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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 Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
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 most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is the UI, it is easy to use."
"I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities."
"It provides a set of developer-friendly tools that simplify application deployment."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring and the deployment is easier."
"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 the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."
"The solution is stable and resilient. In our company, we do not even see any challenges with the solution."
"It has definitely improved how we function."
"Salesforce is the best one out there."
"Intuitive to work with and the overall fundamental of the platform is very strong."
"The scalability of the Salesforce Platform is good."
"We also use Salesforce to find trends to make informed decisions in terms of events and marketing campaigns."
"The product is pretty responsive."
"Salesforce offers control over the opportunities to see where we are and gives me high-level dashboards on each opportunity stage."
"Salesforce's strongest feature is reporting especially. It's also a lot more usable than other platforms I've worked with. It has a great user experience, with the ability to filter and access information in real-time."
 

Cons

"In the next release, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience."
"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."
"There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry doesn't have certain advanced features."
"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it t can take time for users to learn it."
"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."
"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."
"What could be improved in the Salesforce Platform is the price. The platform is too expensive. The implementation time for the platform is also longer than expected, so that's another area for improvement."
"Salesforce also did not integrate well with some of the other systems that we had."
"Its documentation and price should be better."
"It could be maybe a bit more user-intuitive."
"Salesforce could improve the performance of their lightning components as they are currently quite heavy on the system and slow to load."
"Salesforce is incredibly slow. It was difficult to run live sales calls and leveraging Salesforce at the same time."
"When we're documenting information such as notes, and so forth, if we were to go back to the same case all notes go missing."
"I would like to have integration with Google."
 

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."
"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."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."
"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."
"I haven't had to buy Salesforce, however, I have heard it's $1500 a user."
"It is an expensive program."
"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 expensive."
"I don't know anything about its cost, but I'm sure it has got a nice little price tag that goes along with it."
"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 for the Salesforce Platform is too expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
36%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Insurance Company
5%
Transportation Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
11%
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.
884,076 professionals have used our research since 2012.