Compared to OpenStack, OpenShift is the best product in the market. There are plenty of cloud service providers who use OpenStack or other open-source products, but OpenShift is the best. Even AWS is just an okay product, but they have different proprietary software, which is not the same as OpenShift.
Senior System Engineer at a tech consulting company with 10,001+ employees
An expandable solution with an easy initial setup phase and a great GUI
Pros and Cons
- "The product's initial setup is very easy, especially compared to AWS."
- "Latency and performance are two areas of concern in OpenShift where improvements are required."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of the solution stem from the product's GUI, and other such areas of the product have been set up. Compared to AWS, OpenShift is better.
What needs improvement?
Latency and performance are two areas of concern in OpenShift where improvements are required.
OpenShift's scalability has scope for improvement.
OpenShift's technical support team needs to improve the support they provide to my company since the support we currently receive depends on the support package we have from the ones that OpenShift offers, like platinum, gold, or silver. OpenShift's technical support team is good, but it takes time for them to find the root cause of a particular issue. One of the clients of my company doesn't face many issues with the product, so we don't use much of the technical support. I can say that OpenShift's technical support team is okay in general.
I have experience with the product, but I don't possess a large amount of technical knowledge to comment on what functionalities need to be added to the product.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using OpenShift for two years. My company is a user of Red Hat products.
Buyer's Guide
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January 2026
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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a scalable or expandable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Eight members of my company's team use OpenShift.
How are customer service and support?
For one of my company's clients, we have to deal with the technical support team of OpenShift. With Red Hat, my company has platinum support. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
AWS and DigitalOcean are products with which I have some experience.
Kubernetes on AWS is a bit complex to set up, whereas OpenShift is easier for me to set up. However, they use the same things during the setup process. OpenShift is just a better product for a new user compared to AWS since the former is easier to understand.
How was the initial setup?
The product's initial setup is very easy, especially compared to AWS.
The solution is deployed on a public cloud since half of the deployment is in the data center and half of it is in the cloud.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My company makes payments towards the licensing costs attached to OpenShift.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
During the evaluation phase, I looked at Google Cloud.
What other advice do I have?
I carried out OpenShift's integration process for two or three firms as a part of the team, so it was not done by myself alone. I did carry out the integration process for AWS. Comparing OpenShift with AWS, I found the former to be much easier.
I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Kubernetes/Openshift Security Consultant at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
A tool that offers a good production environment that is much more stable
Pros and Cons
- "I have seen a return on investment, and it depends upon the types and the nature of some of the most critical applications that have been hosted on the OpenShift infrastructure."
- "Some of the storage services and integrations with third-party tools should be made possible."
What is our primary use case?
I have not used it on IBM Cloud. It is basically used on AWS and Azure. I am using a standard OpenShift.
OpenShift is a container orchestration tool. We have been using it for hosting products on container-based applications.
How has it helped my organization?
Actually, what happens is that the solution gives or provides that kind of stability and much more. It gives a good production environment that is much more stable and error-free. That's how the solution contributes to the productivity of my whole organization.
What is most valuable?
If we compare OpenShift and Kubernetes Harbor, OpenShift is derived from Kubernetes. However, some of the most prominent features of OpenShift are its security services and some of the policies, especially security policies that are some of the add-ons and the best things I like in OpenShift.
What needs improvement?
Some things need to be improved in the solution. Some of the storage services and integrations with third-party tools should be made possible.
I think some more things will come in, like the projects of CNCFs. I think that verified CNCF projects will be integrated into OpenShift.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using OpenShift for eighteen months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
I think the support is fine. It depends upon some of the SLAs and how things or how the SLAs have been maintained. Overall, it is fine, so I will rate the support a seven out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
Initially, the setup seemed to be complex, but the recommendations from Red Hat, and especially on the CoreOS systems, for quality, stability, and security purposes, it seems to be complex. However, once we get hands-on experience, it is very, very useful and easily maintainable as well.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment, and it depends upon the types and the nature of some of the most critical applications that have been hosted on the OpenShift infrastructure. Considering in terms of stability, performance-wise, and security-wise, if everything goes fine, I think its return on investment is justified.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price depends on the type and the nature of the organizations, along with the types of projects that are of considerable range. I don't think the price is very much of an issue for any organization against the services being delivered over the cloud and the services of OpenSuite.
