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Docker 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
8.0
Docker offers cost savings by enhancing efficiency, reducing complexity, and enabling faster deployment with consistent environments and smaller hardware.
Sentiment score
7.8
Red Hat OpenShift improves productivity, offers cost savings, enhances system stability, and provides 15% ROI, especially in privacy-focused sectors.
With OpenShift combined with IBM Cloud App integration, I can spin an integration server in a second as compared to traditional methods, which could take days or weeks.
Moving to OpenShift resulted in increased system stability and reduced downtime, which contributed to operational efficiency.
It is always advisable to get the bare minimum that you need, and then add more when necessary.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
4.1
Docker's customer service is praised for documentation, though many use community resources; support averages 7-8/10 in ratings.
Sentiment score
6.8
Red Hat OpenShift support is mixed, praised for expertise but criticized for slow responses and varying experiences based on subscription.
Red Hat's technical support is responsive and effective.
I have been pretty happy in the past with getting support from Red Hat.
Red Hat's technical support is good, and I would rate it a nine out of ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Docker efficiently scales applications, especially with Kubernetes and Terraform, despite limitations in disk space and local machine scalability.
Sentiment score
7.5
Red Hat OpenShift offers efficient scalability with automated features, easy deployment, and adaptability, despite cost and infrastructure considerations.
Previously, only one or two applications could run on a server, but now it can handle hundreds of applications, scaling up or down as needed.
The on-demand provisioning of pods and auto-scaling, whether horizontal or vertical, is the best part.
OpenShift's horizontal pod scaling is more effective and efficient than that used in Kubernetes, making it a superior choice for scalability.
Red Hat OpenShift scales excellently, with a rating of ten out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Docker is highly regarded for stability and reliability, despite minor issues with Windows compatibility and occasional resource concerns.
Sentiment score
7.7
Red Hat OpenShift is praised for stability, reliability, and features like Blue-Green deployment, with minor issues quickly resolved.
It provides better performance yet requires more resources compared to vanilla Kubernetes.
I've had my cluster running for over four years.
It performs well under load, providing the desired output.
 

Room For Improvement

Docker needs improvements in stability, security, documentation, user interface, pricing, and support to enhance adoption and usability.
Red Hat OpenShift needs better documentation, improved usability, and enhancements in security, integration, technical support, and installation processes.
Docker is a time-tested, proven solution with industry-wide applications.
In terms of communication between services, perhaps the configuration within networks between containers could be improved.
Learning OpenShift requires complex infrastructure, needing vCenter integration, more advanced answers, active directory, and more expensive hardware.
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.
We should aim to include VMware-like capabilities to be competitive, especially considering cost factors.
 

Setup Cost

Docker's open-source version is free, but licensing for Enterprise users starts at $24 per user monthly, prompting alternatives.
Red Hat OpenShift pricing is high but potentially cost-effective for large enterprises, offering comprehensive support and enterprise capabilities.
I consider Docker's pricing to be affordable.
Initially, licensing was per CPU, with a memory cap, but the price has doubled, making it difficult to justify for clients with smaller compute needs.
Red Hat can improve on the pricing part by making it more flexible and possibly on the lower side.
The cost of OpenShift is very high, particularly with the OpenShift Plus package, which includes many products and services.
 

Valuable Features

Docker's key benefits are security, ease of use, portability, quick deployment, and efficient resource management with extensive features and documentation.
Red Hat OpenShift is valued for its security, scalability, automation, multi-cloud flexibility, and efficient management interface.
It allows the software to run on various machines without compatibility issues, saving a lot of time.
The most valuable feature is the simple containerization.
Because it was centrally managed in our company, many metrics that we had to write code for were available out of the box, including utilization, CPU utilization, memory, and similar metrics.
The concept of containers and scaling on demand is a feature I appreciate the most about Red Hat OpenShift.
A valuable feature of Red Hat OpenShift is its ability to handle increased loads by automatically adding nodes.
 

Categories and Ranking

Docker
Ranking in Container Management
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Development Platforms (1st), Software Supply Chain Security (6th)
Red Hat OpenShift
Ranking in Container Management
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (3rd), Server Virtualization Software (10th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (6th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Docker is 3.6%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 2.4%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Sunny Nair - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers application conversion to Docker image and a mature environment
The learning curve with Docker is huge and extensive. Adopting Docker is a bit difficult because it requires a lot of expertise and background, including an understanding of networking and security concepts. Many professionals are facing issues with the different architectures that interact with each other in Docker. Whenever in our company, we are working with the production environment, professionals are hesitant to adopt Docker due to the extensive learning curve, and most of the team members in our company are more accustomed to an environment like VMware instead of Docker. Docker runs on scripts, so if AI can automate most of the scripting process in Docker, it would be a great advantage in the future version of Docker. As of now, we can create scripts utilizing most of the functions within Docker, but that initial planning phase wherein to understand exactly how you will plan for the resources, how you will convert applications into a Docker-based image, and similar tasks needs to be simplified so that more professionals can adopt Docker.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
29%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Docker?
We are using Docker to host applications.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Docker?
Regarding the cost, Mirantis Container Cloud is cheaper than other solutions like Red Hat. The license costs around 10,000 Indian rupees per year.
What needs improvement with Docker?
Mirantis Container Cloud should have AI integration tools, which are not available right now. These tools should assist in app scalability and deployment error handling.
How does OpenShift compare with Amazon AWS?
Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderful dashboard mechanism to alert us in case the application is over-committing or ...
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...
What do you like most about OpenShift?
OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton
Find out what your peers are saying about Docker vs. Red Hat OpenShift and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,576 professionals have used our research since 2012.