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Amazon AWS vs Heroku vs Red Hat OpenShift comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Amazon AWS is 13.0%, down from 16.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Heroku is 3.4%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 11.8%, up from 11.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon AWS13.0%
Red Hat OpenShift11.8%
Heroku3.4%
Other71.8%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Asif  Meem - PeerSpot reviewer
Managed cloud services have helped accelerate experiments with flexible configuration options
Sometimes the costs associated with spinning up a service, especially managed services, have implications. For example, if I create a Glue job, that will create S3 buckets and other resources that have cost implications, but once I clean up a Glue job, it does not delete the other accessory resources. Sometimes, I have to go hunting for what resources Amazon AWS might have provisioned and how it is costing behind the scenes. It can be complex depending on your level of expertise. It is not as easy to get started, especially when it comes to secure practices. Amazon AWS is more hands-on than other platforms.
Cristian-Molina - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a quick development cycle and continuous integration
The initial setup is straightforward. Heroku integrates well. You only have to push the code, and it automatically deploys the new version. Whether you have permission depends on the application. Currently, I have one application that I deploy myself. I rate the initial setup a nine out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.
Pratul Shukla - PeerSpot reviewer
Adopting a flexible and efficient approach with noticeable improvements in operational costs and continued challenges in job management
Currently, one of the biggest challenges we face is with services and jobs. For spawning batches, although it has crons, it is not easy to integrate with enterprise systems such as Autosys. The entire company uses Autosys, but we are not able to integrate it effectively. We need intermediate servers to run OC utility commands and initiate the cron job. We have to do a lot of modifications to ensure our batches work properly. With physical or virtual servers, even in AWS, we are able to write and manage multiple jobs. Managing batches in Red Hat OpenShift has been a significant challenge. Integrating third parties is a challenge with Red Hat OpenShift. For example, with Elasticsearch, onboarding itself was difficult, running file beats and dealing with routing issues. It is not straightforward, especially since we have some components in AWS as. AWS has many capabilities that come out of the box and are easier to work with compared to Red Hat OpenShift. Red Hat OpenShift's biggest disadvantage is they do not provide any private cloud setup where we can host on our site using their services. The main reason we went with Red Hat OpenShift was because it is a private cloud, and we have regulatory requirements that prevent us from using public cloud.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution can scale quite well."
"We write a lot of Lambda functions for various services, as well as serverless functions."
"The features that I have found most valuable are their compute and their Relational Database Service."
"Amazon AWS is very user-friendly."
"The best features are flexibility and cost."
"The installation process is very simple."
"The compute and the elasticness of the compute is really great. Whenever there's a load, it automatically adds the servers and then reduces the servers based on the configuration. This is really wonderful, more cost-effective, and it's been really good for us."
"The main feature that I like the most is the variety of solutions that it provides. It provides some analysis, business information and more. It provides a wide variety of services."
"The platform is very Node.js-friendly, which is something that is important to us."
"I like the tool's scalability, CLI, and dashboards."
"Thanks to Heroku, we don't need to do as much direct management in AWS."
"The most valuable feature of Heroku is the continuous integration and applications it provides."
"One of the best things about Heroku is that it is very easy and straightforward to deploy an application."
"It's easy to push a change and to deploy new things."
"What I found most valuable about this solution is that it's easy to use and integrate with GitHub actions."
"Valuable for us was the fast deployment. This means the time to market is improved without pain for developers."
"It is a stable platform."
"The company had a product called device financing, where the company worked as a partner with Google. It allowed customers to take mobile phones on loan or via credit. When we migrated those services to OpenShift in February last year, we were able to sell over 100,000 devices in a single day, which was very good."
"The solution is easy to scale."
"OpenShift offers robust tools for monitoring application traffic, allowing us to analyze client requests and other business-related metrics."
"OpenShift's superior dashboard is a notable strength, especially when compared to Kubernetes."
"The concept of containers and scaling on demand is a feature I appreciate the most about Red Hat OpenShift."
"We are currently dealing with both local support and Red Hat support, and they have been amazing."
"The initial setup is simple, and OpenShift is open-source, so it's easy to install on any cloud platform."
 

