TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Google Cloud Run vs. Heroku Platform vs. IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Google Cloud Run

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/AGoogle Cloud Run enables users to build and deploy scalable containerized apps written in any language (including Go, Python, Java, Node.js, .NET, and Ruby) on a fully managed platform. Cloud Run can be paired with other container ecosystem tools, including Google's Cloud Build, Cloud Code, Artifact Registry, and Docker. And it features out-of-the-box integration with Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Logging, Cloud Trace, and Error Reporting to ensure the health of an application.N/A

    Heroku Platform

    Score7.6 out of 10
    N/AThe Heroku Platform, now from Salesforce, is a platform-as-a-service based on a managed container system, with integrated data services and ecosystem for deploying modern apps. It takes an app-centric approach for software delivery, integrated with developer tools and workflows. It’s three main tool are: Heroku Developer Experience (DX), Heroku Operational Experience (OpEx), and Heroku Runtime. Heroku Developer Experience (DX) Developers deploy directly from tools like…

    $85

    per month

    IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service

    Score8 out of 10
    Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
    IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is a managed Kubernetes offering, delivering user tools and built-in security for rapid delivery of applications that users can bind to cloud services related to IBM Watson®, IoT, DevOps and data analytics. As a certified K8s provider, IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service provides intelligent scheduling, self-healing, horizontal scaling, service discovery and load balancing, automated rollouts and rollbacks, and secret and configuration management. The Kubernetes…N/A
    Pricing
    Google Cloud RunHeroku PlatformIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Production
    $25.00
    per month
    Advanced
    $250.00
    per month
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Google Cloud RunHeroku PlatformIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
    Free Trial
    YesNoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Google Cloud RunHeroku PlatformIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
    Considered Multiple Products
    Google
    Chose Google Cloud Run
    Google Cloud Run is integrated into GCP resources, admin, and billing. But it is not as easy to use as some other platforms like Heroku.
    Incentivized
    Salesforce
    No answer on this topic
    IBM
    Chose IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
    I have earlier used various services, such as Kubernetes and Google Cloud Run. Still, IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service offers more convenience and a larger set of functions and features are available in Kubernetes. Google Cloud Run is much closer to a server less approach to …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    17 Answers
    89%
    Would buy again
    8 Answers
    96%
    Would buy again
    27 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    16 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    7 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    25 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    17 Answers
    89%
    Happy with the feature set
    8 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    28 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    11 Answers
    89%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    8 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    19 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    14 Answers
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    8 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    26 Answers
    Features
    Google Cloud RunHeroku PlatformIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
    Container Management
    Comparison of Container Management features of Google Cloud Run and Heroku Platform and IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
    Feature
    Google Cloud Run
    7.3
    17 Ratings
    11% below category average
    Heroku Platform
    -
    Ratings
    IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
    8.1
    20 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Security and Isolation8.117 Ratings00 Ratings8.120 Ratings
    Container Orchestration7.616 Ratings00 Ratings8.520 Ratings
    Cluster Management6.41 Ratings00 Ratings7.820 Ratings
    Storage Management2.71 Ratings00 Ratings8.020 Ratings
    Resource Allocation and Optimization8.517 Ratings00 Ratings8.020 Ratings
    Discovery Tools7.313 Ratings00 Ratings7.819 Ratings
    Update Rollouts and Rollbacks8.216 Ratings00 Ratings7.720 Ratings
    Self-Healing and Recovery8.614 Ratings00 Ratings8.418 Ratings
    Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging8.017 Ratings00 Ratings8.220 Ratings
    Platform-as-a-Service
    Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Google Cloud Run and Heroku Platform and IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
    Feature
    Google Cloud Run
    -
    Ratings
    Heroku Platform
    7.2
    44 Ratings
    7% below category average
    IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
    -
    Ratings
    Ease of building user interfaces00 Ratings6.027 Ratings00 Ratings
    Scalability00 Ratings7.044 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform management overhead00 Ratings7.043 Ratings00 Ratings
    Workflow engine capability00 Ratings6.030 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform access control00 Ratings7.043 Ratings00 Ratings
    Services-enabled integration00 Ratings6.042 Ratings00 Ratings
    Development environment creation00 Ratings9.039 Ratings00 Ratings
    Development environment replication00 Ratings9.038 Ratings00 Ratings
    Issue monitoring and notification00 Ratings8.042 Ratings00 Ratings
    Issue recovery00 Ratings7.039 Ratings00 Ratings
    Upgrades and platform fixes00 Ratings7.044 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Google Cloud RunHeroku PlatformIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
    Small Businesses
    Mirantis Kubernetes Engine
    Score8 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Foundry
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Mirantis Kubernetes Engine
    Score8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)
    Score8.6 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Private
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    SUSE Rancher
    Score9.4 out of 10
    AWS Elastic Beanstalk
    Score8.6 out of 10
    SUSE Rancher
    Score9.4 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Google Cloud RunHeroku PlatformIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.5
