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Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud 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

Pivotal Cloud Foundry
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
15th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
18th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 4.9%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud is 1.2%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Pivotal Cloud Foundry4.9%
Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud1.2%
Other93.9%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Adrian Bilauca - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Software Engineer at Totalsoft
Handles security setups independently for a more secure environment
OpenShift does have more secure features. Azure also has equivalent services. For my client, it was good enough to switch to Azure. For development, there wasn't any significant change in effort, however, for the DevOps team, it was a relief since Azure has managed services. We used elasticity and scalability all over.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."
"The most valuable features of Pivotal Cloud Foundry are its ease of use and the command line interface has the ability to push instances to the cloud easily."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is the UI, it is easy to use."
"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."
"The portability, moving from one platform to another, is easy."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The stability of the solution is good."
"I've used the elasticity and scalability all over."
"For the DevOps team, it was a relief since Azure has managed services."
"The most valuable feature of Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud is the UI console. We are able to receive the resources from the console directly."
"Our pipeline integrates various monitoring tools like Fortify for security checks. Once the pipeline processes the code, the finished product is deployed on Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud. We ensure application setup and recovery by utilizing two separate clusters on OpenShift."
"In general, customers appreciate its ability to run different workloads, manage applications through CI/CD pipelines like Jenkins, and leverage tools like Helm charts and Kako."
 

Cons

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is not scalable, infinitely, because when you install it on a set of virtual machines it is very hard to scale. It's easy to scale on an application level, but not it is not similar to if you were using Amazon. Amazon you can scale thousands of applications."
"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."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve on the technology, it is a bit complex."
"There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it t can take time for users to learn it."
"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."
"In the next release, I would like to see easy integration with external tools."
"It is not straightforward to setup."
"There is more work and effort needed for when many of the managed services are not accessible, especially in the security area. You have to do your own security setups as opposed to using a managed firewall."
"The service mesh integrations could improve the solution."
"There is room for improvement in cluster-based queue monitoring and autoscaling."
"The general purpose solution tries to cater to too many customers so it is heavy."
"The installation and configuration procedure should be simplified."
"The performance could be better; it's a bit slow right now."
"At this point, I cannot recommend this to other users because of the experience that we have had."
"Making it even more cost-effective could be explored."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."
"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 price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."
"The pricing is a little high in China."
"This product is not costly when compared to other vendors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Comms Service Provider
19%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Performing Arts
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud?
From a cost perspective, some cost-effective situations were more difficult to achieve in Azure than in OpenShift. Comparing them can be difficult since the financial services cloud had stripped ma...
What needs improvement with Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud?
There is more work and effort needed for when many of the managed services are not accessible, especially in the security area. You have to do your own security setups as opposed to using a managed...
What is your primary use case for Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud?
If you want to control a more secure environment, like an on-premises environment, I use OpenShift on IBM Financial Services Cloud but not on the public cloud.
 

Also Known As

PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
edenor, Ford
Find out what your peers are saying about Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
916,956 professionals have used our research since 2012.