Portainer vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform comparison

Portainer and Red Hat are both solutions in the Container Management category. Portainer is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.0, while Red Hat is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.2. Portainer holds a 4.1% mindshare in CM, compared to Red Hat’s 23.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Portainer users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Portainer

Read 1 Portainer review

989 Views
880 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Red Hat OpenShift Container...

Read 49 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform reviews

8,618 Views
7,079 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Portainer

Red Hat OpenShift Container...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Portainer and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Amazon Web Services (AWS), VMware and others in Container Management.

To learn more, read our detailed Container Management Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Container Management

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

Portainer

Ranking in Container Management

14th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Red Hat OpenShift Container...

Ranking in Container Management

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Portainer is 4.1%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is 23.7%, up from 20.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Container Management

Featured Reviews

Elio-Bonazzi

Developer with 1-10 employees

A GUI solution that helps to administer a docker using a browser

The first time using Portainer involves a learning curve. It takes longer as you're unfamiliar with the processes and might be lazy to consult the manual. Initially, you may rely on intuition within the GUI. However, after repeating the same tasks three or four times, the process becomes much quicker.

Read full review

Vlado Velkovski

DevOps Architect at KIBS

Provides automation that speeds up our process by 30% and helps us achieve zero downtime

OpenShift has a pretty steep learning curve. It's not an easy tool to use. It's not only OpenShift but Kubernetes itself. The good thing is that Red Hat provides specific targeted training. There are five or six pieces of training where you can get certifications. The licenses for OpenShift are pretty expensive, so they could be cheaper because the competition isn't sleeping, and Red Hat must take that into account. There are a few versions of OpenShift. There is the normal OpenShift and an OpenShift Plus license. Red Hat could think of how to connect those two subscriptions because, with Red Hat Plus, you have one tool called ACM (Advanced Cluster Management), where you can manage multiple clusters from one place. We deployed this functionality by ourselves, but if you don't pay the license for Red Hat OpenShift Plus, you'll lack this functionality. If you have a multi-cloud environment and you have a lot of work to do, it would be a plus if the Red Had OpenShift Plus license came in a bundle with the regular solutions. This ACM tool should be available in the normal subscription, not just the Plus version. There are new versions on an almost weekly basis. I found myself that the upgrading of OpenShift clusters is not a task that will successfully finish every time. It's a simple and quick, but not reliable process. That's why we use multiple clusters. We use v4.10.3, but we want to move to v4.12.X. The upgrade process itself can fail, and we don't have backups of our OpenShift cluster because we have backups of all the Kubernetes manifests on GitHub. We destroy the cluster, bring up a new one quickly, and apply those scripts. The upgrade itself could be more resilient for us as administrators of OpenShift to be sure that it'll succeed and not occasionally fail. They can improve the reliability of their upgrade process. They also have implementations of some Red Hat-verified operators for a lot of products like Elasticsearch. They're good enough for development purposes, but some of the OpenShift operators still lack resilient production-grade configurations. Red Hat says that we have a few hundred operators, but I believe that only half of them are production-grade ready at this moment. They need to work much more on those operators to become more flexible because you can deploy all of them in development mode, but when we go to production grade and want to make specific changes to the operator and configuration, we lack those possibilities.

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

"Portainer comes with the ability to take the information of docker definition. Using it, I can visually observe how the container has been created. It allows me to create networks. I can also visually generate volumes and working stacks."

"The software is user-friendly and straightforward to use, which is favorable to a developer."

"They have built on top of Kubernetes. Most of the Kubernetes latest technology is already supported by the solution."

"The most valuable features are the monitoring and logging functionalities."

"The tool's most valuable features include high availability, scalability, and security. Other features like advanced cluster management, advanced cluster security, and Red Hat Quay make it powerful for businesses. It also comes with features like OpenShift Virtualization."

"Integrating the product into our existing infrastructure was easy."

"Some of the primary features we leverage in the platform have to do with how we manage the cluster configurations, the properties, and the auto-scalability. These are the features that definitely provide value in terms of reducing overhead for the developers."

"It has been a good solution to deploy all containerized applications."

"It’s user-friendly."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform pros

Cons

"Portainer needs to be more intuitive."

"I want to see more incorporation of native automation features; then, we could write a code, deploy it directly to OpenShift, and allow it to take care of the automated process. Using this method, we could write one application and have elements copy/pasted to other applications in the development process."

"Another thing that bugs me is that they removed the software in NFS storage. I don't understand why because this is a common type of storage. I am having problems with that, so I wish they would put it back."

"We've encountered challenges when transitioning applications between these environments."

"The initial setup can be hard."

"The price needs to be improved in OpenShift Container Platform. When I choose this, the product is the first factor that we have to make a long analysis to compare the real cost for the other services. However, price is high."

