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Amazon AWS vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Red Hat OpenShift comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Amazon AWS is 12.9%, down from 17.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 10.3%, up from 7.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 12.1%, up from 11.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Arun Srivastav - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows for automatic scaling of resources and provides built-in firewalls and security features, eliminating the need for external security solutions
One thing that's a bit different is that we're still accustomed to speaking to someone directly. AWS doesn't offer that kind of support. It's only through bots. You're speaking to chatbots, and that can sometimes be frustrating because there's no person on the other side. AI is not a substitute for a person. AWS marketplace is very strong, but somehow AWS doesn't promote it much. They have a huge customer base across the globe, and if products were launched in their marketplace, they could sell like hotcakes. They should improve their marketplace and promote the same product across the globe. They can take a cut, but they should promote it. That's something they don't do very much. So, AWS should promote its marketplace software. The company should promote it aggressively. Currently, they keep it very subtle. If you ask for it, they'll help you out. But they don't seem to advertise, "You're building a product on our platform? Why don't you sell it in our marketplace?" Improvement in AI: AWS is a little behind Microsoft Azure in terms of AI. AWS is still getting there, but the kind of examples and help files available in Azure for AI are much better. So AWS still needs to work on its AI functionality.
Vasundhara  Joshi - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamlessly scalable since applications written in Java and .NET do not create issues for its users
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. However, if we go for Azure or some other cloud, we can get a lot of information. I believe there is not much information for Pivotal Cloud Foundry since it may be some license issue. If you go for Azure, the migration process is straightforward. Since we have been given 10 GB of space in the public cloud, we are utilizing it in our company. So, we are trying to deploy our application on the cloud, and for us, it is like a trial process for now. From our total application rate, I can say that only two to three percent is on Pivotal Cloud Foundry. Currently, half of the code is in the shell script, which is causing issues. Also, most people in my organization have worked on Java-related code. For most of the applications, they are using the same, that is, shell script and AUTOsist, and so we haven't migrated yet. So that is the reason that we are planning to opt for a hybrid model so that we don't have to migrate completely to Pivotal Cloud Foundry.
Mikhael Ibrahim - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamlessly monitor microservices with streamlined DevOps capabilities
Most benefit from it, however, I work with Kubernetes, and installing Vanilla Kubernetes is easy. That said, it introduces many tools that need to be set up individually. OpenShift comes ready out of the box, with all tools installed and configured. Red Hat certifies and confirms that all the components are compatible with each other. OpenShift's superior dashboard is a notable strength, especially when compared to Kubernetes. The integrated DevOps capabilities, such as pipelines and the container registry, are extremely beneficial. Additionally, its capability to monitor microservices and containers with integrated tools like Prometheus is a major advantage. The horizontal pod scaling exceeds the scalability features I found in Kubernetes.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is enough for us in terms of features. We don't have too many transactions, and it is sufficient for our current needs."
"It's a flexible solution."
"Stable platform with a straightforward setup. It's user-friendly, with more reliable servers compared to the competition."
"The main feature that I like the most is the variety of solutions that it provides. It provides some analysis, business information and more. It provides a wide variety of services."
"The experience with Amazon AWS is error-free. That was also, of course, something that I really appreciate. That means it's really well-tested and, as published or as declared."
"Some of the introduced one-year and three-year reservations helped us reduce costs early on. With time, we learned how to minimize our at REST capacity, allowing us to scale up and scale down in near seconds."
"Amazon AWS has a good Redshift database."
"I like ETL, the EC2 platform, and Route 53. These features are a great complement to the basic infrastructure of any company. The AWS platform has many features, but the fundamental cloud infrastructure is the most important."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."
"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 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."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very easy to use compared to other cloud technologies. It has a very good performance."
"It supports CI/CD, and is integrated with the CI/CD very well."
"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."
"We are able to operate client’s platform without downtime during security patch management each month and provide a good SLA (as scalability for applications is processed during heavy client website load, automatically)."