Cons

"The networking models used in AWS, while functional, do have room for improvement. This is especially the fact, considering that they are built/presented from a systems perspective."
"The response time of technical support could be better."
"They are mainly generalists without access to the operating system. As such, they can provide container level insights,not necessarily at the application level."
"The invoicing procedure of Amazon AWS needs to be improved. It can be difficult to manage."
"They have a low code platform, but it is for intervention."
"There is room for improvement in pricing."
"The user interface (UI) needs improvement. Right now, it's not the best."
"This solution would be improved with the inclusion of hybrid Kubernetes management."
"We would like to be notified when something goes wrong in the process. When something is not working, we should get an alert."
"They could flesh out some of their analytics a little more."
"Heroku doesn't support Docker images on the CI infrastructure."
"Their support is good, but they can improve their response time."
"Heroku should increase its slug size limits."
"I improved the application performance by monitoring and adjusting the cleaner configuration to help set better lightweight limits on containers that run the app instances."
"The tool's configuration is complex."
"The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly."
"The product’s integration with Windows containers and other third-party products needs improvement."
"The solution needs to support the new features in Kubernetes more quickly."
"OpenShift could be improved if it were more accessible for smaller budgets."
"One area for improvement is the documentation. They need to make it a little bit more user-friendly. Also, if you compare certain features and the installation process with Rancher, Rancher is simpler."
"OpenShift requires a very expensive and complex infrastructure."
"There is no orchestration platform in OpenShift."
"They could work on the pricing model, making it more flexible and possibly lower."
"Room for improvement is around the offerings that come as a bundle with the container platform. The packaging of the platform should be done such that customers do not have to purchase additional licenses."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon AWS is on the cheaper side, as their pricing is more competitive. There are no additional costs besides the license. However, Azure sells Microsoft licenses, so they have an advantage."
"Technical support is expensive."
"When I first started using the solution I used a free trial, and then we upgraded to a pay-as-you-go subscription. We have an allocated budget of $50."
"It is very expensive, you have to be very cautious."
"We are reducing costs year-over-year."
"Its price should be lower. Currently, the price is the same if you are working in-house or in production. If you have to do internal testing or you are checking if things are working in-house, you need to pay for that, and the price is the same. The price for in-house usage should be different from production usage."
"It is quite expensive in my very personal opinion. Going on-prem in a data center is, for sure, not as expensive as going to AWS, but when it comes to a point where you are raising and growing, it simply makes a lot of sense to stay in AWS. It is awesome in that way. I am not aware of any extra costs."
"The pricing is fair."
"The tool is free."
"I rate the tool's pricing a three out of ten."
"The price of Heroku could be less expensive."
"Its price is very good."
"There is a standard fee for a processing unit, they call them "dynos," and then you pay for add-ons."
"The model of pricing and buying licences is quite rigid. We are in the process of negotiating on demand pricing which will help us take advantage of the cloud as a whole."
"OpenShift is really good when we need to start, but once we get to a certain scale, it becomes too expensive."
"The pricing for OpenShift includes support and licensing, which costs approximately $400."
"This solution is fairly expensive but comes at an average cost compared to other solutions in the market."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"It's expensive. It may be cheaper to invest in building Vanilla Kubernetes, especially if security is not the number one motivation or requirement. Of course, that's difficult, and in some business areas, such as banking, that's not something you can put as a second priority. In other situations, a Vanilla Kubernetes with a sufficiently strong team can be cheaper and almost as effective."
"The price depends on the type and the nature of the organizations, along with the types of projects that are of considerable range."
"My company makes payments towards the licensing costs attached to OpenShift."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 14, 2013
Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison
Amazon Web Services, Rackspace OpenStack, Microsoft Windows Azure and Google are the major cloud hosting and storage service providers. Athough Amazon is top of them and is oldest in cloud market, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google are giving tough competition to each other and to Amazon also for…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Educational Organization
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business131
Midsize Enterprise48
Large Enterprise112
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise40
 

Questions from the Community

How does OpenShift compare with Amazon AWS?
Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderfu...
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS?
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS? Amazon AWS offers options both in terms of upgrading and expand...
Looking to compare Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure
We like Google Firebase hosting and authentication and also the excellent cloud functionality. Our team found the fle...
What do you like most about Heroku?
I like the tool's scalability, CLI, and dashboards.
What needs improvement with Heroku?
I don't like that the web server crashes every day, every 24 hours. The pricing could be improved because scaling the...
What is your primary use case for Heroku?
We use the solution for web applications and web APIs.
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....
What do you like most about OpenShift?
OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins.
What needs improvement with OpenShift?
Currently, one of the biggest challenges we face is with services and jobs. For spawning batches, although it has cro...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Web Services, AWS
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
Facebook, UrbanDictionary, Code for America, Mailchimp, Rapportive, GitHub, TED, and Lyft.
UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Red Hat and others in PaaS Clouds. Updated: August 2025.
867,836 professionals have used our research since 2012.