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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
11th
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
7.0
Number of Reviews
95
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (2nd), Rapid Application Development Software (5th), Low-Code Development Platforms (6th), No-Code Development Platforms (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 9.8%, up from 8.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Platform is 2.6%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Salesforce Platform2.6%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry9.8%
Other87.6%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Stephen  Hack - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use, simple to sign-in, but lacking graphical interface
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is used as a cloud platform Pivotal Cloud Foundry has helped our organization by the way we've set it up, it's easy to sign in, bind services, push services, and create YAML files. The most valuable features of Pivotal Cloud Foundry are its ease of use and the command line…
Yasser_Anter - PeerSpot reviewer
Has customization and integration capabilities which increase efficiency
Salesforce could improve by offering AI features or functionalities to help business decision-makers analyze business history, suggest forward strategies, and participate in events. The previous version had a complicated interface where multiple pages and data entries were required, which was not pleasant for sales teams or business users. Also, deploying Salesforce took a long time, about four to five months, which is not ideal for any business.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very easy to use compared to other cloud technologies. It has a very good performance."
"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."
"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 the UI, it is easy to use."
"It provides a set of developer-friendly tools that simplify application deployment."
"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."
"It supports CI/CD, and is integrated with the CI/CD very well."
"The solution is stable and resilient. In our company, we do not even see any challenges with the solution."
"The solution provides a preferred method of backing up data."
"It has definitely improved how we function."
"The queue management of the solution is its most valuable aspect."
"The Salesforce Platform's most valuable features are everything in one place, perfect reporting, highly customizable, and easy to receive information you need."
"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. The Einstein Analytics dashboards were really great."
"I like the reports and the dashboards. Since I'm a managing partner, I use the reports and dashboards to understand my team's contact management, opportunity management, and account management activities. We use Pardot for marketing campaigns."
"Salesforce is a phenomenal application. It's very diverse."
"A fully integrated solution that provides a seamless experience."
 

Cons

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve the documentation. They are good, but they could improve more. Additionally, it would be beneficial if there were more use case examples."
"Regarding the setup phase, every step is a hurdle. With Pivotal Cloud Foundry, I won't get any proper resources for that. Even if I Google it, there is no proper solution for Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"There are no synthetic application monitoring and real-time monitoring features."
"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."
"In the next release, I would like to see easy integration with external tools."
"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve on the technology it is a bit complex."
"In the next release, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience."
"Salesforce's constant rebranding and name changes can be confusing for both customers and partners."
"The back end really isn't user-friendly at all."
"The reporting functionality is not very intuitive."
"Salesforce Platform is a bit expensive compared to other CRM products, which is a drawback."
"Salesforce Platform could improve by having better integration with Microsoft Azure. For development, we use Microsoft Azure and there was proper integration between the two solutions. We had issues with the customer and they were logged into the Salesforce Platform. We did not have any good way of integrating those issues into the R&D. The R&D mainly uses Microsoft Azure."
"There needs to be more documentation."
"It is quite expensive. It has gotten to that point where it is a lot more pricey. It has kind of got its own proprietary language for development. It is probably never going to change, but if it had a more market language for development, it would be easier to find developers. They come at a premium cost, so it is expensive."
"In terms of features, for our business needs, we have more than enough right now. There is nothing that we are missing or would like to add. They can maybe share some best practices so that when you are starting, you can stick to a good process, and you don't have to think so much about the process that you want or your CEO or CMO wants. The process should not be based on one person in the company. Having some best practices will make it easier to get started. These best practices can be based on what has worked for others. Its basic version is pretty simple, and the customizations are up to the companies, which can make startups like ours lose a lot of time in figuring out what all stakeholders want rather than what would work."
 

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 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."
"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 is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
"It is a fair price for what it's offering, in comparison with other solutions that are available on the market."
"I haven't had to buy Salesforce, however, I have heard it's $1500 a user."
"The licensing is per user per month, which we took out a contract on a long time back. It's really an okay price for what solutions are available and for how many features and what kind of functionality you get."
"The product's additional features can be expensive."
"I don't know anything about its cost, but I'm sure it has got a nice little price tag that goes along with it."
"I rate this solution a six out of ten for pricing. Though the solution is on the pricier side, it still offers good value for money."
"In general, the price is an area where there is always room for improvement."
"The solution is fairly priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
37%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise37
 

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...
What do you like most about Pivotal Cloud Foundry?
I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pivotal Cloud Foundry?
I would say it is around a nine out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. Just short of Oracle. It's sort of Oracle cloud.
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: July 2025.
865,985 professionals have used our research since 2012.