What other advice do I have?
If any organization is just working on open-source technologies and wants to have enterprise support and enterprise-grade solutions, then we must go with OpenShift.
Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Buyer's Guide
Red Hat OpenShift
January 2026
Learn what your peers think about Red Hat OpenShift. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
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IT Specialist at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Easy to deploy with good automation and reduces time to market
Pros and Cons
- "The security is good."
- "The interface could be simplified a bit more."
What is our primary use case?
I primarily use the solution for deploying Springboot applications and Engine X among other things.
How has it helped my organization?
In the company, if transactions rise, we can scale up the solution easily. It's flexible and we're able to ensure it meets our needs based on its ability to autoscale.
What is most valuable?
The deployment is easy.
The security is good. I'd rate it 4.5 or five out of five. I'm satisfied with the security on offer.
The product can scale well automatically.
OpenShift can be deployed on-premises and on the cloud. It helps us comply with regulatory issues that would require at least a portion to be covered by on-prem usage.
The automated processes are really great. It helps with development time and the end product quality. It helps by being so flexible, which translates into easier development. It helps take some stuff off our plate.
The solution's code ready workspaces have reduced project onboarding time. It's really simple to deploy on OpenShift. The reduction levels have been around 35%. It also reduces time to market due ot the faster development times. The reduction has been around almost 20% based on some administration we ned to handle in order to maintain compliance.
What needs improvement?
The flexibility is nice, yet comes with great sacrifice. It's much more complicated in general. We'd like the flexibility on offer to be simplified a bit so that we don't have to do so many workarounds.
The interface could be simplified a bit more.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for one and a half years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability of the product is good. There may be a few bugs, however, in general, it works quite well.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The product is scalable.
We have 100 or hundred users on the solution right now in our organization. Most are developers. Some are end-users. There might be a handful of admins as well.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support isn't used really. I've never called them personally.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously used a different solution. We switched to this product since it was more flexible.
We have considered building our own container platform as well since we needed something on-prem. However, OpenShift already provided what we needed, and so it wasn't necessary.
I'm not sure if we also use any other Red Hat products.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was not done by me. I only work with the solution.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I don't directly deal with pricing or handle the negotiation on licensing. I can't speak to the exact price.
What other advice do I have?
We're a customer and end-user.
I do not use the solution on the vendor's open stack platform.
It's a good idea to explore the solution first before really jumping in. Also, companies need to understand the costing and the SSL before jumping into a deployment.
I'd rate OpenShift at a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Senior Manager - Cloud at a tech consulting company with 10,001+ employees
The security throughout the stack and the software supply chain is pretty robust
Pros and Cons
- "Two stand-out features are the security model and value-add features that don't exist in Upstream Kubernetes."
- "One glaring flaw is how OpenShift handles operators. Sometimes operators are forced to go into a particular namespace. When you do that, OpenShift creates an installation plan for everything in that namespace. These operators may be completely separate from each other and have nothing to do with each other, but now they are tied at the hip. You can't upgrade one without upgrading all of them. That's a huge mistake and highly problematic."
What is our primary use case?
OpenShift is a containerization platform.
How has it helped my organization?
OpenShift provides faster container orchestration without the need to know the guts of an already complex system. Kubernetes is complicated for an organization to do correctly on its own, so OpenShift streamlines that process and makes it easier to get up and running.
It allows flexible and efficient cloud-native stacks. You've got a lot of capabilities, such as build packs to automatically access development solutions or different languages like Spring Boot or .NET. Everything is in one place and addresses the developers and administrators.
What is most valuable?
Two stand-out features are the security model and value-add features that don't exist in Upstream Kubernetes. OpenShift's security throughout the stack and the software supply chain is pretty robust. Including advanced cluster security, OpenShift covers almost everything out of the box.
