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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
11th
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
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
95
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (2nd), Rapid Application Development Software (5th), Low-Code Development Platforms (6th), No-Code Development Platforms (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 9.8%, up from 8.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Platform is 2.6%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Stephen  Hack - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use, simple to sign-in, but lacking graphical interface
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is used as a cloud platform Pivotal Cloud Foundry has helped our organization by the way we've set it up, it's easy to sign in, bind services, push services, and create YAML files. The most valuable features of Pivotal Cloud Foundry are its ease of use and the command line…
Yasser_Anter - PeerSpot reviewer
Has customization and integration capabilities which increase efficiency
Salesforce could improve by offering AI features or functionalities to help business decision-makers analyze business history, suggest forward strategies, and participate in events. The previous version had a complicated interface where multiple pages and data entries were required, which was not pleasant for sales teams or business users. Also, deploying Salesforce took a long time, about four to five months, which is not ideal for any business.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is stable and resilient. In our company, we do not even see any challenges with the solution."
"It provides a set of developer-friendly tools that simplify application deployment."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."
"We find its stability and scalability valuable."
"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very easy to use compared to other cloud technologies. It has a very good performance."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."
"I like it because of the fact that it lets me know what I'm working on and what I've recently worked on. It also helps me and allows me to do tracking. If I want to go out and find out how many times I've touched customers, I can find that information out. It tracks such information, and we use it. If we send any type of promotions out, it tracks who gets those promotions and how they've responded to those promotions."
"We use this solution to track customer activities, opportunities and contact information."
"A great platform to import, manage and save customer data."
"Marketing and Sales Lead, Forecasting, Campaign management."
"We've done a solid job managing past account history, enabling us to quickly review past activities and the contacts we've engaged with. Now, Salesforce has integrated a LinkedIn feature, streamlining the process by eliminating the need to manually input data into LinkedIn separately. This integration adds LinkedIn profiles to customer profiles, enhancing efficiency. They've also introduced a sales console platform."
"The most valuable features are quick customization, solid deployment processes, and excellent reliability."
"We also use Salesforce to find trends to make informed decisions in terms of events and marketing campaigns."
"The solution is easy to use."
 

Cons

"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it t can take time for users to learn it."
"I'd like to see a larger service offering."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve on the technology it is a bit complex."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry doesn't have certain advanced features."
"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."
"In the next release, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience."
"It should offer more security features."
"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."
"Salesforce could improve by adding more capabilities to the dashboard, such as additional fields for more filters and more control over what I would like to see."
"One area that could use improvement is the approval mechanism in the authenticator, which is unstable."
"If you have resellers or distributors, you just need to figure out a way to set up the system in the backend. Since every company is different, it takes a little bit of time to figure that out."
"The general reports could be made easier in the Salesforce Platform. Generating needs extensive training to know the exact structure of the design. Whenever you search for something you need to know what are the exact fields that you need to view. It's not an easy process to learn."
"Salesforce's mobile app could be better. Also, it could integrate more seamlessly with Gmail."
"Salesforce Platform could improve the UI and the responsiveness of their servers. The UI needs to be made user-friendly for all users."
"The integration of Salesforce with other solutions could be improved."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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 is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."
"It is expensive. Licensing is on an annual basis."
"Pricing and license differ and depend on how much license you are purchasing from them."
"For the number of people that are using Salesforce Platform in my organization, I feel the price is reasonable."
"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."
"The licensing is on the expensive side, but most clients engage in negotiations to reach a more favorable agreement. For stand-alone or medium-sized clients, it can be relatively costly."
"Salesforce is cheap."
"It is expensive."
"I haven't had to buy Salesforce, however, I have heard it's $1500 a user."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
37%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 do you like most about Pivotal Cloud Foundry?
I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pivotal Cloud Foundry?
I would say it is around a nine out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. Just short of Oracle. It's sort of Oracle cloud.
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: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.