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Docker vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 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

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 (5th)
Red Hat OpenShift Container...
Ranking in Container Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Docker is 3.1%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is 24.2%, up from 20.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Renat Babin - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to deploy with an impressive networking feature
The volumes for persistent storage could be more user friendly right out of the box. I would like an option to just use it as local storage or some kind of NSF or CIF. Or to mount the volume straight to a Google Drive or through a particular cloud storage. It's not that these things are impossible, but you have to do some extra work or configurations.
Vlado Velkovski - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides automation that speeds up our process by 30% and helps us achieve zero downtime
OpenShift has a pretty steep learning curve. It's not an easy tool to use. It's not only OpenShift but Kubernetes itself. The good thing is that Red Hat provides specific targeted training. There are five or six pieces of training where you can get certifications. The licenses for OpenShift are pretty expensive, so they could be cheaper because the competition isn't sleeping, and Red Hat must take that into account. There are a few versions of OpenShift. There is the normal OpenShift and an OpenShift Plus license. Red Hat could think of how to connect those two subscriptions because, with Red Hat Plus, you have one tool called ACM (Advanced Cluster Management), where you can manage multiple clusters from one place. We deployed this functionality by ourselves, but if you don't pay the license for Red Hat OpenShift Plus, you'll lack this functionality. If you have a multi-cloud environment and you have a lot of work to do, it would be a plus if the Red Had OpenShift Plus license came in a bundle with the regular solutions. This ACM tool should be available in the normal subscription, not just the Plus version. There are new versions on an almost weekly basis. I found myself that the upgrading of OpenShift clusters is not a task that will successfully finish every time. It's a simple and quick, but not reliable process. That's why we use multiple clusters. We use v4.10.3, but we want to move to v4.12.X. The upgrade process itself can fail, and we don't have backups of our OpenShift cluster because we have backups of all the Kubernetes manifests on GitHub. We destroy the cluster, bring up a new one quickly, and apply those scripts. The upgrade itself could be more resilient for us as administrators of OpenShift to be sure that it'll succeed and not occasionally fail. They can improve the reliability of their upgrade process. They also have implementations of some Red Hat-verified operators for a lot of products like Elasticsearch. They're good enough for development purposes, but some of the OpenShift operators still lack resilient production-grade configurations. Red Hat says that we have a few hundred operators, but I believe that only half of them are production-grade ready at this moment. They need to work much more on those operators to become more flexible because you can deploy all of them in development mode, but when we go to production grade and want to make specific changes to the operator and configuration, we lack those possibilities.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There are ways of using Docker where you have absolutely no dependencies on the environment that you work in. This allows us to deploy Docker anywhere anytime and this has been most valuable."
"The most valuable feature of Docker is its portability, ease of security management, and low resource usage."
"We are able to stop our containers or stop the service with a single command."
"The tool helps us in code versioning. I think it's pretty much easy to use and very straightforward. Even if someone is new to the tool, they can easily start using it with a little guidance or theoretical knowledge. Go through the tool and start using it without much struggle."
"The initial setup was easy, and you are only required to run commands."
"It is a quite mature technology."
"It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is that it is cost-saving."
"I think it's a pretty scalable tool...The solution's technical support has been pretty good."
"The product is stable, reliable, and easy to use, from a well-known company, has a large volume handling capacity, and more and more organizations are moving to OpenShift."
"Autoscaling is an excellent feature that makes it very simple to scale our applications as required."
"OpenShift provides tools that tell me everything I have on a container, and I can make it on-premise or on a cloud infrastructure."
"The most valuable are security features, particularly when operating in the cloud."
"The usability and the developer experience. The platform has a centralized consultant that is easy to use for our development, operations and security teams."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring and logging functionalities."
"Some of the primary features we leverage in the platform have to do with how we manage the cluster configurations, the properties, and the auto-scalability. These are the features that definitely provide value in terms of reducing overhead for the developers."
 

Cons

"Marketing of Docker is one area that needs to improve."
"Enhancing artificial intelligence capabilities and cluster management should be a priority. It should facilitate some security management."
"I think Docker can improve as it relates to overall stability."
"The solution is not easy to manage and it is one of the reasons why people introduce orchestration tools to manage it."
"The runtime and security could improve in Docker. Security is paramount in the cloud and important."
"In terms of communication between services, perhaps the configuration within networks between containers could be improved."
"Deployment could be quicker."
"In terms of communication between services, perhaps the configuration within networks between containers could be improved."
"The solution does not work on a route-wise NFS."
"OpenShift needs to improve their container storage."
"I believe OpenShift Container Platform can improve in networking, architecture, and cloud areas by reducing deployment time, lowering costs, and streamlining engineer resources"
"The monitoring and logging could be improved."
"I believe that the documentation part is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"There should be a simplification of the overall cluster environment. It should require fewer resources. Just to run a simple Hello World app, it requires about seven servers, and that's just crazy. I understand that it is fully redundant, but it's prohibitively expensive to get something simple going."
"Setting up OpenShift isn't easy. I rate it three out of ten for ease of setup. We're deploying it in three phases. They're in the second phase now. The total deployment time will be five months. We expect to complete the deployment this March. There are 13 people on three teams working on this deployment."
"We are not big customers of Red Hat, but sometimes, we have severe bugs. We are very innovative, and sometimes, we have to wait for a long time to get proper attention. Red Hat should improve on that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Docker has made some changes and there is an enterprise version that is affordable."
"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."
"Pricing is based on the number of users."
"Docker is a free open-source solution."
"The current cost for us is nothing as an open source."
"We use the open-source version."
"Its convenience edition is free of cost."
"The product is a free open-source tool."
"We paid for Cloud Pak for integration. It all depends on how many VMs or how many CPUs you are using. They do the licensing based on that."
"The pricing and licensing are handled on an upper management level, and I'm not involved in that, but I understand the solution to be somewhat pricey."
"OpenShift with Red Hat support is pretty costly. We have done a comparison between AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Services) which provides fully managed services from AWS. It's built on open-source-based Kubernetes clusters and it is much cheaper compared to Red Hat, but it is a little expensive compared to ECS provided by AWS."
"I'm not familiar with pricing or financial aspects. In terms of effort versus benefit, it's worth it."
"The pricing is expensive for licensing."
"If you buy the product for a year or three, you get a lot of discounts...I feel that the product is worth its cost, especially since setting it up can be done with just a few clicks."
"The product pricing is competitive and structured around vCPU subscriptions, aligning with our application requirements."
"OpenShift Container Platform is highly-priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Insurance Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
8%
Manufacturing 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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Docker?
Our customers buy the software and the prices are available on Docker Hub. The subscription is typically yearly, and customers will need to buy the subscription directly. They can purchase it thems...
What needs improvement with Docker?
Docker is a time-tested, proven solution with industry-wide applications. There can be challenges with port mapping, however, that's not related to Docker itself.
Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...
What do you like most about OpenShift Container Platform?
The tool's most valuable features include high availability, scalability, and security. Other features like advanced cluster management, advanced cluster security, and Red Hat Quay make it powerful...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenShift Container Platform?
OpenShift pricing varies by region. For example, a simple cluster with three nodes in DAL-10 might cost around $560 to $580 per month, subject to specific configurations like memory and CPU cores.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Edenor, BMW, Ford, Argentine Ministry of Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Docker vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.