Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs. Portainer

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is designed to make deploying and managing containerized applications easy. It offers serverless Kubernetes, an integrated continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) experience, and enterprise-grade security and governance. It allows development and operations teams on a single platform to rapidly build, deliver, and scale applications with confidence.N/A
Portainer
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Portainer is a centralized container management platform for containerized apps and IoT device management. It helps accelerate container adoption and reduce time-to-value on Kubernetes, Docker, and Swarm with a management portal, allowing users to deliver and manage containerized applications from the data center to the edge. Portainer helps - Reduce the operational complexity associated with multi-cluster management Bridge the skills gap and facilitate feature…
$0
Pricing
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Portainer
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Portainer Business - 3 Nodes Free
$0
Home & Student
$149
per year
Starter
$995
per year
Professional
$2995
per year
Enterprise
Contact Sales for Pricing
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Portainer
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Portainer
Considered Both Products
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

No answer on this topic

Portainer
Chose Portainer
Portainer is a lot easier to use when compared to Kubernetes. it is easy to get over whelmed by all the options in Kubernetes but portainer makes it simple to build and deploy even to Kubernetes.
Chose Portainer
Portainer has made our rapid prototyping an easy task without requesting too much, especially while deploying micro-services on a self-deployed AMI instance. Above all, Portainer enables all configurations that we were expecting to be feasible, becoming the evident choice …
Chose Portainer
I have not found any application as good as Portainer.
Features
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Portainer
Container Management
Comparison of Container Management features of Product A and Product B
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
5.6
1 Ratings
35% below category average
Portainer
8.3
94 Ratings
4% above category average
Security and Isolation8.01 Ratings8.590 Ratings
Container Orchestration8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Cluster Management2.01 Ratings8.475 Ratings
Storage Management3.01 Ratings8.380 Ratings
Resource Allocation and Optimization9.01 Ratings7.883 Ratings
Discovery Tools4.01 Ratings8.470 Ratings
Update Rollouts and Rollbacks1.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Self-Healing and Recovery7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging8.01 Ratings8.190 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Portainer
Small Businesses
Portainer
Portainer
Score 9.1 out of 10
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Portainer
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(6 ratings)
9.0
(94 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(1 ratings)
8.4
(15 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Portainer
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
At one instance, there was a fire in our data center and the backup power had some issues because of which the whole DC went down. I believe with AKS and the replication it's easier to handle such a situation. Also, the scenario would have been pretty transparent to the end-users.
Read full review
Portainer
Many developers, especially lesser experienced developers, don't have a really good background in setting up containers from the command line. Portainer is invaluable to them. Giving a UI to them gives them much more confidence and allows them to learn properties and capabilities of containers under far less stress. On the flip side of this, giving then a UI on a production system can lead to chaos...never give junior developers access to production servers.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • Scales quickly when the user base increases randomly
  • Downgrades very fast if a bunch of users hop off the system
  • Great dev UX for IT
Read full review
Portainer
  • Separating server maintenance with application development, providing a clear user interface for developers who don't want to worry about the underlying server.
  • RBAC for container deployment linked to a SAML IDP, not something particularly easy in a native Docker instance but point and shoot in Portainer, allowing the use of Azure / Okta etc to provide user access.
  • Image management with multiple repositories is super clear and reduces incidents
Read full review
Cons
Microsoft
  • Steep learning curve
  • Expected charges are unclear until you see real production usage
  • Operations teams need to learn an entirely new skill set
Read full review
Portainer
  • When setting up static IPs for a new container, having the used ones for a specific network at hand would be cool or something like a mini IPAM of some sort...
  • Using the developertools to see "oh, it's a 40x or 500" when something doesn't seem to load because the ui just states "Didn't work" is kinda annoying. expandable toasts or something would be nice.
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Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Portainer
It is an excellent tool.
Read full review
Usability
Microsoft
Barring certain missing features such as operator management , open cluster management, it does gives lot of options to host containerized applications. The GUI may be improved and can give user more insights to the cluster rather than using command line tools. The integration with standard azure monitoring tools is a big plus to use Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
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Portainer
Accessibility for Non-Experts: even with some people having a bit longer on-boarding it is still very simple Quick setup is insanely useful, we can get it running in 10 seconds after installing docker Portainer has once again super clean UI and is very user friendly. Deployment/monitoring and management are super easy. I can tell just from a glance if something is out of date (watching at you Watchtower not doing your job for some reason)
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Support Rating
Microsoft
Microsoft support was really good, whenever we raise any ticket they come back to us within a couple of hours.
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Portainer
One of their staff members jumped on a video call immediately with me and led me through the problem and solution during a quick session of screen sharing. In this day and age that is above and beyond, especially when it comes to software. It took approximately 5-10 minutes to diagnose and fix, including pleasantries!
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Implementation Rating
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Portainer
It is really easy. Just follow the documentation.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
Due to cost efficiency. And using AZURE cloud for other services as well. Azure Kubernetes Service is more suitable to configure CI/CD pipelines. With a facility of automated or One click deployment and integration of the application. As compared with other Kubernetes Services like Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service and Google Kubernetes Service, Azure Kubernetes is most cost-efficient with the same facilities and with an advantage to configure easily, manage easily, as it is one click manageable with Microsoft applications. It provides high Microsoft security to containers and secures applications from any kind of harm.
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Portainer
Portainer takes the cup in terms of usability and features. It is also more useful for smaller deployments, whereas Kubernetes in our opinion and experience, could probably be more suited to certain other use cases. Portainer is also a fresh feel among all the preexisting container management solutions and brings positivity and a new breeze in the industry.
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Positive impact in moving applications to cloud from the in-hose data center to save cost
  • Sometimes got affected with some bugs on the AKS infrastructure but hasn't caused a big kios as our production footprint in AKS is not yet high
Read full review
Portainer
  • Increased productivity: Portainer's user-friendly interface and streamlined container management can help increase the productivity of IT teams.
  • Cost savings: By simplifying container management, Portainer can help reduce the time and resources required to manage container environments, potentially leading to cost savings.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Portainer Screenshots

Screenshot of Portainer is a universal container management platform to help adopt and manage Docker, Kubernetes, Nomad and Edge environments.