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Heroku vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry 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
Pivotal Cloud Foundry
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 6.2%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Heroku3.5%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry6.2%
Other90.3%
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.
reviewer2263239 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
PCF allows for fine-grained configuration, especially regarding scaling but routing limitations
Something that can be done better is canary deployment. So, right now, we're using blue-green deployment. The support for canary deployment would be nice. A few things, such as what OpenShift does better are cluster management. Like, you can manage the entire thing together. Currently, it's possible to manage all the clusters, especially when it comes to cluster management using straightforward configuration. As of now, we have to handle each application instance individually, which means servicing them one by one. It would be better if we could perform these actions as a group or in a more streamlined manner. One more downside is actually the cost of this environment. So, major downside of Pivotal, it's the cost. So, the runtime running costs are very high. Extremely high.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Deploying with git, npm install git hook ... basically, they got it right for nodejs servers hosting."
"The platform is very Node.js-friendly, which is something that is important to us."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the auto maintenance of databases."
"They solve most of our problems and we don't experience many issues with them."
"Valuable for us was the fast deployment. This means the time to market is improved without pain for developers."
"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."
"We, as a startup, can use Heroku and the plenty of possible configurations to scale from the very beginning to a medium-sized company."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring and that the deployment is easier."
"The solution is stable and resilient. In our company, we do not even see any challenges with the solution."
"The solution is stable, and we have not experienced any infrastructure issues, so it is very good and captures a few metrics, onboarding to App Dynamics."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."
"I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."
"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."
"Stability is not a concern with this product."
 

Cons

"They could flesh out some of their analytics a little more."
"We would like to be notified when something goes wrong in the process. When something is not working, we should get an alert."
"Heroku is pretty stable. We experience the occasional outages."
"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."
"Plugins aren't cheap (Mailchimp is $1.5/1000 emails)."
"We have to do daily restarts of some processes, which is annoying, and the support for custom CI could be better."
"Heroku doesn't support Docker images on the CI infrastructure."
"Their support is good, but they can improve their response time."
"It is not straightforward to setup."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve on the technology, it is a bit complex."
"In the next release, I would like to see easy integration with external tools."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is not scalable, infinitely, because when you install it on a set of virtual machines it is very hard to scale. It's easy to scale on an application level, but not it is not similar to if you were using Amazon. Amazon you can scale thousands of applications."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve on the technology it is a bit complex."
"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."
"There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"In the next release, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is free."
"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."
"Its price is very good."
"I rate the tool's pricing a three out of ten."
"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
"We do pay for the licensing cost because we have opted for a private cloud setup. So, it is a cloud setup, and we have to make payments based on the cloud size. I do not consider it very costly when comparing it to the market."
"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Financial Services Firm
36%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Insurance Company
5%
Computer Software Company
4%
 

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 Business5
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What advice do you have for others considering Heroku?
The integration capabilities are great because of the quick integration and the management features. We don't need a lot of expertise and all external DevOps people. Heroku is the easiest platform ...
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, UrbanDictionary, Code for America, Mailchimp, Rapportive, GitHub, TED, and Lyft.
Humana, Citibank, Mercedes Benz, Liberty Mutual, The Home Depot, GE, West Corp, Merrill Corporation, CoreLogic, Orange, Dish Network, Comcast, Bloomberg, Internal Revenue Service, Ford Motor Company, Garmin, Volkswagen, Solera, Allstate, US Air Force, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, ScotiaBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Heroku vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,264 professionals have used our research since 2012.