No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

IBM Public Cloud vs Salesforce Platform comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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

IBM Public Cloud
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
15th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
IoT Platforms (1st)
Salesforce Platform
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (3rd), Rapid Application Development Software (5th), Low-Code Development Platforms (4th), No-Code Development Platforms (2nd), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of IBM Public Cloud is 3.6%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Platform is 3.8%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Salesforce Platform3.8%
IBM Public Cloud3.6%
Other92.6%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Premnath Jaganathan - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at Uop Ipl
Affordability and security improve our cloud experience while learning new systems
I'm not working with any AI features in IBM Public Cloud, but they are in the process of building it.I am very satisfied with the security that IBM Public Cloud provides. I would rate IBM Public Cloud eight out of ten, where one is worst and ten is the best.
Sharmila-K - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Transformations and Infrastructure Delivery Manager at a university with 10,001+ employees
Integration processes improve but scripting requires effort
The updates, pricing part, and upgrades to the products are some of the most valuable features with the Salesforce Platform.With the Salesforce Platform, I have minimal experience of approximately one and a half years. I get minimal exposure, once every three or two months, especially during holidays. The Salesforce Platform is connected to the cloud, which is beneficial. When it is integrated with different tools such as Microsoft BI Analytics, it helps us analyze much better. Currently, the integration itself is tricky as we have to use extensive scripting. It should be more of a plug-in and use solution. That is the only issue I see, but otherwise, I appreciate it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In terms of performance, resiliency, and availability, it is second to none."
"An advantage of IBM Public Cloud is the bare metal server. We can take the bare metal server. It's not shared with anyone. We can deploy our applications without sharing them with anyone. That is an advantage of IBM Public Cloud."
"The platform has everything that I need - or 99% of the requirements we need."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Public Cloud is the AI integrations."
"This product is very good because it is accessible in remote locations, and anyone can deploy from any place."
"Overall, I would say that IBM Cloud is stable, straightforward, and is a good service."
"What I like most in IBM Public Cloud is how easy it is to create serverless functions. They are called IBM functions, but in AWS, they are called Lambda functions. Those are pretty standard, and another thing I like the most is that you have fewer restrictions on the amount of data you can transfer across those functions. IBM Public Cloud is way more flexible than AWS. I also like that IBM Public Cloud is pretty straightforward to integrate. As long as you have all the tools IBM provides you, getting everything up and running is straightforward."
"I am very much satisfied with the technical support team at IBM Public Cloud."
"We used it for providing a 360 view of the customers from within Salesforce, so a lot of data got presented there, for which we used Einstein Analytics, and the Einstein Analytics dashboards were really great."
"The updates, pricing part, and upgrades to the products are some of the most valuable features with the Salesforce Platform."
"We use Salesforce to keep track of our customers' activity."
"One can do almost everything using Salesforce's OOTB functionality without much investment."
"Salesforce as a platform gives a lot of freedom to have a customized view."
"I like it because of the fact that it lets me know what I'm working on and what I've recently worked on. It also helps me and allows me to do tracking. If I want to go out and find out how many times I've touched customers, I can find that information out. It tracks such information, and we use it. If we send any type of promotions out, it tracks who gets those promotions and how they've responded to those promotions."
"The product has definitely helped us improve our support services."
"We use this solution to track customer activities, opportunities and contact information."
 

Cons

"It could be more secure."
"The connectivity and speed of IBM Public Cloud are much lower compared to the competition."
"Maybe performance enhancers and reports could be better improved. If they do so, it would be better. Of all the drawbacks I saw, this would be the biggest enhancement."
"Support needs some improvement. Basically, you are doing it all on your own, and it's not easy."
"They could improve on customizing reporting capabilities."
"Support could be improved."
"This solution can be very slow, which was a big problem for us."
"An area for improvement in IBM Public Cloud is getting up-to-date information on how to set up everything. It's hard to find new documentation."
"They need an easy way of getting details and then adding to it and then being able to do it in a more simplified way"
"I think that Salesforce can improve lead management when it comes to B2C. I would like to have more features specifically related to the B2C segment. The current process where you create a lead that's in the B2C segment and it creates an account makes no sense."
"We have a lot of strategic accounts and large accounts that are tied with all the growth and acquisitions across North America, being able to tag parent-child accounts in an easier fashion would be better. This is the biggest pain point is associating parent to child and being able to align and manage it better. Overall a better parent-child relationship between accounts would be a benefit."
"Identification management systems integration should be easier."
"The initial setup is rather complex."
"The UI needs to be improved. As developers, we can manage it, but for end users it's not very attractive in the workshop."
"Currently, the integration itself is tricky as we have to use extensive scripting. It should be more of a plug-in and use solution."
"Easier process to move to Lightning Components. There is a huge overtake of planning, testing and resources required to analyse what features would work."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing fees are straightforward and predictable."
"The price of IBM Cloud is very cheap compared to competitors AWS and Azure."
"We are using the trial version of this solution, so we have not paid anything."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a nine out of ten."
"Pricing is not as fair as Amazon or Azure."
"IBM has a lesser price compared to other cloud service providers like Azure and AWS."
"IBM Public Cloud is pretty cheap. They have an ongoing free tier that basically won't expire, so as long as your solution is small enough, you can have a test set that you can use for demos, which will cost you almost nothing."
"In order to be competitive, you have to commit to a contract for at least one year, but you pay a fixed monthly fee."
"It is expensive."
"It is quite expensive. Its developers come at a premium cost, which makes it expensive."
"It is a fair price for what it's offering, in comparison with other solutions that are available on the market."
"It is expensive."
"I have heard that it is fairly priced. It offers ROI."
"Salesforce is cheap."
"The cost of this solution depends on negotiations. It is somewhere between expensive and reasonable. There is always additional costs for consulting services. It's the kind of solution that requires consulting, but it is not a licensing cost. It is a consulting cost. It is CAPEX versus OPEX."
"Costly, but it is the top product in SaaS/PaaS. Pricing is more for large to enterprise level companies."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which PaaS Clouds solutions are best for your needs.
914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
11%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise44
 

Questions from the Community

Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to manage data and applications. One of the features we like is the cloud activity ...
What needs improvement with IBM Public Cloud?
The connectivity and speed of IBM Public Cloud are much lower compared to the competition.
What is your primary use case for IBM Public Cloud?
Working with cloud solutions in general, specifically AWS ( /products/amazon-aws-reviews ) and Azure ( /products/microsoft-azure-reviews ).I am completely new to IBM Public Cloud, so it is a learni...
How would you choose between Microsoft PowerApps and Salesforce Platform?
I think it depends on your use case. If your organization uses Microsoft Enterprise products, PowerApps will work better in your environment. Similarly, if you have a Salesforce integration in pla...
How does Salesforce Platform compare with Azure?
Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform is not easy or intuitive to deploy. The difficulty will be impacted by the type of application that you are trying to use the platform to build. Organizations tha...
Do you build applications using low-code or pro-code builders on Salesforce Platform?
At my organization, we have only used Salesforce Platform's low-code builder. The reason for this is not because we do not like the pro-code option, but because we do not see the need of using it, ...
 

Also Known As

IBM Bluemix
Salesforce1, Force.com, Salesforce App Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uvionics Tech, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alpha Modus, Inventive, Web Business Consulting, FindBrok, SilverHook Powerboats, United Way of Allegheny County
ADP
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Public Cloud vs. Salesforce Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.