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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
14th
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
62
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (10th), Container Management (12th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (6th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Heroku is 3.3%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 12.0%, up from 11.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Red Hat OpenShift12.0%
Heroku3.3%
Other84.7%
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.
Pratul Shukla - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"Thanks to Heroku, we don't need to do as much direct management in AWS."
"The platform is very Node.js-friendly, which is something that is important to us."
"The most valuable feature of Heroku is the continuous integration and applications it provides."
"The product is stable."
"Valuable for us was the fast deployment. This means the time to market is improved without pain for developers."
"What I found most valuable about this solution is that it's easy to use and integrate with GitHub actions."
"The solution's most valuable feature is the auto maintenance of databases."
"I like the tool's scalability, CLI, and dashboards."
"There is a quick deployment of the application, and we can scale out efficiently."
"A valuable feature of Red Hat OpenShift is its ability to handle increased loads by automatically adding nodes."
"OpenShift offers an easy-to-use graphical user interface for cluster management, making it more accessible for administrators."
"Two stand-out features are the security model and value-add features that don't exist in Upstream Kubernetes."
"I am impressed with the product's security features."
"OpenShift offers robust tools for monitoring application traffic, allowing us to analyze client requests and other business-related metrics."
"Overall, the solution's security throughout the stack and software supply chain is excellent."
"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)."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"They could flesh out some of their analytics a little more."
"I think this solution would be improved if free demos were available indefinitely."
"Heroku doesn't support Docker images on the CI infrastructure."
"The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly."
"We want to see better alerting, especially in critical situations requiring immediate intervention. Until we go to the dashboard, it can be challenging to quickly recognize that there's an issue for us to deal with. Therefore, a popup of the event or a tweaked GUI to catch our attention when it's alerting would be a welcome change. Everything else is good. We don't need any additional features. From the operations perspective, as an administrator, there is nothing concerning."
"I had to frequently upgrade my cluster due to OpenShift's rolling updates every six months, which I found to be excessive."
"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."
"It would be great if it supported Bitbucket repositories too."
"One area for improvement is the documentation. They need to make it a little bit more user-friendly. Also, if you compare certain features and the installation process with Rancher, Rancher is simpler."
"The speed of deploying new applications can be improved."
"The operators need a lot of improvement, with better integrations."
"There have been some issues with security, in particular, that we had to address. At times they make it “clunky." I am quite confident these parameters will appear in the next releases. They have been reported as bugs and are actually in process."
 

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."
"I rate the tool's pricing a three out of ten."
"The tool is free."
"Pricing of OpenShift depends on the number of nodes and who is hosting it."
"It's important to start small because the solution is scalable. We can build our cluster and look at the bundle option, not the external subscriptions. Talking to the people at Red Hat can save us money."
"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."
"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 for OpenShift includes support and licensing, which costs approximately $400."
"OpenShift is really good when we need to start, but once we get to a certain scale, it becomes too expensive."
"The product’s pricing is expensive."
"This solution is fairly expensive but comes at an average cost compared to other solutions in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Educational Organization
8%
Financial Services Firm
29%
Manufacturing Company
9%
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 Business18
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise39
 

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: July 2025.
866,218 professionals have used our research since 2012.