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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
12th
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 (11th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (6th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Heroku is 3.4%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 11.6%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Red Hat OpenShift11.6%
Heroku3.4%
Other85.0%
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.
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

"What I found most valuable about this solution is that it's easy to use and integrate with GitHub actions."
"The most valuable feature of Heroku is the continuous integration and applications it provides."
"It's easy to push a change and to deploy new things."
"The platform is very Node.js-friendly, which is something that is important to us."
"Thanks to Heroku, we don't need to do as much direct management in AWS."
"One of the best things about Heroku is that it is very easy and straightforward to deploy an application."
"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."
"The product is stable."
"The solution provides a lot of flexibility to the application team for running their applications in the container platform, without needing to monitor the entire infrastructure all the time. It automatically scales and automatically self-heals. There is also a mechanism to alert the team in case it is over-committing or overutilizing the application."
"The most valuable feature of OpenShift is the containers."
"Red Hat OpenShift helped us with managing scaling up and scaling down."
"The solution is easy to scale."
"The most valuable feature of OpenShift is the security context constraint (SCC). The solution’s security throughout the stack is good. And security context constraints provide port-level security. It's a granular level of control, where you can give privileges to certain users to work on certain applications."
"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)."
"The product's initial setup is very easy, especially compared to AWS."
"We are currently dealing with both local support and Red Hat support, and they have been amazing."
 

Cons

"They could flesh out some of their analytics a little more."
"Heroku should increase its slug size limits."
"We have to do daily restarts of some processes, which is annoying, and the support for custom CI could be better."
"The tool's configuration is complex."
"Heroku had an authentication problem a few months ago, but they solved it."
"The pricing could be improved because scaling the database becomes costly."
"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."
"I think this solution would be improved if free demos were available indefinitely."
"The area for improvement is mostly in support for legacy applications."
"Its virtual upgrades are time-consuming."
"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."
"This is a fairly expensive solution."
"Autoscaling is a very unique feature, but it could be useful to have more options based on traffic statistics, for example, via Prometheus. So, there should be more ready solutions to autoscale based on specific applications."
"The product’s integration with Windows containers and other third-party products needs improvement."
"OpenShift could be improved if it were more accessible for smaller budgets."
"Room for improvement is around the offerings that come as a bundle with the container platform. The packaging of the platform should be done such that customers do not have to purchase additional licenses."
 

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."
"Its price is very good."
"The price of Heroku could be less expensive."
"I rate the tool's pricing a three out of ten."
"My company makes payments towards the licensing costs attached to OpenShift."
"We use the license-free version of Red Hat Openshift but we pay for the support."
"The pricing is standard; the solution isn't particularly expensive or affordable."
"The cost is quite high."
"The product's support is expensive. I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"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."
"The product’s pricing is expensive."
"The pricing for OpenShift includes support and licensing, which costs approximately $400."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Educational Organization
9%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
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 Business17
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise40
 

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: September 2025.
871,829 professionals have used our research since 2012.