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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
7.3
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Portainer is 5.7%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is 20.8%, down from 21.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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.
Prasad Gupta - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient deployment with resource optimization and multi-region stability
There are several areas where OpenShift could improve. The interface has numerous UI bugs that need addressing. Furthermore, the latest version has deprecated the deployment config, which has its own advantages compared to the deployment container. Lastly, there is no built-in auto-scaling plugin at the OpenShift level; this needs to be addressed as it's available at the cloud provider level, like IBM Cloud.

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."
"Autoscaling is an excellent feature that makes it very simple to scale our applications as required."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its scalability on demand, which allows for potentially lower costs, and Built-in resiliency."
"On OpenShift, it's easy to scale applications. We can easily scale up or scale down."
"The operating system has a live update and is more secure than any other. It's made for Atomic OS, a lightweight OS new to the market. I also like the source-to-image capabilities. The customer can directly deploy their applications from the repository. It's a highly flexible and easy way to deploy into production."
"I think it's a pretty scalable tool...The solution's technical support has been pretty good."
"The software is user-friendly and straightforward to use, which is favorable to a developer."
"It has been a good solution to deploy all containerized applications."
"For us, the fully automated upgrades are valuable. We have to maintain the clusters in production. For us, it is very important that it does not take too much time to manage all the clusters and do life cycle management and upgrades."
 

Cons

"Portainer needs to be more intuitive."
"The interface has numerous UI bugs that need addressing."
"The setup process is not great."
"Setting up OpenShift locally can be challenging, particularly because it requires RHL Linux and has specific restrictions."
"The support costs are too high."
"It has an option to install OpenShift without connecting it to the Internet. We tried this, but it was very hard. We couldn't manage to use that option. We wanted to use it offline for installations, updates, upgrades, etc., but we didn't find the offline installation and updates easy. This could be better."
"It is difficult to deploy the OpenShift cluster in a bare-metal environment."
"OpenShift Container Platform needs to work on integrations."
"One area for product improvement is the support limitations within the subscription models, particularly the restricted support hours for lower-tier subscriptions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"OpenShift with Red Hat support is pretty costly. We have done a comparison between AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Services) which provides fully managed services from AWS. It's built on open-source-based Kubernetes clusters and it is much cheaper compared to Red Hat, but it is a little expensive compared to ECS provided by AWS."
"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."
"The product pricing is competitive and structured around vCPU subscriptions, aligning with our application requirements."
"The license to use the OpenShift Container Platform is free. If you are capable with Java you can modify it."
"It depends on who you're talking to. For a large corporation, it is acceptable, other than the significant infrastructure requirements. For a small organization, it is in no way suitable, and we'd go for Amazon's container solution."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
University
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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?
The current licensing cost for this solution is around $23,000 per year, per month. Regarding the current licensing cost, I would rate my satisfaction around seven or seven and a half; there's alwa...
 

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: June 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.