Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Heroku VS OpenShift Container Platform

Compare Heroku VS OpenShift Container Platform and see what are their differences

Heroku logo Heroku

Agile deployment platform for Ruby, Node.js, Clojure, Java, Python, and Scala. Setup takes only minutes and deploys are instant through git. Leave tedious server maintenance to Heroku and focus on your code.

OpenShift Container Platform logo OpenShift Container Platform

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is the secure and comprehensive enterprise-grade container platform based on industry standards, Docker and Kubernetes.
  • Heroku Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05
  • OpenShift Container Platform Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-04

Heroku features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Heroku offers an extremely user-friendly interface and a high level of abstraction, making it easy for developers to deploy, manage, and scale applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.
  • Quick Deployment
    One of Heroku’s strongest points is the ability to deploy applications quickly using Git. Developers can push their code to Heroku with a simple command, streamlining the entire process.
  • Scalability
    Heroku provides effortless scaling options by allowing developers to add more dynos (containers) with a single command to handle increased traffic and workload.
  • Add-Ons Ecosystem
    Heroku offers a rich ecosystem of add-ons, such as databases, caching, monitoring, and more, which can be easily integrated into applications to extend their functionality.
  • Automatic Updates
    Heroku automatically handles operating system and server updates, allowing developers to focus solely on their application code rather than maintenance tasks.
  • Free Tier
    Heroku offers a free tier with sufficient resources to host small projects and learn the platform without incurring costs, making it accessible for beginners and small-scale applications.

Possible disadvantages of Heroku

  • Cost
    While Heroku offers a free tier, the costs can quickly add up for larger applications and professional use. Paid plans and additional dynos or add-ons can become expensive.
  • Performance
    Heroku’s performance can sometimes be suboptimal compared to other cloud providers, particularly when running high-performance or resource-intensive applications.
  • Limited Control
    Heroku abstracts away a lot of infrastructure management, which can be a downside for developers who need fine-grained control over their environments and configurations.
  • Dyno Sleeping
    Applications running on Heroku’s free tier experience 'dyno sleeping,' where the application goes to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity, causing a delay when it wakes up after receiving a new request.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Relying heavily on Heroku’s ecosystem and platform-specific features can lead to vendor lock-in, making it challenging to migrate to another platform if needed.
  • Add-On Costs
    The costs for add-ons can also become significant, as many useful features and integrations require paid add-ons, increasing the overall expense.

OpenShift Container Platform features and specs

  • Comprehensive Kubernetes Platform
    OpenShift Container Platform provides a robust, enterprise-grade Kubernetes environment with advanced features for application lifecycle management, networking, and security out-of-the-box.
  • Integrated Developer Tools
    The platform includes integrated developer tools such as source-to-image (S2I) build systems and Jenkins pipelines, which streamline development workflows and enhance productivity.
  • Multi-cloud Support
    OpenShift supports hybrid and multi-cloud deployments, allowing organizations to run workloads across on-premises, bare metal, and multiple public cloud providers seamlessly.
  • Enhanced Security Features
    The platform offers advanced security capabilities such as built-in compliance checks, role-based access control (RBAC), and automated security updates to protect workloads from vulnerabilities.
  • Rich Ecosystem and Integrations
    OpenShift integrates seamlessly with a wide range of Red Hat and third-party tools and services, providing a rich ecosystem for building, deploying, and managing containerized applications.

Possible disadvantages of OpenShift Container Platform

  • Complexity
    The platform's extensive features and capabilities can lead to a steep learning curve, making it challenging for teams without prior Kubernetes or OpenShift experience.
  • Cost
    OpenShift Container Platform can be costly, especially for large-scale deployments, as it includes enterprise-grade support and additional tooling not found in vanilla Kubernetes.
  • Resource Intensive
    The platform may require significant compute and storage resources to run efficiently, which can be a consideration for organizations with limited infrastructure capacity.
  • Vendor Lock-in
    While OpenShift is based on open-source Kubernetes, certain features and integrations are Red Hat-specific, possibly leading to a degree of vendor lock-in.
  • Operational Overhead
    Managing and maintaining an OpenShift environment can introduce additional operational overhead due to its comprehensive but complex nature, requiring dedicated staff and expertise.

