Heroku vs IBM Public Cloud vs Red Hat OpenShift comparison

Heroku and IBM are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. Heroku is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.0, while IBM is ranked #14 with an average rating of 6.3. Heroku holds a 3.0% mindshare in PSP, compared to IBM’s 3.3% 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

2,234 Views
1,585 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

IBM Public Cloud

Read 18 IBM Public Cloud reviews

3,553 Views
2,683 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Red Hat OpenShift

Read 62 Red Hat OpenShift reviews

9,752 Views
7,978 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: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

PaaS Clouds

May 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 May 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Heroku is 3.0%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Public Cloud is 3.3%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 12.2%, up from 11.3% 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.

Read full review

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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Mikhael Ibrahim

Platform Engineer & Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

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.

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

"The platform is very Node.js-friendly, which is something that is important to us."

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

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

"The solution's most valuable feature is the auto maintenance of databases."

"One of the best things about Heroku is that it is very easy and straightforward to deploy an application."

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

"The product is stable."

"It's easy to push a change and to deploy new things."

More Heroku pros

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

"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."

"One of the features that I really like about IBM Cloud is the flexibility where you can order your own hardware."

"It provides robust analytics and management tools to give customers complete visibility into their environment and infrastructure."

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

"For non-complex applications, the IBM Cloud works fine and the price is much lower than the competitors."

"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."

More IBM Public Cloud pros

"There is a quick deployment of the application, and we can scale out efficiently."

"OpenShift's superior dashboard is a notable strength, especially when compared to Kubernetes."

"What I like best about OpenShift is that it can reduce some of the costs of having multiple applications because you can just move them into small container applications. For example, applications don't need to run for twenty days, only to be used up by Monday. Through OpenShift, you can move some of the small applications into any cloud. I also find the design of OpenShift good."

"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."

"I am impressed with the product's security features."

"The security features of OpenShift are strong when in use of role-based access."

"Its interface is good. The other part is the seamless integration with the stack that I have. Because my stack is mostly of Red Hat, which is running on top of VMware virtualization, I have had no issues with integrating both of these and trying to install them. We had a seamless integration with the other non-Red Hat products as well."

"The security is good."

More Red Hat OpenShift pros

Cons

"I think this solution would be improved if free demos were available indefinitely."

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

"Heroku had an authentication problem a few months ago, but they solved it."

"The tool's configuration is complex."

"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."

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

"We have to do daily restarts of some processes, which is annoying, and the support for custom CI could be better."

More Heroku cons

"It will be challenging to implement if you do not have any experience."

"It could be more secure."

"The solution’s pricing could be improved."

"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."

"They do not have a very good virtual network implemented, and the VPC is the most important feature that needs to be improved."

"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."

"Support could be improved."

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

More IBM Public Cloud cons

"Autoscaling is a very unique feature, but it could be useful to have more options based on traffic statistics, for example, via Prometheus. So, there should be more ready solutions to autoscale based on specific applications."

"The interface could be simplified a bit more."

"Documentation and technical support could be improved. The product is good, but when we raise a case with support—say we are having an image issue—the support is not really up to the mark. It is difficult to get support... When we raise a case, their support people will hesitate to get on a call or a screen-sharing session. That is a major drawback when it comes to OpenShift."

"If we can have a GUI-based configuration with better flexibility then it will be great."

"This solution could be improved by offering best practices on standardization and additional guidance on how to use this solution."

"The operators need a lot of improvement, with better integrations."

"While Red Hat OpenShift is stable, monitoring and reporting capabilities need improvement. Integration with tools like Grafana and Prometheus is necessary for capturing logs, and manually managing these aspects is time-consuming."

"The metrics in OpenShift can use improvement."

More Red Hat OpenShift cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is free."

"Its price is very good."

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

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

"The price of Heroku could be less expensive."

"It pretty much has a standard price. There is no hidden price with IBM Public Cloud."

"The licensing fees are straightforward and predictable."

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

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

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

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

"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."

More IBM Public Cloud pricing and cost advice

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

"My company makes payments towards the licensing costs attached to OpenShift."

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

"The product's support is expensive. I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."

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

"The pricing for OpenShift includes support and licensing, which costs approximately $400."

"The product has reasonable pricing."

More Red Hat OpenShift pricing and cost advice

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852,098 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Educational Organization

10%

University

Computer Software Company

14%

University

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

31%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

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 29% of the time

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Heroku

Compared 14% of the time

AWS Fargate vs Heroku

Compared 10% of the time

Google App Engine vs Heroku

Compared 7% of the time

SAP Cloud Platform vs Heroku

Compared 2% of the time

More Heroku Competitors

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 36% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 33% of the time

Amazon AWS vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 12% of the time

Dell ECS vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM Public Cloud Competitors

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 17% of the time

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 16% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 14% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 9% of the time

Google Cloud vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 8% of the time

More Red Hat OpenShift Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Heroku

May 2025

Download Heroku product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Public Cloud

May 2025

Download IBM Public Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat OpenShift

May 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: May 2025.

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