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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Docker
Ranking in Container Management
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
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
61
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (3rd), Server Virtualization Software (9th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (7th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Docker is 2.7%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 1.6%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Rikin Parekh - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful to create sandbox environments to run applications and makes it easy to test them
Overall, setting up the Docker environment is quite easy. Many methods exist, such as using Docker Compose and Docker networks to communicate between containers. The main challenge lies in designing the architecture and integrating different frameworks and microservices. I would rate the ease of setting up the tool at around nine out of ten. The time it takes to deploy depends on the scale of the system. For the early-stage startup I'm currently working with, it doesn't take much time. It's just me handling the deployment. In our early-stage startup, we have a couple of teams with around four to five backend APIs and two front-end services. Deploying these doesn't take much time. My focus is more on minimizing costs due to our lean startup structure.
Mikhael Ibrahim - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamlessly monitor microservices with streamlined DevOps capabilities
Most benefit from it, however, I work with Kubernetes, and installing Vanilla Kubernetes is easy. That said, it introduces many tools that need to be set up individually. OpenShift comes ready out of the box, with all tools installed and configured. Red Hat certifies and confirms that all the components are compatible with each other. OpenShift's superior dashboard is a notable strength, especially when compared to Kubernetes. The integrated DevOps capabilities, such as pipelines and the container registry, are extremely beneficial. Additionally, its capability to monitor microservices and containers with integrated tools like Prometheus is a major advantage. The horizontal pod scaling exceeds the scalability features I found in Kubernetes.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Docker is convenient and easy to use."
"Traditional deployments take more time and builds can be inconsistent across different environments. Docker solves these issues."
"The tool helps us in code versioning. I think it's pretty much easy to use and very straightforward. Even if someone is new to the tool, they can easily start using it with a little guidance or theoretical knowledge. Go through the tool and start using it without much struggle."
"The most valuable feature is the simple containerization."
"We are able to stop our containers or stop the service with a single command."
"The deployment is quite fast, which is beneficial."
"The solution's most valuable feature is having containers independent of the operating system or environment."
"We find the auto scaling and auto healing functionality of this solution very good."
"The most valuable feature is the auto scalers for all microservices. The feature allows us to place request limits and it is much cheaper than AWS."
"The security features of OpenShift are strong when in use of role-based access."
"The most valuable feature of OpenShift is the security context constraint (SCC). The solution’s security throughout the stack is good. And security context constraints provide port-level security. It's a granular level of control, where you can give privileges to certain users to work on certain applications."
"The developers seem to like the source-to-image feature. That makes it easy for them to deploy an application from code into containers, so they don't have to think about things. They take it straight from their code into a containerized application. If you don't have OpenShift, you have to build the container and then deploy the container to, say, EKS or something like that."
"I like OCP, and the management UI is better than the open-source ones."
"Excellent GUI support, so one does not need to use the command line client for almost any tasks. Great support for building images directly from Git repositories with hooks."
"The concept of containers and scaling on demand is a feature I appreciate the most about Red Hat OpenShift."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is the great customer service and the ability for our team to get assistance when we need it."
 

Cons

"In terms of communication between services, perhaps the configuration within networks between containers could be improved."
"Docker volumes. When I integrated volumes, I faced challenges. I have not essentially used add volumes to the existing instances."
"There is always room for improvement. I often refer to forums such as StackOverflow to learn from other developers' experiences and the challenges they have faced while using Docker."
"We would like to see improvement in adding the node into the Docker Swarm cluster, as at present it is a little tricky and requires a lot of manual steps."
"Sometimes, we have sync-up issues where the build doesn't get processed due to these sync issues, causing the build to fail. That's one of the drawbacks I see. When we did a huge sync-up, we faced a couple of issues. It takes some time for us to complete the sync-up. For frequent, smaller updates, we haven't had any issues. However, challenges can arise for those who prefer doing everything in one go. This might not necessarily be due to the tool itself but because of the approach of doing everything in a single batch."
"Stability is an area with a shortcoming."
"The solution could improve with a GUI instead of only a command line interface. Having to use the command line interface can be a hassle."
"The solution is not easy to manage and it is one of the reasons why people introduce orchestration tools to manage it."
"Not a ten because it's not a standard solution and the endpoint protection user has to prepare with documentation or have training from other people. It's not easy to start because it's not like other solutions."
"I had to frequently upgrade my cluster due to OpenShift's rolling updates every six months, which I found to be excessive."
"The latest 4.0 version of OpenShift disabled a few of the features we previously made use of, although this wasn't a huge deal."
"One of the features that I've observed in Tanzu Mission Control is that I can manage multiple Kubernetes environments. For instance, one of my lines of business is using OpenShift OKD; another one wants to use Google Anthos, and somebody else wants to use VMware Tanzu. If I have to manage all these, Tanzu Mission Control is giving me the opportunity to completely manage all of my Kubernetes clusters, whereas, with OpenShift, I can only manage a particular area. I can't manage other Kubernetes clusters. I would like to have the option to manage all Kubernetes clusters with OpenShift."
"This is a fairly expensive solution."
"There are challenges related to additional security layers, connectivity compliance for endpoints, and integration."
"I think that OpenShift has too many commands for running services from the CLI, and the configuration files are a little complicated."
"The tool lacks some features to make it compliant with Kubernetes"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Docker's price is good."
"The product is not expensive."
"The pricing of the solution is fairly cheap."
"We are using the open-source version of the solution."
"The solution offers an open-source version that is free and includes a lot of functionality."
"Docker is a free tool."
"For commercial use, it's about $30 per month. The license itself isn't expensive, but if there are many users, the price becomes high."
"We use the open-source version."
"The cost is quite high."
"Depending on the extent of the product use, licenses are available for a range of time periods, and are renewable at the end of the period."
"The product has reasonable pricing."
"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."
"We are currently using the open version, OKD. We plan to get the enterprise version in the future."
"This solution is fairly expensive but comes at an average cost compared to other solutions in the market."
"The licensing cost for OpenShift is expensive when compared to other products. RedHat also charges you additional costs apart from the standard licensing fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Insurance Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
32%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Insurance Company
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 needs improvement with Docker?
In terms of communication between services, perhaps the configuration within networks between containers could be improved.
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: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.