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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
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (4th), Rapid Application Development Software (6th), Low-Code Development Platforms (6th), No-Code Development Platforms (1st), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 6.2%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Platform is 3.3%, 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 Platform3.3%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry6.2%
Other90.5%
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 solution is stable and resilient. In our company, we do not even see any challenges with the solution."
"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."
"We find its stability and scalability valuable."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."
"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."
"Stability is not a concern with this product."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."
"The lead conversion process in Salesforce Sales Cloud is extremely valuable."
"When compared to Siebel, the Salesforce Platform is easier to use."
"The most valuable features are quick customization, solid deployment processes, and excellent reliability."
"The solution provides a preferred method of backing up data."
"Salesforce Platform is effective as it provides frameworks and pre-built components."
"There are no major performance issues in the solution."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its overall ability to manage everything, including the sales pipeline and quick creation of sales reports."
"The product is pretty responsive."
 

Cons

"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."
"In the next release, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry doesn't have certain advanced features."
"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 is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it t can take time for users to learn it."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve on the technology it is a bit complex."
"It should offer more security features."
"There needs to be more documentation."
"The pricing of the solution is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement since, right now, I am not sure if Salesforce Platform has any plans for start-ups or small businesses."
"Salesforce Platform is a bit expensive compared to other CRM products, which is a drawback."
"Salesforce could improve the performance of their lightning components as they are currently quite heavy on the system and slow to load."
"The interface could be more user-friendly and offer more customization."
"The previous version had a complicated interface where multiple pages and data entries were required, which was not pleasant for sales teams or business users."
"They have some limitations as a cloud solution."
"There is a considerable effort required to load the data, involving processes like XML connections."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
"I rate this solution a six out of ten for pricing. Though the solution is on the pricier side, it still offers good value for money."
"The licensing is on the expensive side, but most clients engage in negotiations to reach a more favorable agreement. For stand-alone or medium-sized clients, it can be relatively costly."
"The licensing is per user per month, which we took out a contract on a long time back. It's really an okay price for what solutions are available and for how many features and what kind of functionality you get."
"Pricing and license differ and depend on how much license you are purchasing from them."
"Costly, but it is the top product in SaaS/PaaS. Pricing is more for large to enterprise level companies."
"The cost of this solution depends on negotiations. It is somewhere between expensive and reasonable. There is always additional costs for consulting services. It's the kind of solution that requires consulting, but it is not a licensing cost. It is a consulting cost. It is CAPEX versus OPEX."
"The solution is fairly priced."
"The price varies depending on the cloud."
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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: March 2026.
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