Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Salesforce Platform comparison

VMware and Salesforce are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. VMware is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.4, while Salesforce is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.0. VMware holds a 10.0% mindshare in PSP, compared to Salesforce’s 2.8% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of VMware users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of Salesforce users who would recommend it.

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Read 15 Pivotal Cloud Foundry reviews

7,814 Views
6,692 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Salesforce Platform

Read 92 Salesforce Platform reviews

2,571 Views
2,316 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Salesforce Platform

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Salesforce Platform and Pivotal Cloud Foundry operate in the enterprise cloud solutions space. Salesforce Platform holds the edge with its quick customization and scalability.

Features: Salesforce Platform offers quick customization, robust integration capabilities, and flexibility for various business processes, making it adaptable for diverse organizational needs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry stands out for its strong Java performance, ease of application deployment, and robust deployment capabilities, especially beneficial in focusing on business services development without the technical hassles.

Room for Improvement: Salesforce Platform could enhance its reporting tools, lower pricing, and improve marketing automation integration. Pivotal Cloud Foundry faces challenges with its technological complexity, higher runtime costs, and could benefit from simplified migration processes and better security features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Salesforce Platform primarily supports deployment across hybrid cloud environments and is known for overall responsive customer service, though some find it slower with complex issues. Pivotal Cloud Foundry provides versatility in public and private cloud scenarios, with positive customer service, yet there's room for improvement in support during intricate problems.

Pricing and ROI: Salesforce Platform is seen as pricey but valuable for extensive features and integration, especially appealing to enterprise clients. Its ROI is evident through enhanced efficiency and sales growth. Pivotal Cloud Foundry, priced comparatively high, offers cost advantages due to its open-source nature. Pricing varies with cloud provider agreements but is considered manageable given its market benefits, contributing positively to agility and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. Salesforce Platform Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. Salesforce Platform

March 2025

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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

7th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Salesforce Platform

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Mobile Development Platforms (3rd), Rapid Application Development Software (6th), Low-Code Development Platforms (5th), No-Code Development Platforms (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 10.0%, up from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Platform is 2.8%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

Vasundhara Joshi

Senior Software Engineer at Wells Fargo

Seamlessly scalable since applications written in Java and .NET do not create issues for its users

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. However, if we go for Azure or some other cloud, we can get a lot of information. I believe there is not much information for Pivotal Cloud Foundry since it may be some license issue. If you go for Azure, the migration process is straightforward. Since we have been given 10 GB of space in the public cloud, we are utilizing it in our company. So, we are trying to deploy our application on the cloud, and for us, it is like a trial process for now. From our total application rate, I can say that only two to three percent is on Pivotal Cloud Foundry. Currently, half of the code is in the shell script, which is causing issues. Also, most people in my organization have worked on Java-related code. For most of the applications, they are using the same, that is, shell script and AUTOsist, and so we haven't migrated yet. So that is the reason that we are planning to opt for a hybrid model so that we don't have to migrate completely to Pivotal Cloud Foundry.

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Yasser_Anter

Independent Business Consultant at Freelance

Has customization and integration capabilities which increase efficiency

Salesforce could improve by offering AI features or functionalities to help business decision-makers analyze business history, suggest forward strategies, and participate in events. 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. Also, deploying Salesforce took a long time, about four to five months, which is not ideal for any business.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We find its stability and scalability valuable."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."

"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."

"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 auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."

"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 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."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry pros

"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 activities, opportunities, follow-up of the opportunities, and business tracking are valuable features. It provides everything that we need. It works pretty well."

"Salesforce provides customization that aligns with our organization's lifecycle management of opportunities. It integrates with our call records, meeting notes, and the Outlook calendar, which helps in mapping roles and managing opportunities effectively."

"It is a fairly useful and user-friendly tool for salespersons. It is very extensive and flexible. You can customize it for your needs, and you can use whatever you want. I like Salesforce."

"Salesforce is cloud-based, so there's no installation involved. You simply log in using the provided organization login. There's no need for installation."

"It is an easy product to use and does great things for our company. It keeps track of all of our sales activity."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its overall ability to manage everything, including the sales pipeline and quick creation of sales reports."

"It works beautifully. I haven't had any errors."

More Salesforce Platform pros

Cons

"It should offer more security 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."

"In the next release, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience."

"In the next release, I would like to see easy integration with external tools."

"There are no synthetic application monitoring and real-time monitoring features."

"It is not straightforward to setup."

"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."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry cons

"Salesforce's constant rebranding and name changes can be confusing for both customers and partners."

"Sometimes what will happen is we work on it and then we move to a different tab and work on something else. After five minutes, when we come back, it automatically signs out."

"The reporting for Salesforce could be approved. It is a manual process and it would be useful to have a guide or videos on how to generate reports or any other cool things that you could do with the platform."

"Better flexibility in editing emails created from templates would be great, and being able to add hyperlinks in emails for scheduling meetings would allow us to automate more."

"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."

"Although the platform is already set up for you, there's a lot of customization that needs to be done, especially for any new component we start using. For whatever solution we wanted, we had to think for ourselves and design it all on our own. And, unfortunately, there were some components that were not really mature in the beginning, like Tableau for example."

