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Docker 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Docker
Ranking in Container Management
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Development Platforms (1st), Software Supply Chain Security (6th)
Red Hat OpenShift
Ranking in Container Management
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (3rd), Server Virtualization Software (9th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (7th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Docker is 2.9%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 1.4%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Rikin Parekh - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful to create sandbox environments to run applications and makes it easy to test them
Overall, setting up the Docker environment is quite easy. Many methods exist, such as using Docker Compose and Docker networks to communicate between containers. The main challenge lies in designing the architecture and integrating different frameworks and microservices. I would rate the ease of setting up the tool at around nine out of ten. The time it takes to deploy depends on the scale of the system. For the early-stage startup I'm currently working with, it doesn't take much time. It's just me handling the deployment. In our early-stage startup, we have a couple of teams with around four to five backend APIs and two front-end services. Deploying these doesn't take much time. My focus is more on minimizing costs due to our lean startup structure.
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 neat and very flexible."
"The solution is easy to deploy for clients so it saves a lot of hassle."
"I am impressed with the product's independence. We can also deploy it anywhere."
"Docker is highly scalable."
"Traditional deployments take more time and builds can be inconsistent across different environments. Docker solves these issues."
"We find the auto scaling and auto healing functionality of this solution very good."
"The most valuable feature is that it gives you the same environment as on a developer machine as well as a production machine relevant to specifications."
"Docker packages up an application as a single item that you can then run without the need to install or configure it to work on any specific machine."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is the great customer service and the ability for our team to get assistance when we need it."
"The security features of OpenShift are strong when in use of role-based access."
"Scaling and uptime of the applications are positives."
"OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins."
"The company had a product called device financing, where the company worked as a partner with Google. It allowed customers to take mobile phones on loan or via credit. When we migrated those services to OpenShift in February last year, we were able to sell over 100,000 devices in a single day, which was very good."
"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."
"The solution is easy to scale."
"The scalability of OpenShift combined with Kubernetes is good. At least from the software standpoint, it becomes quite easy to handle the scalability through configuration. You need to constantly monitor the underlying infrastructure and ensure that it has adequate provisioning. If you have enough infrastructure, then managing the scalability is quite easy which is done through configuration."
 

Cons

"I think Docker can improve as it relates to overall stability."
"We are facing multiple issues with the solution's stability."
"I would like to see a single package image orchestration bundled together."
"Stability is an area with a shortcoming."
"The command line interface could be more intuitive. I constantly struggle with it."
"I would like to see a more UI-based tool so that students can easily understand it rather than memorizing all of the Docker commands."
"There are elements of stability that are problematic. One of the most recent upgrades created a major incident on our cloud, whereby the containers were not restarting automatically."
"We have found that it is not easy to install it into a Windows system."
"Some of the storage services and integrations with third-party tools should be made possible."
"The GUI could have more capabilities, particularly around virtualization."
"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."
"OpenShift can improve monitoring. Sometimes there are issues. Additionally, the solution could benefit from protective tools if something was to happen in our network."
"This solution could be improved by offering best practices on standardization and additional guidance on how to use this solution."
"The metrics in OpenShift can use improvement."
"We need some kind of a multi-cluster management solution from the Red Hat site."
"They could work on the pricing model, making it more flexible and possibly lower."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Docker is a free open-source solution."
"The pricing of the solution is fairly cheap."
"This is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"The product is not expensive."
"The offering and service are quite free."
"Regarding pricing, we primarily use AWS for our deployments since we have funding for it. We don't spend much on Docker-specific services, just the containerization product. Docker Hub isn't particularly expensive either, so overall, the pricing is pretty reasonable."
"For commercial use, it's about $30 per month. The license itself isn't expensive, but if there are many users, the price becomes high."
"We are using the open-source version of the solution."
"The cost is quite high."
"The licensing cost for OpenShift is expensive when compared to other products. RedHat also charges you additional costs apart from the standard licensing fees."
"The price depends on the type and the nature of the organizations, along with the types of projects that are of considerable range."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"It's important to start small because the solution is scalable. We can build our cluster and look at the bundle option, not the external subscriptions. Talking to the people at Red Hat can save us money."
"This solution is fairly expensive but comes at an average cost compared to other solutions in the market."
"The pricing for OpenShift includes support and licensing, which costs approximately $400."
"The product’s pricing is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Insurance Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
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

What do you like most about Docker?
We are using Docker to host applications.
What needs improvement with Docker?
In terms of communication between services, perhaps the configuration within networks between containers could be improved.
How does OpenShift compare with Amazon AWS?
Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderful dashboard mechanism to alert us in case the application is over-committing or ...
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 OpenShift?
OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton
Find out what your peers are saying about Docker vs. Red Hat OpenShift and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.