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Heroku vs Red Hat OpenShift comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

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

Heroku
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
13th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat OpenShift
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (9th), Container Management (9th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (5th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Heroku is 3.5%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 8.2%, down from 12.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Red Hat OpenShift8.2%
Heroku3.5%
Other88.3%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Faizan Haider - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at Aldaim Solutions
Used for server deployment and provides auto maintenance of databases
Heroku is deployed on the cloud. We can deploy our private and public projects over at Heroku. Most of the time, when we are starting any new project from scratch, we have to implement our MVP for that project or the core idea. We are unsure how our traffic flow will go or the actual production environment requirements. We don't want to spend the most on the server sites, so then we can use it with our go-to plan for Heroku, and all the resources are available in the basic plan with the minimum expenses. So, it helps us to deploy and make our features available online at the minimum cost. Once we know our needs, we can add the professional add-ons and shift it to another platform. Heroku supports any resource listed in the marketplace. We just have to deploy our AI solutions, and Heroku can also support AI projects. I would recommend the solution to other users. I advise users not to purchase extra add-ons but to make scalable resources so that they can use all the resources efficiently. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Pratul Shukla - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"What I found most valuable about this solution is that it's easy to use and integrate with GitHub actions."
"Thanks to Heroku, we don't need to do as much direct management in AWS."
"It's easy to push a change and to deploy new things."
"We use Heroku to run generic data. We also use it for our customer development environment. It helps us to build and test websites."
"I like the tool's scalability, CLI, and dashboards."
"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."
"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."
"OpenShift's superior dashboard is a notable strength, especially when compared to 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)."
"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."
"Key features are WildFly, because it standardizes infrastructure and the git repository and docker. Git is essential for source code and Docker for infrastructure."
"OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins."
 

Cons

"The tool's configuration is complex."
"We would like to be notified when something goes wrong in the process. When something is not working, we should get an alert."
"Their support is good, but they can improve their response time."
"Heroku had an authentication problem a few months ago, but they solved it."
"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."
"Heroku should increase its slug size limits."
"Heroku doesn't support Docker images on the CI infrastructure."
"The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly."
"The platform's documentation could be more comprehensive to cover the full spectrum of user needs. Sometimes, achieving specific goals is challenging due to a lack of detailed guidance."
"The solution needs to support the new features in Kubernetes more quickly."
"Credential not hidden, so people on the same group can view it."
"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."
"OpenShift requires a very expensive and complex infrastructure. These demands can deter people from learning OpenShift."
"Support could improve with faster response times, as responses are currently quite slow."
"Areas where Red Hat OpenShift can be improved include the licensing being a bit complex and maybe expensive, as that is something in the hands of the organization's higher management, especially when those licensing agreements are done, and I think Red Hat OpenShift is quite resource-heavy because the control plane and default monitoring stack consume significant resources, meaning for small clusters, a large percentage of compute goes just to running Red Hat OpenShift itself, not our apps."
"The whole area around the hybrid cloud could be improved. I would like to deploy a Red Hat OpenShift cluster on-premise and on the cloud, then have Red Hat do the entire hybrid cloud management."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is free."
"The price of Heroku could be less expensive."
"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."
"Its price is very good."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"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."
"The licensing cost for OpenShift is expensive when compared to other products. RedHat also charges you additional costs apart from the standard licensing fees."
"The price depends on the type and the nature of the organizations, along with the types of projects that are of considerable range."
"The product's support is expensive. I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The product’s pricing is expensive."
"I don't deal with the cost part, but I know that the cost is very high when compared to other products. They charge for CPU and memory, but we don't worry about it."
"The pricing is standard; the solution isn't particularly expensive or affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise43
 

Questions from the Community

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 database becomes costly. The Docker features are not great. You cannot use any ...
What is your primary use case for Heroku?
We use the solution for web applications and web APIs.
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 needs improvement with OpenShift?
Areas where Red Hat OpenShift can be improved include the licensing being a bit complex and maybe expensive, as that is something in the hands of the organization's higher management, especially wh...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, UrbanDictionary, Code for America, Mailchimp, Rapportive, GitHub, TED, and Lyft.
UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton
Find out what your peers are saying about Heroku vs. Red Hat OpenShift and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
883,089 professionals have used our research since 2012.