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Heroku vs Red Hat OpenShift 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

Heroku
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat OpenShift
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (9th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Heroku is 2.7%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 12.0%, up from 11.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Faizan Haider - PeerSpot reviewer
Used for server deployment and provides auto maintenance of databases
Heroku is deployed on the cloud. We can deploy our private and public projects over at Heroku. Most of the time, when we are starting any new project from scratch, we have to implement our MVP for that project or the core idea. We are unsure how our traffic flow will go or the actual production environment requirements. We don't want to spend the most on the server sites, so then we can use it with our go-to plan for Heroku, and all the resources are available in the basic plan with the minimum expenses. So, it helps us to deploy and make our features available online at the minimum cost. Once we know our needs, we can add the professional add-ons and shift it to another platform. Heroku supports any resource listed in the marketplace. We just have to deploy our AI solutions, and Heroku can also support AI projects. I would recommend the solution to other users. I advise users not to purchase extra add-ons but to make scalable resources so that they can use all the resources efficiently. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
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

"One of the best things about Heroku is that it is very easy and straightforward to deploy an application."
"It is easy to deploy applications, and we don't need to bother about software updates on the server. We don't need to bother about machines, servers, and hardware. We only need to care about the system and functionality that we need or want to develop. They take care of everything else. It provides high availability. It is a pretty good solution that provides everything that we need. It has everything that we need to run our applications. We have many different applications, and we generate three million bills for a company in Brazil. We see more than a billion requests per day in another application. Everything works just fine, and it is very good."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the auto maintenance of databases."
"The product is stable."
"The platform is very Node.js-friendly, which is something that is important to us."
"It's easy to push a change and to deploy new things."
"What I found most valuable about this solution is that it's easy to use and integrate with GitHub actions."
"The most valuable feature of Heroku is the continuous integration and applications it provides."
"Its interface is good. The other part is the seamless integration with the stack that I have. Because my stack is mostly of Red Hat, which is running on top of VMware virtualization, I have had no issues with integrating both of these and trying to install them. We had a seamless integration with the other non-Red Hat products as well."
"It's cloud agnostic and the containerization and security features are outstanding."
"Key features are WildFly, because it standardizes infrastructure and the git repository and docker. Git is essential for source code and Docker for infrastructure."
"The solution provides a lot of flexibility to the application team for running their applications in the container platform, without needing to monitor the entire infrastructure all the time. It automatically scales and automatically self-heals. There is also a mechanism to alert the team in case it is over-committing or overutilizing the application."
"Scaling and uptime of the applications are positives."
"We have found the cluster management function to be very good with this product."
"What I like best about OpenShift is that it can reduce some of the costs of having multiple applications because you can just move them into small container applications. For example, applications don't need to run for twenty days, only to be used up by Monday. Through OpenShift, you can move some of the small applications into any cloud. I also find the design of OpenShift good."
"We are currently dealing with both local support and Red Hat support, and they have been amazing."
 

Cons

"I think this solution would be improved if free demos were available indefinitely."
"I improved the application performance by monitoring and adjusting the cleaner configuration to help set better lightweight limits on containers that run the app instances."
"The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly."
"Their support is good, but they can improve their response time."
"We don't find the pipelines intuitive. The user experience could be better. Having to set up multiple apps, then a pipeline, seems like an overkill on the amount of work to do."
"We have to do daily restarts of some processes, which is annoying, and the support for custom CI could be better."
"Heroku should increase its slug size limits."
"The tool's configuration is complex."
"The interface could be simplified a bit more."
"There is no orchestration platform in OpenShift."
"The platform's documentation could be more comprehensive to cover the full spectrum of user needs. Sometimes, achieving specific goals is challenging due to a lack of detailed guidance."
"The solution needs to support the new features in Kubernetes more quickly."
"They could work on the pricing model, making it more flexible and possibly lower."
"I had to frequently upgrade my cluster due to OpenShift's rolling updates every six months, which I found to be excessive."
"Needs work on volume handling (although this is already better with GlusterFS). Security (SSSD) would also be an improvement."
"The GUI could have more capabilities, particularly around virtualization. Some features are missing, such as storage migrations, when compared with VMware."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is free."
"The price of Heroku could be less expensive."
"There is a standard fee for a processing unit, they call them "dynos," and then you pay for add-ons."
"Its price is very good."
"I rate the tool's pricing a three out of ten."
"We use the license-free version of Red Hat Openshift but we pay for the support."
"The price depends on the type and the nature of the organizations, along with the types of projects that are of considerable range."
"The licensing cost for OpenShift is expensive when compared to other products. RedHat also charges you additional costs apart from the standard licensing fees."
"This solution is fairly expensive but comes at an average cost compared to other solutions in the market."
"I don't deal with the cost part, but I know that the cost is very high when compared to other products. They charge for CPU and memory, but we don't worry about it."
"The product's support is expensive. I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The model of pricing and buying licences is quite rigid. We are in the process of negotiating on demand pricing which will help us take advantage of the cloud as a whole."
"We are currently using the open version, OKD. We plan to get the enterprise version in the future."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Educational Organization
9%
University
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 Heroku?
I like the tool's scalability, CLI, and dashboards.
What needs improvement with Heroku?
I don't like that the web server crashes every day, every 24 hours. The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly. The Docker features are not great. You cannot use any ...
What is your primary use case for Heroku?
We use the solution for web applications and web APIs.
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

Facebook, UrbanDictionary, Code for America, Mailchimp, Rapportive, GitHub, TED, and Lyft.
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