We are also using Linux Rail and Ansible, and all these Red Hat products have some awareness. However, it's hard to say because some of them previously existed as non-Red Hat products.
What needs improvement?
One glaring flaw is how OpenShift handles operators. Sometimes operators are forced to go into a particular namespace. When you do that, OpenShift creates an installation plan for everything in that namespace.
These operators may be completely separate from each other and have nothing to do with each other, but now they are tied at the hip. You can't upgrade one without upgrading all of them. That's a huge mistake and highly problematic. They shouldn't be linked together so that when you upgrade one, you must also upgrade the other. It doesn't make sense if they aren't related as operators.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using OpenShift for three or four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
OpenShift is mostly stable. It's designed so that you seldom notice if it's unstable. I have no complaints.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
OpenShift is scalable. It automatically scales.
How are customer service and support?
I rate OpenShift support seven out of 10. There is room for improvement. We sometimes find the answer before the vendor. You get bounced around to various people and must repeat the issue even though it's all documented.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
Setting up OpenShift is pretty straightforward, and you can do it in under 30 minutes if you know what to do. We have four admins who maintain it. It requires a lot of maintenance because the underlying platform moves quickly. Kubernetes moves quickly, so new versions are constantly coming out. Keeping current requires lots of maintenance. We do upgrades monthly.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Vendor support is one reason to go with OpenShift. It's an open-source product, but you can pay for support.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at all the options, including Upstream Kubernetes, AWS, Azure, GCP, and Rancher.
What other advice do I have?
I rate OpenShift eight out of 10. Red Hart is a good partner for the most part. Like anything, it depends on who you work with. Some people will regurgitate the documentation, while others will bring their experiences from other locations.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
Head of Architecture at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
An easily scalable solution offering good cluster management and continuous improvements with upgrades
Pros and Cons
- "We have found the cluster management function to be very good with this product."
- "We experienced issues around desktop security, that stopped us implementing a new feature that had been developed."
What is our primary use case?
We use the solution for container orchestration and management.
What is most valuable?
We have found the cluster management function to be very good with this product. Also, each new version of the product has made upgrading easier and faster to carry out.
What needs improvement?
We experienced issues around desktop security, which stopped us from implementing a new feature that had been developed. This needs to be improved in order to expand the usage of the product.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been working with this solution for around two and a half years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We have found the solution to be very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have found the solution to be very scalable during our time using it, and we now have a large number of transactions passing through the product.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support is good, but they have been slow to respond in the past. The issues were resolved effectively, but it took some time for this to happen.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of the solution was hard, and took around three months to deploy completely.
What about the implementation team?
We used a third-party vendor for our implementation, and they were very knowledgeable.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Depending on the extent of the product use, licenses are available for a range of time periods, and are renewable at the end of the period.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend that organizations pay a lot of attention to the initial design and setup of the solution to ensure that it is optimized for their needs, as it isn't easy to make changes once this is complete.
I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Head Of Department Digital Center of Excellence at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Useful containers and reliable
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature of OpenShift is the containers."
- "OpenShift can improve monitoring. Sometimes there are issues. Additionally, the solution could benefit from protective tools if something was to happen in our network."
What is our primary use case?
We are using OpenShift as a microservice platform.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of OpenShift is the containers.
What needs improvement?
OpenShift can improve monitoring. Sometimes there are issues. Additionally, the solution could benefit from protective tools if something was to happen in our network.
In a new release of OpenShift, they should add Kibana, Grafana, and Elasticsearch.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using OpenShift for approximately two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
OpenShift is stable. However, I feel it could be better but the local implementor is not giving us all the information.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We use OpenShift on a daily basis. We have one engineer for the operation and a pre-engineer for monitoring. Additionally, we have more than five to handle the daily work.
How are customer service and support?
We are using a local vendor for the support. They can handle level one and two support when we have issues.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of OpenShift is complex. We have two types we do, but active active does not work, only active passive does.
