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Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Salesforce Platform comparison

 

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
13th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Salesforce Platform
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (3rd), Rapid Application Development Software (6th), Low-Code Development Platforms (6th), No-Code Development Platforms (2nd), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 7.2%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Platform is 3.2%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Salesforce Platform3.2%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry7.2%
Other89.6%
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.
Sharmila-K - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Transformations and Infrastructure Delivery Manager at a university with 10,001+ employees
Integration processes improve but scripting requires effort
The updates, pricing part, and upgrades to the products are some of the most valuable features with the Salesforce Platform.With the Salesforce Platform, I have minimal experience of approximately one and a half years. I get minimal exposure, once every three or two months, especially during holidays. The Salesforce Platform is connected to the cloud, which is beneficial. When it is integrated with different tools such as Microsoft BI Analytics, it helps us analyze much better. Currently, the integration itself is tricky as we have to use extensive scripting. It should be more of a plug-in and use solution. That is the only issue I see, but otherwise, I appreciate it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities."
"It supports CI/CD, and is integrated with the CI/CD very well."
"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."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very easy to use compared to other cloud technologies. It has a very good performance."
"We find its stability and scalability valuable."
"It is a scalable product...We are not facing any particular issues since most of the applications in our company are written in Java and .NET."
"The technical support services are good."
"A fully integrated solution that provides a seamless experience."
"The most valuable features of Salesforce Platform are its analytics capabilities."
"Salesforce is a phenomenal application. It's very diverse."
"A great platform to import, manage and save customer data."
"I find Salesforce Platform to be stable."
"Salesforce offers control over the opportunities to see where we are and gives me high-level dashboards on each opportunity stage."
"The process and the workflows are amazing."
 

Cons

"In the next release, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience."
"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."
"In the next release, I would like to see easy integration with external tools."
"There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The initial setup process was a complex thing to do because four different organizations were working together."
"Technical support could be a bit faster."
"There is always room for improvement. It can be hard to learn, but when you have somebody who is experienced in this, it is like anything else. It is like Excel, you'll never know everything about Excel, but there's somebody who would possibly know. I'm sure I don't know all of the ins and outs of Salesforce."
"Integration needs improvement."
"When it switched to lightning, it threw me for a loop. When they changed the look and feel, I had a hard time finding things and doing what I used to do."
"The cost of data storage is an issue once the company grows."
"I do not like the number of clicks required to get information. The UI is not very intuitive or innovative."
"Some business functionalities could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
"The licensing is per user per month, which we took out a contract on a long time back. It's really an okay price for what solutions are available and for how many features and what kind of functionality you get."
"Pricing and license differ and depend on how much license you are purchasing from them."
"The solution is fairly priced."
"I haven't had to buy Salesforce, however, I have heard it's $1500 a user."
"I rate this solution a six out of ten for pricing. Though the solution is on the pricier side, it still offers good value for money."
"The product's additional features can be expensive."
"I don't know anything about its cost, but I'm sure it has got a nice little price tag that goes along with it."
"It is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
37%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Insurance Company
5%
Computer Software Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business39
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise39
 

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...
How would you choose between Microsoft PowerApps and Salesforce Platform?
I think it depends on your use case. If your organization uses Microsoft Enterprise products, PowerApps will work better in your environment. Similarly, if you have a Salesforce integration in pla...
How does Salesforce Platform compare with Azure?
Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform is not easy or intuitive to deploy. The difficulty will be impacted by the type of application that you are trying to use the platform to build. Organizations tha...
Do you build applications using low-code or pro-code builders on Salesforce Platform?
At my organization, we have only used Salesforce Platform's low-code builder. The reason for this is not because we do not like the pro-code option, but because we do not see the need of using it, ...
 

Also Known As

PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)
Salesforce1, Force.com, Salesforce App Cloud
 

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
ADP
Find out what your peers are saying about Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. Salesforce Platform and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
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