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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
12th
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
15th
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 June 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Heroku is 3.0%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 5.0%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Heroku3.0%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry5.0%
Other92.0%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Cristian-Molina - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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

"Easy, fast, fun, and extendable."
"The product is stable."
"We, as a startup, can use Heroku and the plenty of possible configurations to scale from the very beginning to a medium-sized company."
"Thanks to Heroku, we don't need to do as much direct management in AWS."
"We use Heroku to run generic data. We also use it for our customer development environment. It helps us to build and test websites."
"Deploying with git, npm install git hook ... basically, they got it right for nodejs servers hosting."
"One of the best things about Heroku is that it is very easy and straightforward to deploy an application."
"My advice for anybody who is considering Heroku is that it's really simple to use, it's stable, and it is very powerful for continuous deployment."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is the UI, it is easy to use."
"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."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring and that the deployment is easier."
"Stability is not a concern with this product."
"We find its stability and scalability valuable."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."
 

Cons

"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."
"But I recently got my account suspended because someone abused one of my apps."
"The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly."
"Heroku had an authentication problem a few months ago, but they solved it."
"I had an issue recently where my site was down intermittently for unknown reasons. I posted a ticket and 5 days have gone by without any resolution."
"Heroku doesn't support Docker images on the CI infrastructure."
"Plugins aren't cheap (Mailchimp is $1.5/1000 emails)."
"Heroku is pretty stable. We experience the occasional outages."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve on the technology, it is a bit complex."
"Scalability is terrible. So far we have not been able to scale it up."
"There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it t can take time for users to learn it."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve the documentation. They are good, but they could improve more. Additionally, it would be beneficial if there were more use case examples."
"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."
"It is not straightforward to setup."
"I'd like to see a larger service offering."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
35%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
4%
Insurance 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: June 2026.
902,417 professionals have used our research since 2012.