What about the implementation team?
We used a local vendor to do the implementation and maintenance.
What other advice do I have?
I rate OpenShift an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Software Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The solution is easily compatible with other solutions and the features are easily installed
Pros and Cons
- "The security features of OpenShift are strong when in use of role-based access."
- "OpenShift could be improved if it were more accessible for smaller budgets."
What is our primary use case?
OpenShift as a solution is quite broad depending on the industry you are applying it to. For example, telco companies use the entire breadth of applications that the client wants from the web to their middle tier up to the back end.
OpenShift is a platform for ensuring that your apps are running reliably.
What is most valuable?
OpenShift has 100% compatibility with Kubernetes. I find using kubectl, and kubectl commands to be valuable.
The security features of OpenShift are strong when in use of role-based access. The solution is easily compatible with other solutions and the features are easily installed.
What needs improvement?
OpenShift could be improved if it were more accessible for smaller budgets. I currently mostly use Raspberry Pi, which will be over to use Kubernetes. As a platform, I am using Raspberry Pi rather than using a very large configuration computer.
The solution requires eight or more cores of CPUs, multiplied over the number of nodes needed to make OpenShift reliable, making it susceptible to failures.
In the future, I would like to see a roadmap to have Wasm supported. If you have WebAssembly as an alternative to Docker, it would be great.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been learning how to use OpenShift for years, but actively using it for six months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable. We haven't experienced downtime.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
OpenShift is easy to scale. You just need to make sure you have the capacity to purchase and the number of nodes needed. Scalability only depends on your budget.
Currently, they are more than 10 users of OpenShift in the organization.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support has been efficient, supportive, and communicative. They do not drop the ball. I would rate the customer service and support of OpenShift a five out of five.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, I had experience with VMware's Kubernetes version. VMware was very difficult to install. I could not understand the route they were taking and why there were so many steps.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of OpenShift is straightforward if you are an experienced platform engineer. Installing on AWS or Azure could be more complex. The product has a Terraform command to install everything.
If all of the tools that are needed and all the hardware is there, the implementation should be straightforward. I would rate the initial setup a four out of five overall.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Pricing of OpenShift depends on the number of nodes and who is hosting it. OpenShift is more expensive than other solutions, however, I think it is worth it.
What other advice do I have?
Anyone looking to implement OpenShift in their organization should start with the most minimal setup for configuration. There is an OpenShift version with just the single master with a built-in worker. You will only need a single CPU and you can start with at least three masters and a single worker and scale from there as the need arises, whether it is to add additional worker nodes or as your app grows.
There is no product that compares to OpenShift. I would rate it a 10 out of 10 overall.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
Team Lead at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Easy to learn, simple to start using, and offers good support
Pros and Cons
- "The stability has been good."
- "We need some kind of a multi-cluster management solution from the Red Hat site."
What is our primary use case?
We are not using it for our core banking or any critical application. It's just for our remediation services. We have an ITSM tool, which is running on that, et cetera.
What is most valuable?
The support is very strong in Turkey. We are very happy with its capabilities. The steps are easy in terms of usage.
What needs improvement?
We need some kind of a multi-cluster management solution from the Red Hat site. With that, we have got some problems; however, right now, we can manage to run the solution without any problems.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability has been good. We haven’t had any real issues up to this point. It’s been reliable, and the performance has been good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is fine. We haven’t had any problems in that regard.
The main reason that we chose OpenShift rather than Azure or AWS was the scalability. It’s the best one on the market.
How are customer service and support?
We have gotten both local and international support from Red Hat company, so we are covered. We are satisfied with the solution’s support in general.
How was the initial setup?
There isn’t really any initial setup to worry about.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I don’t have any information about the licensing costs or the process.
What other advice do I have?
I’d rate the solution eight out of ten.
It's both very easy to start and learn and to improve yourself to manage Kubernetes environments. It’s very portable. You can easily switch from this product to another if you want. It's not like that with other products. For example, if you have an Azure solution, it's not that easy to port everything over.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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