    (17 ratings)
    7.0
    (47 ratings)
    8.0
    (86 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.5
    (6 ratings)
    8.9
    (16 ratings)
    Usability
    7.8
    (2 ratings)
    9.2
    (17 ratings)
    8.7
    (16 ratings)
    Availability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.7
    (19 ratings)
    7.7
    (4 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.7
    (15 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    7.6
    (3 ratings)
    Configurability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    1.0
    (1 ratings)
    Professional Services
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Google Cloud RunHeroku PlatformIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Google
    Microservices and RestFul API application as it is fast and reliant. Seamless integration with event triggers such as pubsub or event arc, so you can easily integrate that with usecases with file uploads, database changes, etc. Basically great with short-lived tasks, if however, you have long-running processses, Cloud Run might not be idle for this. For example if you have a long running data processing task, other solutions such as kubeflow pipelines or dataflow are more suited for this kind of tasks. Cloud Run is also stateless, so if you need memory, you will have to connect an external database.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Heroku is very well suited for startups looking to get a server stack up and running quickly. There is little to no overhead when managing your instances. However, you'll need a background in basic DevOps or system management to make sure everything is set up correctly. In addition, it's easy to accidentally go crazy on pricing. Make sure you're only creating the server instances you need to run the base application and set up an auto-scaler plugin to handle peaks.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service also stands out in environments where the workloads vary continuously and require befitting scale. The product excels particularly in microservices structures, wherein the companies would harness the capacity for container orchestration and automated scaling. Still, it may face the challenges due to monolith applications that have not been originally developed for using container technology.
    Read full review
    Pros
    Google
    • Auto scaling is the best one
    • provide direct VPC connectivity and rigid network
    • Cloud SQL and Pub/Sub services
    • Handling latency issues
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    • Heroku has a very simple deployment model, making it easy to get your application up-and-running with minimal effort. We can focus on our efforts the unique aspects of our application.
    • The robust add-on marketplace makes it easy to try out new approaches with minimal effort and investment -- and when we settle on a solution, we can easily scale it.
    • Heroku's support is quite good -- their staff is quite technical and willing to get into the weeds to diagnose even complicated problems.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • IBM has a strong focus on serverless and Kubernetes. This shows in the platform. Deploying containers to Kubernetes was very easy.
    • Deploying a Kubernetes cluster through the GUI is very easy and quick. On top of that, IBM Cloud offers a single node cluster for Free.
    • Container Registry is a very good product for managing container images. Integration with Kubernetes was seemless.
    • Portability. To transition from Google Cloud Kubernetes to IBM Cloud Kubernetes took almost no effort. We mostly use the CLI and the standard tools such as kubectl were present.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Google
    • The UI can be made simpler. Currently the UI is bloated and it takes time to find out what you want
    • More integrations with container registry providers (ECR, dockerhub)
    • Better permissions UX. Currently GCP requires service accounts to be used with cloud products, the experience adding/removing permissions is difficult to navigate
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    • Large price jumps between certain resource tiers (2x Dyno for $50 per month versus Performance Dyno for $250). Free Postgres next jumps to $50 per month.
    • Marketing/Branding to non-technical stakeholders. As the years pass, I've had to fight more to convince stakeholders on the value of Heroku over AWS.
    • Improve Buildpack documentation. This is one area where Heroku's documentation is fairly confusing.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • I constantly get this error even when everything is well configured prefect.exceptions.AuthorizationError: [{'path': ['auth_info'], 'message': 'AuthenticationError: Forbidden', 'extensions': {'code': 'UNAUTHENTICATED'}}]
    • Then sometimes the error disapear without changine anything, happened twice to me. Should there be an issue with the authentication service? Please let's improve or let users know why this may be happening.
    • Improve the UX in the browse console when removing many images at once
    • UX on the process of installing KeyCloack operator
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Google
    We definitely need to renew it because we dont own our own infrastructure and storage and we are happy with Cloud Run features
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Heroku is easy to use, services a ton of functions for you out of the box, and provides a means to get a software product off the ground and managed quickly and easily. The tools provide allows a small to medium size org to move very quickly. The CLI tools provided make managing an entire technical infrastructure simple.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    We have our application running on a CentOS compartment on IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service. We have been utilizing the help since IBM Cloud initially dispatched. We liked the adaptability and versatility that IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service give us. Since we are tiny, the Kubernetes administration is just utilized at present inside my venture bunch.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Google
    The UI/console is great... the documentation is top-notch for developers, but the CLI itself when you have to script around it is very complex and easy to forget some options... the downside of a generic command line client.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Easy to use web based console and easy to use command line tools; deployment is done directly from a GIT repository. What more could you ask for? The one thing that keeps me from giving it a 10 is that custom build packs are almost incomprehensible. We used one for a while because we needed cairo graphics processing. Fortunately, I was able to figure out a different way to do what we needed so that we could get off the custom build pack.
    Read full review
    IBM
    We actually haven't had any real problems in our clusters recently and the results we have gotten from adopting IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service have been beyond even our greatest expectations. The community has helped optimize the use of the system and make it relatively simpler to use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Google
    Not seen any major issues when we run applications its good
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Heroku availability correlates pretty strongly to AWS US EAST availability. We had a couple of times where there was a Heroku-specific issue but not for the last 7-8 months.
    Read full review
    IBM
    IBM's cloud is almost infallible.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Google
    Initially we felt slow but slowly it picked up and easy to manage
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    The only issue that I ever have is that about 1 out of 20 deployments (git push) will hang and need to be cancelled and done again.
    Read full review
    IBM
    IBM's cloud has a site in my conuntry (MEXICO) so the network latency was almost 0
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    I've used it for many years without facing any major problem. It's not hard at all to get used to it, it's documentation is outstanding and simple. We are close to 2020 and I don't think most of the existing companies or startups should still face old problems such as wasting time deploying code and calculate computing resources.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    The self-guided support was solid, and there are plenty of online videos to guide first time users, but I think one area of improvement is a faster way to transfer a large quantity of files from our local machine to the cloud for storage (Aspera)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    No answers on this topic
    IBM
    Online training is really an important resource for using these tools. IBM's help center is rich in useful information and tips. Also, external guides and tutorials are available (e.g. on youtube), but I followed only IBM ones and I had no difficulties.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Google
    I was involved in the initial implementation setup, Its easy with the given documentaiton we can do ourself. Not that critical
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Be ready to pay a bit more than expected in the beginning if you're migrating from a big server. The application is probably not ready for the change and you have to keep improving it with time.
    It's also important to consider that you can't save anything to the disc as it will be lost when your application restarts, so you have to think about using something like S3.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    Ease of use. Very intuitive. We have been looking for a product that allows us to orchestrate our docker containers in a way where it allows us to effectively scale our applications to production. It also provides us a way of monitoring all our infrastructure in a very clear concise way.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Google
    AWS Lambda supports code zip package, enabling lower cold start time. Also, AWS Lambda pricing is much simpler, easier to understand.
    Other than that, the 2 products are very similar, including the Docker image support: the image must be built based on proprietary base image.
    Obviously, if your other services are running in GCP, then Google Cloud Run is your only choice for tight integration, & private networking.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Heroku is the more expensive option for hosting compared to some of the cloud platforms we investigated, but it's worth it for us because of the plug-and-play nature of Heroku deployment. We can be up and running in a few minutes and know with precision how much it will cost us each month to run the application, unlike Amazon Web Services where you have to go to great pains to configure it correctly or else you might end up with a shocking monthly bill. Overall, spending the time to configure Amazon Web Services or one of its competitors is likely the more affordable and powerful choice, because you have control over so many specifics of the configuration. But it also requires the burden of continuing to maintain and update your AWS instance, whereas with Heroku they take care of security fixes and platform upgrades. It's a great service and we are happy to pay the extra cost for the value-adds Heroku provides.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    We mainly selected [IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service] because IBM fabric blockchain service is mostly compatible with it. To have all the infrastructure in a single cloud to get the best output we selected the [IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service].
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Google
    Not part of purchase.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    No answers on this topic
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Scalability
    Google
    It has good auto scale feature and reliable also
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    No answers on this topic
    IBM
    IBM's CKS does not offers automatic autoscaling nor vertical scaling (automatic). Other services like Google Kubernetes Engine scales up and down very well
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Professional Services
    Google
    We have very good support when needed
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    No answers on this topic
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Google
    • Built in support for auto scaling helps reduce operational overhead
    • Any application performance issues can be addressed quickly by allocating more resources while a proper fix can be planned and rolled out later
    • Using Google Cloud Run enables development of microservices which provides granular control for scaling critical services in the platform
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    • It has been critical in seamlessly operating our platform with runs all of our programs.
    • It has been impressive with its ability to scale quickly which results in the growth of our work.
    • It allows for tracking of different features which allows for quick problem solving which saves us time.
    Read full review
    IBM
    • Increased development speed and agility allows to build features faster and more economically.
    • Improved resource utilization helps keep applications running very efficiently, which saves on cloud service expenses.
    • Scalability and resilience allows for scaling up or down based on demand, which keeps applications running efficiently and more economically.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots