Heroku vs IBM Public Cloud vs Red Hat OpenShift comparison

Heroku and IBM are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. Heroku is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.0, while IBM is ranked #15 with an average rating of 6.7. Heroku holds a 3.3% mindshare in PSP, compared to IBM’s 3.2% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of Heroku users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 83% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Heroku

Read 29 Heroku reviews

2,195 Views
1,997 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

IBM Public Cloud

Read 18 IBM Public Cloud reviews

2,759 Views
2,593 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Red Hat OpenShift

Read 62 Red Hat OpenShift reviews

11,087 Views
7,650 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Heroku

IBM Public Cloud

Red Hat OpenShift

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Heroku, IBM Public Cloud, and Red Hat OpenShift based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Red Hat and others in PaaS Clouds.

To learn more, read our detailed PaaS Clouds Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

PaaS Clouds

July 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:

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Heroku is 3.3%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Public Cloud is 3.2%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 12.0%, up from 11.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

Cristian-Molina

Senior Developer at Go Coeupas

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.

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Premnath Jaganathan

Product Manager at Uop Ipl

Affordability and security improve our cloud experience while learning new systems

I'm not working with any AI features in IBM Public Cloud, but they are in the process of building it.I am very satisfied with the security that IBM Public Cloud provides. I would rate IBM Public Cloud eight out of ten, where one is worst and ten is the best.

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Pratul Shukla

Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

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.

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

"We use Heroku to run generic data. We also use it for our customer development environment. It helps us to build and test websites."

"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."

"I like the tool's scalability, CLI, and dashboards."

"The most valuable feature of Heroku is the continuous integration and applications it provides."

"It is easy to deploy applications, and we don't need to bother about software updates on the server. We don't need to bother about machines, servers, and hardware. We only need to care about the system and functionality that we need or want to develop. They take care of everything else. It provides high availability. It is a pretty good solution that provides everything that we need. It has everything that we need to run our applications. We have many different applications, and we generate three million bills for a company in Brazil. We see more than a billion requests per day in another application. Everything works just fine, and it is very good."

"Valuable for us was the fast deployment. This means the time to market is improved without pain for developers."

More Heroku pros

"What I like most in IBM Public Cloud is how easy it is to create serverless functions. They are called IBM functions, but in AWS, they are called Lambda functions. Those are pretty standard, and another thing I like the most is that you have fewer restrictions on the amount of data you can transfer across those functions. IBM Public Cloud is way more flexible than AWS. I also like that IBM Public Cloud is pretty straightforward to integrate. As long as you have all the tools IBM provides you, getting everything up and running is straightforward."

"I am very much satisfied with the technical support team at IBM Public Cloud."

"The most valuable feature of IBM Public Cloud is the AI integrations."

"This is a predictable and dependable service."

"There is no installation for this product because it is a cloud product."

"I've found the stability to be excellent. The performance is good."

"The price of IBM Cloud is most valuable for us. The service is personable and gives us a good rapport. I can't say it's the best, but it was enough for our needs."

"It's straightforward, has a good environment and is cost-effective."

More IBM Public Cloud pros

"OpenShift offers more stability than Kubernetes."

"We are able to operate client’s platform without downtime during security patch management each month and provide a good SLA (as scalability for applications is processed during heavy client website load, automatically)."

"The virtualization of my APIs means I no longer have to pay VMware large amounts of money to only run in-house solutions."

"In terms of implementation, OpenShift is very user-friendly, which is an advantage. We are using it along with GitLab for implementing CI/CD pipelines. That's a feature that other products also have, but in OpenShift, we find it good."

"Overall, the solution's security throughout the stack and software supply chain is excellent."

"This solution is providing a platform with OOTB features that are difficult to build from scratch."

"OpenShift offers robust tools for monitoring application traffic, allowing us to analyze client requests and other business-related metrics."

"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."

More Red Hat OpenShift pros

Cons

"The tool's configuration is complex."

"Heroku doesn't support Docker images on the CI infrastructure."

"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."

"We don't find the pipelines intuitive. The user experience could be better. Having to set up multiple apps, then a pipeline, seems like an overkill on the amount of work to do."

"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 pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly."

"Their support is good, but they can improve their response time."

More Heroku cons

"While they have about 99% of what we need, the only exception, perhaps, was the push notification feature that was discontinued. They delayed the replacement product."

"There is not a lot of support for this solution, which is something that needs to be improved."

"An area for improvement in IBM Public Cloud is getting up-to-date information on how to set up everything. It's hard to find new documentation."

"The deployment can be a bit of a pain. There are a lot of packages and a lot of options and it can require complex configuration to get it right."

"The solution needs to be more autonomous. It should let the DL go to allow for more jobs on the cloud. It could have a better interface as well."

"Recently, we just faced some issues with the operating system due to the end of life of CentOS 6...So, then the client wanted to try it out under AWS instead of IBM. In short, it has some complexities."

"The connectivity and speed of IBM Public Cloud are much lower compared to the competition."

"It could be more secure."

More IBM Public Cloud cons

"The speed of deploying new applications can be improved."

"We want to see better alerting, especially in critical situations requiring immediate intervention. Until we go to the dashboard, it can be challenging to quickly recognize that there's an issue for us to deal with. Therefore, a popup of the event or a tweaked GUI to catch our attention when it's alerting would be a welcome change. Everything else is good. We don't need any additional features. From the operations perspective, as an administrator, there is nothing concerning."

