Public Cloud?
Working with cloud solutions in general, specifically AWS ( /products/amazon-aws-reviews ) and Azure ( /products/microsoft-azure-reviews ).I am completely new to IBM Public Cloud, so it is a learni...
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...
 

Also Known As

IBM Bluemix
PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uvionics Tech, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alpha Modus, Inventive, Web Business Consulting, FindBrok, SilverHook Powerboats, United Way of Allegheny County
Humana, Citibank, Mercedes Benz, Liberty Mutual, The Home Depot, GE, West Corp, Merrill Corporation, CoreLogic, Orange, Dish Network, Comcast, Bloomberg, Internal Revenue Service, Ford Motor Company, Garmin, Volkswagen, Solera, Allstate, US Air Force, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, ScotiaBank
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Public Cloud vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.