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Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Salesforce Platform 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

Pivotal Cloud Foundry
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Salesforce Platform
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (3rd), Rapid Application Development Software (6th), Low-Code Development Platforms (6th), No-Code Development Platforms (2nd), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 6.7%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Platform is 3.2%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Salesforce Platform3.2%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry6.7%
Other90.1%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2263239 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
PCF allows for fine-grained configuration, especially regarding scaling but routing limitations
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. A few things, such as what OpenShift does better are cluster management. Like, you can manage the entire thing together. Currently, it's possible to manage all the clusters, especially when it comes to cluster management using straightforward configuration. As of now, we have to handle each application instance individually, which means servicing them one by one. It would be better if we could perform these actions as a group or in a more streamlined manner. One more downside is actually the cost of this environment. So, major downside of Pivotal, it's the cost. So, the runtime running costs are very high. Extremely high.
Sharmila-K - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Transformations and Infrastructure Delivery Manager at a university with 10,001+ employees
Integration processes improve but scripting requires effort
The updates, pricing part, and upgrades to the products are some of the most valuable features with the Salesforce Platform.With the Salesforce Platform, I have minimal experience of approximately one and a half years. I get minimal exposure, once every three or two months, especially during holidays. The Salesforce Platform is connected to the cloud, which is beneficial. When it is integrated with different tools such as Microsoft BI Analytics, it helps us analyze much better. Currently, the integration itself is tricky as we have to use extensive scripting. It should be more of a plug-in and use solution. That is the only issue I see, but otherwise, I appreciate it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."
"It is a scalable product...We are not facing any particular issues since most of the applications in our company are written in Java and .NET."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very easy to use compared to other cloud technologies. It has a very good performance."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is the UI, it is easy to use."
"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."
"It provides a set of developer-friendly tools that simplify application deployment."
"Stability is not a concern with this product."
"The most valuable features of Salesforce Platform are its analytics capabilities."
"The reporting capabilities are pretty user-friendly."
"There is very good documentation available and Salesforce offers good communication with its clients. It's very user-friendly and has a system that is easy to learn."
"The Salesforce Platform's most valuable features are everything in one place, perfect reporting, highly customizable, and easy to receive information you need."
"Most of the apps allow you to try out the product before buying it. The trial period depends on the product and varies from a week to 30 days."
"The lead conversion process in Salesforce Sales Cloud is extremely valuable."
"I found the ease of use most valuable in the Salesforce Platform. I also found the platform pretty light."
"A great platform to import, manage and save customer data."
 

Cons

"In the next release, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience."
"There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."
"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."
"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it t can take time for users to learn it."
"It is not straightforward to setup."
"I'd like to see a larger service offering."
"In the next release, I would like to see easy integration with external tools."
"I would like to see the organizational details improved to make it less difficult to bring new clients on board."
"Salesforce Platform has a cumbersome interface when creating reports, dashboards, and those types of things. They could be a little bit more simple. The administration has to be an aficionado to do any sort of administration and maintenance, for example, setting up the way you want to modify the lead tracks or functions. These systems tend to be quite cumbersome."
"It does need very specific resources to help deploy it and buy in from the users. It's one of those items it's pretty disruptive and if it's not deployed properly and if it doesn't get utilized efficiently, it won't be effective."
"The solution offers upgrades at a slower pace. The solution needs to keep up with competitors."
"I have found it takes an exceedingly long time to put opportunities or clients in the system. If I have an opportunity that I need to put in the system it could take approximately 10 minutes. This is a lot of time when you have multiple opportunities to put in. There are other tasks to do that are required by supervisors, such as forecasts. What I have done to save time is I did not input as much detail as I could have because I knew it was going to take me an hour to get five leads in."
"Salesforce needs to be re-platformed, or re-architected, making it lighter."
"Instead of creating our own template, if we had some nice templates that we could pick up - if there were some Microsoft Word templates or Microsoft Excel templates in a repository in Salesforce, that would be great."
"We have a lot of strategic accounts and large accounts that are tied with all the growth and acquisitions across North America, being able to tag parent-child accounts in an easier fashion would be better. This is the biggest pain point is associating parent to child and being able to align and manage it better. Overall a better parent-child relationship between accounts would be a benefit."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."
"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."
"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."
"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."
"It is very expensive. Its licensing is on a monthly basis."
"Salesforce charges double the rates, or almost three times, compared to its competitors. Our company does incur additional charges for maintenance and support."
"Pricing and license differ and depend on how much license you are purchasing from them."
"In general, the price is an area where there is always room for improvement."
"Salesforce does a user capacity analysis on a regular basis. For example, if you're not using certain areas, you may lose access. If you don't go in and quote and edit quotes, all of a sudden you may lose your rights to quote."
"Pricing for the Salesforce Platform is too expensive."
"The price of Salesforce Platform is very expensive. There are other solutions that are similar that cost a quarter of what Salesforce Platform does, such as HubSpot."
"It is an expensive program."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
37%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Insurance Company
5%
Computer Software Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business39
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise39
 

Questions from the Community

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...
How would you choose between Microsoft PowerApps and Salesforce Platform?
I think it depends on your use case. If your organization uses Microsoft Enterprise products, PowerApps will work better in your environment. Similarly, if you have a Salesforce integration in pla...
How does Salesforce Platform compare with Azure?
Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform is not easy or intuitive to deploy. The difficulty will be impacted by the type of application that you are trying to use the platform to build. Organizations tha...
Do you build applications using low-code or pro-code builders on Salesforce Platform?
At my organization, we have only used Salesforce Platform's low-code builder. The reason for this is not because we do not like the pro-code option, but because we do not see the need of using it, ...
 

Also Known As

PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)
Salesforce1, Force.com, Salesforce App Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
ADP
Find out what your peers are saying about Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. Salesforce Platform and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,961 professionals have used our research since 2012.