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Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Salesforce Platform 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

Pivotal Cloud Foundry
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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 (7th), No-Code Development Platforms (1st), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 5.7%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Platform is 3.4%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Salesforce Platform3.4%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry5.7%
Other90.9%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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

"The most valuable features of Pivotal Cloud Foundry are its ease of use and the command line interface has the ability to push instances to the cloud easily."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."
"Stability is not a concern with this product."
"The solution is stable and resilient. In our company, we do not even see any challenges with the solution."
"The most valuable features of Pivotal Cloud Foundry are its ease of use and the command line interface has the ability to push instances to the cloud easily."
"We find its stability and scalability valuable."
"It is a scalable product...We are not facing any particular issues since most of the applications in our company are written in Java and .NET."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."
"Its stability, performance, and usability are most valuable."
"Using this solution makes our company more agile and efficient, and prevents information silos."
"It works beautifully. I haven't had any errors."
"Most of the apps allow you to try out the product before buying it. The trial period depends on the product and varies from a week to 30 days."
"Scalability to configure and integrate, as Salesforce is easily configurable and, with the ability to build APIs, almost anything can be integrated, thus allowing more capability, more data, and more value to the system."
"I like using the reports feature, but also the fact that we are able to have a smooth process when it comes to leads and opportunities."
"The entire solution is very customizable and you are able to add many functionalities."
"Salesforce's strongest feature is reporting especially. It's also a lot more usable than other platforms I've worked with. It has a great user experience, with the ability to filter and access information in real-time."
 

Cons

"There are no synthetic application monitoring and real-time monitoring features."
"There are no synthetic application monitoring and real-time monitoring features and they should be included."
"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it can take time for users to learn it."
"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it t can take time for users to learn it."
"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."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve on the technology it is a bit complex."
"There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"In the next release, I would like to see easy integration with external tools."
"When it switched to lightning, it threw me for a loop."
"Instead of creating our own template, if we had some nice templates that we could pick up - if there were some Microsoft Word templates or Microsoft Excel templates in a repository in Salesforce, that would be great."
"Currently, the integration itself is tricky as we have to use extensive scripting. It should be more of a plug-in and use solution."
"The UI needs to be improved. As developers, we can manage it, but for end users it's not very attractive in the workshop."
"It could be maybe a bit more user-intuitive."
"The initial setup is rather complex."
"If you have resellers or distributors, you just need to figure out a way to set up the system in the backend. Since every company is different, it takes a little bit of time to figure that out."
"Although the platform is already set up for you, there's a lot of customization that needs to be done, especially for any new component we start using. For whatever solution we wanted, we had to think for ourselves and design it all on our own. And, unfortunately, there were some components that were not really mature in the beginning, like Tableau for example."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."
"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."
"Costly, but it is the top product in SaaS/PaaS. Pricing is more for large to enterprise level companies."
"It is expensive. Licensing is on an annual basis."
"Salesforce charges double the rates, or almost three times, compared to its competitors. Our company does incur additional charges for maintenance and support."
"Salesforce does a user capacity analysis on a regular basis. For example, if you're not using certain areas, you may lose access. If you don't go in and quote and edit quotes, all of a sudden you may lose your rights to quote."
"I haven't had to buy Salesforce, however, I have heard it's $1500 a user."
"The price of Salesforce Platform is very expensive. There are other solutions that are similar that cost a quarter of what Salesforce Platform does, such as HubSpot."
"The solution is fairly priced."
"In general, the price is an area where there is always room for improvement."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
36%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Insurance Company
4%
Retailer
3%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business39
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise39
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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

PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)
Salesforce1, Force.com, Salesforce App Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
ADP
Find out what your peers are saying about Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. Salesforce Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
890,088 professionals have used our research since 2012.