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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 features are the monitoring and the deployment is easier."
"It provides a set of developer-friendly tools that simplify application deployment."
"Stability is not a concern with this product."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."
"The solution is stable and resilient. In our company, we do not even see any challenges with the solution."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very easy to use compared to other cloud technologies. It has a very good performance."
"I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities."
"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."
"The solution is easy to use."
"The technical support services are good."
"We haven't had any issues with stability so far."
"The most valuable features of Salesforce are its level of customization and integration."
"The solution scales extremely well."
"A fully integrated solution that provides a seamless experience."
"What I like about the Salesforce Platform, in particular, its enterprise edition is that apart from its many features, you can have a wider view of the customers, a 360-degree view. I also enjoy managing opportunities in the Salesforce Platform a lot because it's easier and gives you a wider view, compared to HubSpot."
"The solution can scale."
 

Cons

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve the documentation. They are good, but they could improve more. Additionally, it would be beneficial if there were more use case examples."
"There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"I'd like to see a larger service offering."
"It is not straightforward to setup."
"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."
"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 Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."
"It is quite expensive. It has gotten to that point where it is a lot more pricey. It has kind of got its own proprietary language for development. It is probably never going to change, but if it had a more market language for development, it would be easier to find developers. They come at a premium cost, so it is expensive."
"Sometimes what will happen is we work on it and then we move to a different tab and work on something else. After five minutes, when we come back, it automatically signs out."
"I want more analytics in the platform and the addition of AI-based models, for example, predictive feedback. The Salesforce Platform needs to be more intelligent and intuitive to make it a great solution."
"Currently, the integration itself is tricky as we have to use extensive scripting. It should be more of a plug-in and use solution."
"An expensive solution requiring a lot of configuration."
"Salesforce could improve the performance of their lightning components as they are currently quite heavy on the system and slow to load."
"Better flexibility in editing emails created from templates would be great, and being able to add hyperlinks in emails for scheduling meetings would allow us to automate more."
"This platform is indeed on the expensive side."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."
"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 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."
"It is expensive."
"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."
"It is quite expensive. Its developers come at a premium cost, which makes it expensive."
"Salesforce is cheap."
"The price varies depending on the cloud."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"The cost is reasonable for the corporations I work for. I would say an average would be around $100 per month per user."
"rice-wise, the solution is reasonable for what we're getting."
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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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