"OpenShift offers an easy-to-use graphical user interface for cluster management, making it more accessible for administrators."
"It's cloud agnostic and the containerization and security features are outstanding."
"Valuable features include time to market, avoiding vendor lock-in, and the ease of working in a multi-cloud environment."
"The stability has been good."
"OpenShift is more enterprise-oriented, offers good support, and provides integration with multiple solutions."
"I am impressed with the product's security features."
"We have found the cluster management function to be very good with this product."
 

Cons

"Amazon AWS could be improved with cheaper licensing costs."
"I have been using Amazon AWS for approximately one year."
"In some areas, more transparency on what is persistent towards novice users."
"The availability could be better."
"The customization could improve. However, it depends on the customization needed."
"Its subscription model or pricing model is too complex, which should be improved."
"The price could be better."
"When I try to enter the multi-cloud, they provide very poor support. Support is a concern with Amazon."
"There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"It should offer more security features."
"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."
"There are no synthetic application monitoring and real-time monitoring features."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve on the technology it is a bit complex."
"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 Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."
"OpenShift requires a very expensive and complex infrastructure. These demands can deter people from learning OpenShift."
"OpenShift's storage management could be better."
"There is no orchestration platform in OpenShift."
"They could work on the pricing model, making it more flexible and possibly lower."
"There are challenges related to additional security layers, connectivity compliance for endpoints, and integration."
"I had to frequently upgrade my cluster due to OpenShift's rolling updates every six months, which I found to be excessive."
"One area for improvement is the documentation. They need to make it a little bit more user-friendly. Also, if you compare certain features and the installation process with Rancher, Rancher is simpler."
"One of the features that I've observed in Tanzu Mission Control is that I can manage multiple Kubernetes environments. For instance, one of my lines of business is using OpenShift OKD; another one wants to use Google Anthos, and somebody else wants to use VMware Tanzu. If I have to manage all these, Tanzu Mission Control is giving me the opportunity to completely manage all of my Kubernetes clusters, whereas, with OpenShift, I can only manage a particular area. I can't manage other Kubernetes clusters. I would like to have the option to manage all Kubernetes clusters with OpenShift."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS is not an expensive product."
"There are many variables involved in pricing service in AWS and overall the pricing is a bit on the higher side."
"The pricing may vary and is often influenced by marketing strategies."
"Amazon AWS is a bit more expensive than Oracle."
"It's my understanding that our company is charged a few hundred dollars on a monthly basis."
"It's paid on a monthly basis and you have to pay for the resources that you use."
"They have different pricing models for each suite of services."
"It can get quite pricey at times."
"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
"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."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."
"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 for OpenShift includes support and licensing, which costs approximately $400."
"The cost is quite high."
"The pricing is standard; the solution isn't particularly expensive or affordable."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"We are currently using the open version, OKD. We plan to get the enterprise version in the future."
"Pricing of OpenShift depends on the number of nodes and who is hosting it."
"This solution is fairly expensive but comes at an average cost compared to other solutions in the market."
"We use the license-free version of Red Hat Openshift but we pay for the support."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 14, 2013
Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
38%
Manufacturing Company
19%
Insurance Company
6%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
32%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does OpenShift compare with Amazon AWS?
Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderfu...
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS?
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS? Amazon AWS offers options both in terms of upgrading and expand...
Looking to compare Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure
We like Google Firebase hosting and authentication and also the excellent cloud functionality. Our team found the fle...
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....
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...
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...
What do you like most about OpenShift?
OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins.
What needs improvement with OpenShift?
Simplified Networking: While OpenShift has advanced networking features, simplifying configurations for complex setup...
What is your primary use case for OpenShift?
Our primary use case for Red Hat OpenShift involves leveraging its container orchestration platform to enhance applic...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Web Services, AWS
PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
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
UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Red Hat and others in PaaS Clouds. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.