Heroku videos

What is Heroku | Ask a Dev Episode 14

More videos:

OpenShift Container Platform videos

OpenShift Container Platform by RedHat | Kubernetes Made Easy | Tech Primers

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Heroku and OpenShift Container Platform)
Cloud Computing
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
79 79%
21% 21
Cloud Hosting
91 91%
9% 9
Containers As A Service
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Heroku and OpenShift Container Platform

Heroku Reviews

  1. mark-mercer
    Useful Cloud Platform

    Great service to build, run and manage applications entirely in the cloud!

    🏁 Competitors: Amazon AWS, Dokku on Digital Ocean, Firebase
    👍 Pros:    Easy user interface|Good customer service|Multi-language cloud application platform
    👎 Cons:    Limitation with some addons|Low network performance
  2. jamestelford
    · Full Stack Developer at OutDev ·
    🏁 Competitors: Docker, Amazon AWS
    👍 Pros:    Powerful development environments|Great value for the money|Great customer support|Paas

10 Top Firebase Alternatives to Ignite Your Development in 2024
Heroku’s focus on simplicity and developer experience makes it a perfect fit for those who want to focus on building their apps, not babysitting servers. Startups and small businesses, in particular, can benefit from Heroku’s ability to accelerate development and deployment, allowing them to get their ideas to market faster.
Source: genezio.com
2023 Firebase Alternatives: Top 10 Open-Source & Free
Heroku Postgres – Majority of businesses like Heroku because of its SQL database support. Yes, PostgreSQL as a service is an appealing product of this PaaS vendor with quick deployment approaches.
5 Free Heroku Alternatives with Free Plan for Developers
Koyeb is a decent alternative to Heroku that you can consider for hosting or deploying your web apps and APIs. It has all the features of Heroku that you will need for your projects. So far, I have not encountered an importer tool for migrating Heroku deployments but I am sure doing that manually will not be that hard. Just like Heroku it offers you an intuitive web UI as...
Choosing the best Next.js hosting platform
However, there are a few disadvantages to Heroku. First of all, despite its build pack, Heroku will run your project as a Node.js application. As a result, you will lose some of Next.js’ most interesting features, such as Incremental Static Regeneration. Analytics are replaced by metrics and measured throughput, response time, and memory usage (only on paid plans).
Top 10 Netlify Alternatives
Heroku is another alternative to Netlify that doesn’t only host static websites but has the ability to host dynamic websites. This PaaS platform was launched in 2007 and conferred highly scalable features to deploy, host and launch applications.

OpenShift Container Platform Reviews

11 Best Rancher Alternatives Multi Cluster Orchestration Platform
On the flip side, the OpenShift Container Platform is a powerful commercialized tool introduced by Red Hat as flagship software. It boasts a very simple and intuitive user interface that lets you easily create, build, test, and deploy your applications directly to the cloud.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Heroku seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 73 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Heroku mentions (73)

  • How to deploy your web application? 3 different approaches to consider (+1 bonus)
    Providers include Digital Ocean, Heroku or Render for example. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Heroku Reviews Apps prevent delivering bugs on production
    Review Apps run the code in any GitHub PR in a complete, disposable Heroku application. Review Apps each have a unique URL you can share. It’s then super easy for anyone to try the new code. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • How to keep an HTTP connection alive for 9 hours
    The app is deployed to Heroku and when it came time to switch the mode to email-on-account-creation mode, it was a very simple environment change:. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • How to Process Scheduled Queue Jobs in Node.js with BullMQ and Redis on Heroku
    Heroku is a cloud platform that makes it easy to deploy and scale web applications. It provides a number of features that make it ideal for deploying background job applications, including:. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • I made a Bot.. How do I use it?
    Once you've created it you can host it locally (this means leaving the program running on your computer) or host it through a service online. I haven't personally tried this yet, but I believe you can use a site like heroku.com or other similar services. Source: almost 2 years ago
View more

OpenShift Container Platform mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of OpenShift Container Platform yet. Tracking of OpenShift Container Platform recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Heroku and OpenShift Container Platform, you can also consider the following products

DigitalOcean - Simplifying cloud hosting. Deploy an SSD cloud server in 55 seconds.

Docker - Docker is an open platform that enables developers and system administrators to create distributed applications.

Linode - We make it simple to develop, deploy, and scale cloud infrastructure at the best price-to-performance ratio in the market.

Google Kubernetes Engine - Google Kubernetes Engine is a powerful cluster manager and orchestration system for running your Docker containers. Set up a cluster in minutes.

Amazon AWS - Amazon Web Services offers reliable, scalable, and inexpensive cloud computing services. Free to join, pay only for what you use.

Kubernetes - Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers