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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

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."
"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."
"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."
"I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is the UI, it is easy to use."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very easy to use compared to other cloud technologies. It has a very good performance."
"We find its stability and scalability valuable."
"The solution is scalable and it is one of its best features."
"They are already beginning to implement generative AI."
"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."
"The most valuable features are quick customization, solid deployment processes, and excellent reliability."
"The lead conversion process in Salesforce Sales Cloud is extremely valuable."
"Salesforce Platform is very good at what it does."
"I found the ease of use most valuable in the Salesforce Platform. I also found the platform pretty light."
"The solution provides a preferred method of backing up data."
 

Cons

"Scalability is terrible. So far we have not been able to scale it up."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"In the next release, I would like to see easy integration with external tools."
"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."
"The initial setup was not easy, it was a bit complex."
"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it can take time for users to learn it."
"Salesforce also did not integrate well with some of the other systems that we had."
"I think the interface should be enhanced and more user-friendly."
"The solution is very expensive compared to CRM solutions."
"Getting reports in Salesforce is sometimes a little bit difficult. You need to do a lot of things to get detailed reports."
"With Salesforce, I do feel that I'm doing a lot of repetitive tasks."
"The reporting functionality is very granular and you can do a lot with it, but unfortunately, it's not very intuitive."
"Easier process to move to Lightning Components."
"In Salesforce, every customer is unique and it's not possible to bundle them together effectively if they are from the same company or move companies, et cetera."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."
"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."
"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."
"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 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 a bit expensive."
"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."
"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."
"I haven't had to buy Salesforce, however, I have heard it's $1500 a user."
"rice-wise, the solution is reasonable for what we're getting."
"Pricing for the Salesforce Platform is too expensive."
"The licensing is on the expensive side, but most clients engage in negotiations to reach a more favorable agreement. For stand-alone or medium-sized clients, it can be relatively costly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
36%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Insurance Company
5%
Retailer
4%
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.
887,041 professionals have used our research since 2012.