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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
15th
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
6.9
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (3rd), Rapid Application Development Software (5th), Low-Code Development Platforms (7th), No-Code Development Platforms (2nd), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 5.1%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Platform is 3.6%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Salesforce Platform3.6%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry5.1%
Other91.3%
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 the UI, it is easy to use."
"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 solution is stable, and we have not experienced any infrastructure issues, so it is very good and captures a few metrics, onboarding to App Dynamics."
"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."
"Stability is not a concern with this product."
"I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities."
"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, and it has very good performance."
"It is a good product, and it has served us well."
"The most valuable features are quick customization, solid deployment processes, and excellent reliability."
"It was pretty easy to deploy."
"Salesforce's strongest feature is reporting especially. It's also a lot more usable than other platforms I've worked with. It has a great user experience, with the ability to filter and access information in real-time."
"We use Salesforce to find trends to make informed decisions in terms of events and marketing campaigns."
"With Salesforce Platform, we are able to focus on business outcomes and we need not worry about infrastructure at all."
"Intuitive to work with and the overall fundamental of the platform is very strong."
"Salesforce has helped us customizing the system as per business user needs."
 

Cons

"In the next release, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience."
"There are no synthetic application monitoring and real-time monitoring features and they should be included."
"It should offer more security 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."
"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it can take time for users to learn it."
"Scalability is terrible. So far we have not been able to scale it up."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is not scalable, infinitely, because when you install it on a set of virtual machines it is very hard to scale."
"In the next release, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience."
"The licensing is on an annual basis. It is expensive."
"Pricing is the biggest factor. The cost right now is too high and I've had a lot of clients leave."
"There's a learning curve. It was a bit hard to understand the logical way of working with it, just at the beginning."
"An improved UX may be helpful in the solution's next release."
"One area that could use improvement is the approval mechanism in the authenticator, which is unstable."
"I don't have any notes for improvement. It serves us well."
"Easier process to move to Lightning Components."
"Integration needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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 cost is reasonable for the corporations I work for. I would say an average would be around $100 per month per user."
"It is very expensive. Its licensing is on a monthly basis."
"I have heard that it is fairly priced. It offers ROI."
"Salesforce charges double the rates, or almost three times, compared to its competitors. Our company does incur additional charges for maintenance and support."
"Costly, but it is the top product in SaaS/PaaS. Pricing is more for large to enterprise level companies."
"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."
"Salesforce is cheap."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
35%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Insurance Company
4%
Comms Service Provider
4%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

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 Enterprise44
 

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: April 2026.
896,510 professionals have used our research since 2012.