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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
15th
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
7.1
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (9th), Container Management (12th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (7th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)
 

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 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

Faizan Haider - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Mikhael Ibrahim - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

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."
"It's easy to push a change and to deploy new things."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the auto maintenance of databases."
"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."
"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."
"Valuable for us was the fast deployment. This means the time to market is improved without pain for developers."
"Thanks to Heroku, we don't need to do as much direct management in AWS."
"OpenShift is more enterprise-oriented, offers good support, and provides integration with multiple solutions."
"The most valuable feature is the high availability for the applications."
"In terms of implementation, OpenShift is very user-friendly, which is an advantage. We are using it along with GitLab for implementing CI/CD pipelines. That's a feature that other products also have, but in OpenShift, we find it good."
"The product's initial setup is very easy, especially compared to AWS."
"OpenShift offers more stability than Kubernetes."
"The virtualization of my APIs means I no longer have to pay VMware large amounts of money to only run in-house solutions."
"Its security is most valuable. It's by default secure, which is very important."
"OpenShift is based on Kubernetes and we try to use all the Kubernetes objects of OpenShift. We don't use features that are specific to OpenShift, except internal certificates for the services. The one feature that is missing from Kubernetes and that is really useful in OpenShift is the lifecycle of the cluster and the ease of installation. We use VMware and VMware integration internally with the OpenShift installer, which is very good. With OpenShift it's easy to spin up or scale out a cluster."
 

Cons

"They could flesh out some of their analytics a little more."
"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."
"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 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 doesn't support Docker images on the CI infrastructure."
"The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly."
"The GUI could have more capabilities, particularly around virtualization. Some features are missing, such as storage migrations, when compared with VMware."
"It would be great if it supported Bitbucket repositories too."
"They could work on the pricing model, making it more flexible and possibly lower."
"The product’s integration with Windows containers and other third-party products needs improvement."
"The speed of deploying new applications can be improved."
"The software-defined networking part of it caused us quite a bit of heartburn. We ran into a lot of problems with the difference between on-prem and cloud, where we had to make quite a number of modifications... They've since resolved it, so it's not really an issue anymore."
"I want easier node management and more user-friendly scripts for installing master and worker nodes."
"They could work on the pricing model, making it more flexible and possibly lower."
 

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."
"Its price is very good."
"There is a standard fee for a processing unit, they call them "dynos," and then you pay for add-ons."
"Depending on the extent of the product use, licenses are available for a range of time periods, and are renewable at the end of the period."
"The licensing cost for OpenShift is expensive when compared to other products. RedHat also charges you additional costs apart from the standard licensing fees."
"Pricing of OpenShift depends on the number of nodes and who is hosting it."
"We had a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) license for all our servers' operating systems. By having multiple Red Hat products together, you can negotiate costs and leverage on having a sort of enterprise license agreement to reduce the overall outlay or TCO."
"OpenShift is really good when we need to start, but once we get to a certain scale, it becomes too expensive."
"The price depends on the type and the nature of the organizations, along with the types of projects that are of considerable range."
"The pricing is standard; the solution isn't particularly expensive or affordable."
"The cost is quite high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Educational Organization
9%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
32%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
 

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.
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 do you like most about OpenShift?
OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins.
 

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: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.