"Its virtual upgrades are time-consuming."

"They could work on the pricing model, making it more flexible and possibly lower."

"The metrics in OpenShift can use improvement."

"The interface could be simplified a bit more."

"I want easier node management and more user-friendly scripts for installing master and worker nodes."

"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."

More Red Hat OpenShift cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a standard fee for a processing unit, they call them "dynos," and then you pay for add-ons."

"Its price is very good."

"The price of Heroku could be less expensive."

"I rate the tool's pricing a three out of ten."

"The tool is free."

"In order to be competitive, you have to commit to a contract for at least one year, but you pay a fixed monthly fee."

"Pricing is not as fair as Amazon or Azure."

"IBM has a lesser price compared to other cloud service providers like Azure and AWS."

"The price of IBM Cloud is very cheap compared to competitors AWS and Azure."

"We are using the trial version of this solution, so we have not paid anything."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a nine out of ten."

"IBM Public Cloud is pretty cheap. They have an ongoing free tier that basically won't expire, so as long as your solution is small enough, you can have a test set that you can use for demos, which will cost you almost nothing."

"The licensing fees are straightforward and predictable."

More IBM Public Cloud pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is standard; the solution isn't particularly expensive or affordable."

"The solution is cost-effective."

"We use the license-free version of Red Hat Openshift but we pay for the support."

"The price depends on the type and the nature of the organizations, along with the types of projects that are of considerable range."

"The licensing cost for OpenShift is expensive when compared to other products. RedHat also charges you additional costs apart from the standard licensing fees."

"Pricing of OpenShift depends on the number of nodes and who is hosting it."

"This solution is fairly expensive but comes at an average cost compared to other solutions in the market."

"The cost is quite high."

More Red Hat OpenShift pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

University

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

29%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Heroku?

I like the tool's scalability, CLI, and dashboards.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Heroku?

We use the solution for web applications and web APIs.

See all answers

Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?

IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Cloud?

The front end is not pervasive, so it is very difficult get the status of your current services or account from a mob...

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Public Cloud?

The most valuable feature of IBM Public Cloud is the AI integrations.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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....

See all answers

What do you like most about OpenShift?

OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure vs Heroku

Compared 20% of the time

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Heroku

Compared 11% of the time

AWS Fargate vs Heroku

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Heroku

Compared 8% of the time

More Heroku Competitors

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 33% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 30% of the time

Amazon AWS vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 17% of the time

Dell ECS vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 5% of the time

Amazon Lightsail vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

More IBM Public Cloud Competitors

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 14% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 8% of the time

Google Cloud vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 5% of the time

More Red Hat OpenShift Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Heroku

August 2025

Download Heroku product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Public Cloud

August 2025

Download IBM Public Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat OpenShift

August 2025

Download Red Hat OpenShift product report

Also Known As

No data available

IBM Bluemix

No data available

Overview

Established in 2007, Heroku is a cloud application platform providing a streamlined, efficient place for web app developers to create and deploy their applications. Heroku is designed to maximize developer productivity. With the entire web application development process available on the Herokucloud, creating and rolling out web apps has been made more efficient, convenient, and cost-effective than ever before.

Heroku

IBM Cloud is a full-stack cloud platform that spans public, private and hybrid environments. Build with a robust suite of advanced data and AI tools, and draw on deep industry expertise to help you on your journey to the cloud.

IBM

Red Hat OpenShift offers a robust, scalable platform with strong security and automation, suitable for container orchestration, application deployment, and microservices architecture.

Designed to modernize applications by transitioning from legacy systems to cloud-native environments, Red Hat OpenShift provides powerful CI/CD integration and Kubernetes compatibility. Its security features, multi-cloud support, and source-to-image functionality enhance deployment flexibility. While the GUI offers user-friendly navigation, users benefit from its cloud-agnostic nature and efficient lifecycle management. However, improvements are needed in documentation, configuration complexity, and integration with third-party platforms. Pricing and high resource demands can also be challenging for wider adoption.

What are the key features of Red Hat OpenShift?

Security: Comprehensive security features ensure safe deployments and operations.
Scalability: Auto-scaling and monitoring capabilities cater to high-demand environments.
CI/CD Integration: Seamless integration for efficient continuous deployment processes.
Cloud Compatibility: Supports multi-cloud and on-premise solutions with ease.
GUI: Simplifies platform management and enhances usability.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Improved Efficiency: Streamlined operations reduce time and resource investments.
Enhanced Flexibility: Adapt quickly to changing demands and environments.
Quick Deployment: Fast application deployment supports agile project timelines.
Robust Support: Access to dependable customer support services.

Red Hat OpenShift is strategically implemented for diverse industries focusing on container orchestration and application modernization. Organizations leverage it for migrating applications to cloud-native environments and managing CI/CD pipelines. Its functionality facilitates efficient resource management and microservices architecture adoption, supporting enterprise-level DevOps practices. Users employ it across cloud and on-premises platforms to drive performance improvements.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

Facebook, UrbanDictionary, Code for America, Mailchimp, Rapportive, GitHub, TED, and Lyft.

Uvionics Tech, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alpha Modus, Inventive, Web Business Consulting, FindBrok, SilverHook Powerboats, United Way of Allegheny County

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: July 2025.

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