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Portainer vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Portainer
Ranking in Container Management
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat OpenShift Container...
Ranking in Container Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Portainer is 5.4%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is 19.7%, down from 21.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform19.7%
Portainer5.4%
Other74.9%
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

EB
A GUI solution that helps to administer a docker using a browser
The first time using Portainer involves a learning curve. It takes longer as you're unfamiliar with the processes and might be lazy to consult the manual. Initially, you may rely on intuition within the GUI. However, after repeating the same tasks three or four times, the process becomes much quicker.
Rifat Rahman - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration and automation have transformed deployment and maintenance
Regarding the learning curve, the customers actually do not need the technical nitty-gritty details; they need to know about the containerization journey because they are not familiar with it. They know it as a theory, but they don't understand anything about its practical implications. That's the main challenge. The solution itself doesn't require a high learning curve; it is actually quite good to manage. However, application developers and managers have to understand the beauty of it, and that is the challenge. If Red Hat can execute some programs regarding that, it will help. Regarding Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, it is expensive according to market feedback. Notably, the platform plus is perceived as quite expensive and some features from an infrastructure perspective are lacking.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Portainer comes with the ability to take the information of docker definition. Using it, I can visually observe how the container has been created. It allows me to create networks. I can also visually generate volumes and working stacks."
"On OpenShift, it's easy to scale applications. We can easily scale up or scale down."
"Technical support is good; they are fast and reliable."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring and logging functionalities."
"The banking transactions, inquiries, and account opening have been the most valuable."
"The solution's security throughout the stack and the software supply chain is very reliable. When it was on-prem, it was by default secured by our company firewalls and security tools, and now it's in the cloud, which has its security and systems in place. This provides stability to our infrastructure."
"They have built on top of Kubernetes. Most of the Kubernetes latest technology is already supported by the solution."
"It is very lightweight and can be deployed very fast, especially when it comes to containers."
"I like the Flexibility of the solution."
 

Cons

"Portainer needs to be more intuitive."
"The product could benefit from additional operators and tools integrated with OpenShift."
"Setting up OpenShift locally can be challenging, particularly because it requires RHL Linux and has specific restrictions."
"The UI could be more user-friendly to drive tasks more effectively through the interface."
"My impression is that this solution is pretty expensive so I think the pricing plan could improve."
"The monitoring and logging could be improved."
"OpenShift Container Platform is an expensive solution, and its pricing could be improved."
"The complexity of the installation could be reduced. While we got the necessary support, the instructions could be clearer."
"One challenge is that sometimes it may be difficult to find the answers to your questions if you are not a Red Hat customer."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution is expensive, and I rate it an eight out of ten. There is a subscription called OpenShift Plus, which offers additional features and products the vendor provides to complement the OpenShift Container Platform. These include ACM, Red Hat Quay, and Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation."
"OpenShift pricing varies by region. For example, a simple cluster with three nodes in DAL-10 might cost around $560 to $580 per month, subject to specific configurations like memory and CPU cores."
"If you buy the product for a year or three, you get a lot of discounts...I feel that the product is worth its cost, especially since setting it up can be done with just a few clicks."
"The pricing and licensing are handled on an upper management level, and I'm not involved in that, but I understand the solution to be somewhat pricey."
"We currently have an annual license renewal."
"OpenShift Container Platform is highly-priced."
"We paid for Cloud Pak for integration. It all depends on how many VMs or how many CPUs you are using. They do the licensing based on that."
"It largely depends on how much money they earn from the application being deployed; you don't normally deploy an app just for the purpose of having it. You must constantly look into your revenue and how much you spend every container, minute, or hour of how much it is working."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise39
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Portainer?
Portainer comes with the ability to take the information of docker definition. Using it, I can visually observe how the container has been created. It allows me to create networks. I can also visua...
What needs improvement with Portainer?
Portainer needs to be more intuitive.
What is your primary use case for Portainer?
The tool is a GUI that helps to administer a docker using a browser.
Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...
What do you like most about OpenShift Container Platform?
The tool's most valuable features include high availability, scalability, and security. Other features like advanced cluster management, advanced cluster security, and Red Hat Quay make it powerful...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenShift Container Platform?
Regarding whether Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is expensive or if the price is reasonable for my customers, to me, the services it provides should incur some costs, but based on market feed...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Edenor, BMW, Ford, Argentine Ministry of Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Amazon Web Services (AWS), VMware and others in Container Management. Updated: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.