"I believe OpenShift Container Platform can improve in networking, architecture, and cloud areas by reducing deployment time, lowering costs, and streamlining engineer resources"

"In my experience, the issues are not always simply technical. They do stem from technical challenges, but they struggle with the topic of adoption. When you encounter all of the customer pull, there are normally several tiers of your client pop that can adopt either the fundamental features or a little more advanced ones. The majority of the time, the challenge is determining how to drive adoption, how to sell the product to the customer, and how much time they can spend to really utilize those advanced features. If we get into much more detail, but this is from my perspective as the platform engineer and not the end customer, the ability of the end user to be able to debug potential issues with their application That is arguably the most important, let's say, work throughput in my area."

"Metrics monitoring feature needs improvement."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The license to use the OpenShift Container Platform is free. If you are capable with Java you can modify it."

"Its licensing is completely incomprehensible. We have special people within our company. They discuss with Red Hat subscription managers. It is too complex, and I do not understand it. We are from the government, and we are trying to be as cheap as possible. Sometimes, I am just amazed at the amount of money that we have to pay. It is crazy."

"We currently have an annual license renewal."

"OpenShift with Red Hat support is pretty costly. We have done a comparison between AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Services) which provides fully managed services from AWS. It's built on open-source-based Kubernetes clusters and it is much cheaper compared to Red Hat, but it is a little expensive compared to ECS provided by AWS."

"I'm not familiar with pricing or financial aspects. In terms of effort versus benefit, it's worth it."

"The price is slightly on the higher side. It is something that can be worked on because most of the businesses now have margins."

"OpenShift pricing varies by region. For example, a simple cluster with three nodes in DAL-10 might cost around $560 to $580 per month, subject to specific configurations like memory and CPU cores."

"Its price is a bit high because it's a premium product, but as long as the business is ready to pay for that, it's okay."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

University

Energy/Utilities Company

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Portainer?

Portainer comes with the ability to take the information of docker definition. Using it, I can visually observe how the container has been created. It allows me to create networks. I can also visua...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Portainer?

Portainer needs to be more intuitive.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Portainer?

The tool is a GUI that helps to administer a docker using a browser.

See all answers

Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...

See all answers

What do you like most about OpenShift Container Platform?

The tool's most valuable features include high availability, scalability, and security. Other features like advanced cluster management, advanced cluster security, and Red Hat Quay make it powerful...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenShift Container Platform?

OpenShift pricing varies by region. For example, a simple cluster with three nodes in DAL-10 might cost around $560 to $580 per month, subject to specific configurations like memory and CPU cores.

See all answers

Comparisons

Komodor vs Portainer

Compared 52% of the time

Rancher Labs vs Portainer

Compared 10% of the time

Kubernetes vs Portainer

Compared 10% of the time

HashiCorp Nomad vs Portainer

Compared 9% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE vs Portainer

Compared 4% of the time

More Portainer Competitors

Amazon EKS vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 50% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 15% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 8% of the time

HashiCorp Nomad vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 4% of the time

Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 1% of the time

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Container Management

March 2025

Download Portainer product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

March 2025

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform report

Download Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform product report

Overview

Portainer offers a robust platform for managing Docker environments, streamlining containerized application deployments and simplifying complex processes. It provides scalability and efficiency for IT operations.

Portainer facilitates comprehensive management of containerized environments, increasing operational efficiency. Known for its intuitive interface and broad functionality, Portainer minimizes time spent on mundane management tasks. Users benefit from resource optimization and improved visibility in container orchestration. As organizations continue to embrace cloud-native technologies, Portainer becomes a reliable choice for those looking to harness the full potential of Docker while maintaining easy control and oversight of container workloads.

What key features does Portainer offer?

Container Management: Simplifies handling of Docker containers with an easy-to-use interface.
Application Templates: Provides pre-defined templates for faster deployment of applications.
Role-Based Access Control: Ensures secure access through detailed permission settings.
Support for Multi-Cluster: Allows managing multiple clusters from a single point.
Monitoring and Logging: Offers detailed insights and logging for efficient resource monitoring.

Which benefits should be expected from Portainer?

Time Savings: Reduces time spent on manual configurations with its streamlined processes.
Cost Efficiency: Maximizes resource utilization, potentially lowering operational costs.
Enhanced Security: Provides secure management of access and deployments.
Scalability: Supports growth with features that accommodate expanding infrastructures.

In industries like healthcare and finance, Portainer is deployed to manage sensitive data workflows, ensuring compliance and security. It's used in manufacturing for optimizing IoT integrations and in the tech industry to manage microservices efficiently, aligning with modern agile development practices.

Portainer

Red Hat® OpenShift® offers a consistent hybrid cloud foundation for building and scaling containerized applications. Benefit from streamlined platform installation and upgrades from one of the enterprise Kubernetes leaders.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Edenor, BMW, Ford, Argentine Ministry of Health

Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Amazon Web Services (AWS), VMware and others in Container Management. Updated: March 2025.

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