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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
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (3rd), Rapid Application Development Software (5th), Low-Code Development Platforms (7th), No-Code Development Platforms (1st), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 5.7%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Platform is 3.4%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Salesforce Platform3.4%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry5.7%
Other90.9%
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

"We find its stability and scalability valuable."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very easy to use compared to other cloud technologies. It has a very good performance."
"I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."
"The solution is stable, and we have not experienced any infrastructure issues, so it is very good and captures a few metrics, onboarding to App Dynamics."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale."
"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, and it has very good performance."
"Salesforce is the best one out there."
"It is an easy product to use and does great things for our company."
"Any issues it may have for example with integration are all minor when you compare it with the performance, scalability, and ease of use."
"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."
"We used it for providing a 360 view of the customers from within Salesforce. So, a lot of data got presented there, for which we used Einstein Analytics. The Einstein Analytics dashboards were really great."
"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."
"We like that everything is in it, as it's a very robust product that can be used for many things, the solution is easy to use, the initial setup is very easy, and it's stable."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the unit coordination between sales and marketing when it comes to lead management."
 

Cons

"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."
"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."
"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."
"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."
"It should offer more security features."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry doesn't have certain advanced features."
"Scalability is terrible. So far we have not been able to scale it up."
"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."
"Reporting tools are not great and you usually have to use a 3rd party reporting tool for any complex report or reports which also need to source data from outside your CRM (which many of ours do), and to get any historical data analysis (e.g. need data warehouse)."
"Salesforce Platform is a bit expensive compared to other CRM products, which is a drawback."
"Salesforce introduces a lot of products and sometimes rebrands them, causing confusion. They acquire products like W and retain their names, creating confusion in the market. This confusion isn't related to the product's functionality but rather its positioning and rebranding. For instance, what was once known as Community Cloud is now referred to as Experience Cloud. This can be confusing for business leaders."
"The reporting needs improvement and the dashboard could have more components added."
"When you compare with Appian, they have to improve more on configuration and more systematic care, configuring by itself and if they are making other things in the area that they update."
"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."
"It may be slow, but that is relative."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
"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."
"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 price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."
"The price varies depending on the cloud."
"rice-wise, the solution is reasonable for what we're getting."
"It is quite expensive. Its developers come at a premium cost, which makes it expensive."
"Salesforce is cheap."
"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."
"In general, the price is an area where there is always room for improvement."
"The solution is fairly priced."
"I haven't had to buy Salesforce, however, I have heard it's $1500 a user."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
36%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Insurance Company
5%
Retailer
4%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
6%
 

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: April 2026.
886,932 professionals have used our research since 2012.