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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
14th
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
11th
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 July 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Heroku is 3.4%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 10.0%, up from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Cristian-Molina - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Stephen  Hack - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use, simple to sign-in, but lacking graphical interface
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is used as a cloud platform Pivotal Cloud Foundry has helped our organization by the way we've set it up, it's easy to sign in, bind services, push services, and create YAML files. The most valuable features of Pivotal Cloud Foundry are its ease of use and the command line…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's most valuable feature is the auto maintenance of databases."
"Thanks to Heroku, we don't need to do as much direct management in AWS."
"I like the tool's scalability, CLI, and dashboards."
"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."
"One of the best things about Heroku is that it is very easy and straightforward to deploy an application."
"The product is stable."
"We use Heroku to run generic data. We also use it for our customer development environment. It helps us to build and test websites."
"Valuable for us was the fast deployment. This means the time to market is improved without pain for developers."
"The most valuable features of Pivotal Cloud Foundry are its ease of use and the command line interface has the ability to push instances to the cloud easily."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is the UI, it is easy to use."
"It supports CI/CD, and is integrated with the CI/CD very well."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring and the deployment is easier."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."
"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very easy to use compared to other cloud technologies. It has a very good performance."
"Stability is not a concern with this product."
 

Cons

"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."
"We would like to be notified when something goes wrong in the process. When something is not working, we should get an alert."
"The tool's configuration is complex."
"The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly."
"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."
"They could flesh out some of their analytics a little more."
"Heroku should increase its slug size limits."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry doesn't have certain advanced features."
"In the next release, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience."
"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it t can take time for users to learn it."
"It is not straightforward to setup."
"It should offer more security features."
"I'd like to see a larger service offering."
"There are no synthetic application monitoring and real-time monitoring features."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is very good."
"The price of Heroku could be less expensive."
"There is a standard fee for a processing unit, they call them "dynos," and then you pay for add-ons."
"The tool is free."
"I rate the tool's pricing a three out of ten."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."
"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."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."
"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Educational Organization
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
37%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
 

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.
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.
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 Pivotal Cloud Foundry?
I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pivotal Cloud Foundry?
I would say it is around a nine out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. Just short of Oracle. It's sort of Oracle cloud.
 

Comparisons

 

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: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.