"The general reports could be made easier in the Salesforce Platform. Generating needs extensive training to know the exact structure of the design. Whenever you search for something you need to know what are the exact fields that you need to view. It's not an easy process to learn."

"The integration of Salesforce with other solutions could be improved."

More Salesforce Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."

"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."

"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."

"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."

"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."

"The solution is fairly priced."

"It is very expensive. Its licensing is on a monthly basis."

"I have heard that it is fairly priced. It offers ROI."

"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."

"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."

"It is quite expensive. Its developers come at a premium cost, which makes it expensive."

"The price varies depending on the cloud."

"The product's additional features can be expensive."

More Salesforce Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

38%

Manufacturing Company

20%

Insurance Company

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Pivotal Cloud Foundry?

I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pivotal Cloud Foundry?

I would say it is around a nine out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. Just short of Oracle. It's sort of Oracle cloud.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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, ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 32% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 31% of the time

Google Cloud vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 11% of the time

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry Competitors

Appian vs Salesforce Platform

Compared 17% of the time

Oracle Application Express (APEX) vs Salesforce Platform

Compared 16% of the time

Microsoft Power Apps vs Salesforce Platform

Compared 14% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Salesforce Platform

Compared 10% of the time

ServiceNow vs Salesforce Platform

Compared 6% of the time

More Salesforce Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

February 2025

Download Pivotal Cloud Foundry product report

Buyer's Guide

Salesforce Platform

February 2025

Download Salesforce Platform product report

Also Known As

PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)

Salesforce1, Force.com, Salesforce App Cloud

Overview

Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) is the leading enterprise PaaS, powered by Cloud Foundry. PCF provides a cloud-native application platform that allows you to continuously deliver any app to every major private and public cloud with a single platform. PCF is proven to accelerate feature delivery with higher developer productivity and a 200:1 developer to operator ratio. PCF's built-in security and self-healing capabilities reduce risk in your app portfolio while maintaining high-availability at scale to keep customer facing systems online even in the most challenging circumstances. pivotal.io

VMware

Salesforce Platform is a tool that provides application building with open application programming interfaces (APIs), integration tools, back-end services, starter templates, and developer environments. With a low-code interface, users are able to build applications and benefit from automated processes. The product helps customers to increase work productivity and save on IT costs through efficient, easy-to-understand, methods for creating applications.

Salesforce Platform allows companies to build and operate intelligent applications at scale and share them with employees and customers in real time. The tool secures companies' data while connecting and synchronizing it simultaneously across their Customer 360 accounts. The main components of the product are:

Application development: With low code, companies can build applications faster and automate their businesses.
Automation: The product can connect with Salesforce Genie, allowing employees to create seamless processes.
Security: The Shield component allows companies to secure their data and build applications.
Hyperforce: Companies have the option to scale globally and serve customers locally, providing secure, private, and agile solutions.
Einstein Intelligence: Organizations can utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to create personalized experiences for customers, potentially increasing companies’ growth.
Sandboxes: Salesforce Platform offers developers secure development environments where they can test, build, and deploy changes before rolling out final products.

Salesforce Platform Features

Also referred to as a “drag and drop app builder," this solution offers various features for customers to create intelligent applications and build personalized services for clients, partners, and employees within the apps.

Mobile feature: The mobile feature of Salesforce Platform allows users to build applications for mobile as well as turn already-made apps into mobile apps instantly.
AI: Through AI, users are able to personalize their applications, utilizing the smart assistant of the platform (called Einstein). The creation of customized services for clients can drive engagement and scale customer experience.
Vision feature: The Vision feature also utilizes Einstein Platform, where users can take advantage of Einstein Prediction Builder, Bots, Vision, and Language to create AI-powered applications.
Data protection: Salesforce Platform offers a data protection feature called Salesforce Shield. With it, companies can monitor app and data use, automate security policies, run compliance audits, and encrypt sensitive data.
Privacy and identity feature: Salesforce Customer Identity is a feature for privacy that offers user access through a single login. The feature provides a seamless user experience while maintaining a high level of security.
Community feature: The community feature of the product offers a digital experience platform where companies can create secure portals, applications, and websites.
Builder feature: The application building feature of Salesforce Platform offers various ways for users to create apps, including through low-code builders and pro-code tools.

Salesforce Platform Benefits

The benefits of using Salesforce Platform include:

Compared to manual coding products, Salesforce Platform is simpler for beginner users who want to develop a product.
The tool requires a low amount of coding, making it a quick and agile way to develop applications.
The adaptable design of the platform offers multi-layered security which maintains data accessible to users while protecting it from outside sources.
The product can be incorporated with various platforms and coding languages for application development.
The platform can be used to create applications compatible with large database systems like MySQL and Oracle.
Salesforce Platform allows collaboration between users, as it offers simultaneous access to various users at the same time.
Salesforce Platform is compatible with desktop databases such as Microsoft Access.

Reviews from Real Users

A vice president at a healthcare company values Salesforce Platform because it is flexible and user-friendly with helpful pre-built schemas.

Peter G., a senior technical consultant at a tech services company, rates Salesforce Platform highly because it is intuitive, quite easy to learn, and stores all kinds of relevant sales information.

Salesforce

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

Buyer's Guide

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. Salesforce Platform

March 2025

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