TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Consul

    Score9.6 out of 10
    N/AHashiCorp Consul is a tool for discovering and configuring services in the IT infrastructure. It provides service discovery, health checking, key/value stores and support for multiple data centers out of the box.

    $0

    always free

    IBM Cloud Functions

    Score6.5 out of 10
    N/AIBM Cloud Functions is a PaaS platform based on Apache OpenWhisk. With it, developers write code (“actions”) that respond to external events. Actions are hosted, executed, and scaled on demand based on the number of events coming in. No servers or infrastructure to provision and manage.

    $0

    per second of execution

    Pricing
    ConsulIBM Cloud Functions
    Editions & Modules
    Open Source (self-managed)
    $0
    always free
    HCP Consul (Cloud)
    $0.027/hr
    Per Hour
    Enterprise
    Self-Managed Custom Deployments
    Basic Cloud Functions Rate
    $0.00017
    per second of execution
    API Gateway Rate
    Free
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    ConsulIBM Cloud Functions
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Best Alternatives
    ConsulIBM Cloud Functions
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    AWS Lambda
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    AWS Lambda
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    AWS Lambda
    Score8.3 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    ConsulIBM Cloud Functions
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.1
    (5 ratings)
    3.0
    (7 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.8
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    ConsulIBM Cloud Functions
    Likelihood to Recommend
    IBM
    Consul can provide a light-weight, lightning-fast and robust solution for the following:
    • Network mesh
    • Service DNS
    • Global key-value store (values can be complex objects as well)
    • Utility for blue-green deployments
    • Service health checking
    Consul can be used in any or a combination of these scenarios. Regardless if you are a network administrator or a regular software engineer, Consul can add value to your work.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    IBM Cloud Functions [is] not the worse product on the IBM cloud. I decided to write this review as I thought it would be balanced. I would still use functions to set up a serverless architecture where execution time is pretty quick and the code is relatively simple. I wouldn't use IBM Cloud Functions for async calls obviously, as costs could be higher. The functions documentation is lacking in terms of CI/CD, and there are unexplainable errors occurring - like the network connection that I mentioned. So I wouldn't just rely on IBM Cloud Functions too much for the entire system, but make sure it's diversified.
    Read full review
    Pros
    IBM
    • Key-Value database management.
    • Service discovery.
    • Centralized configuration database with native high availability.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • Great substitute for a simple API calls to run non-complicated code.
    • Easy way to run Python/Java/Javascript to get something done.
    • File validation.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    IBM
    • The GUI: The GUI interface for Consul has gotten a lot better over the years. Since Consul is so easy to interact with via API, this isn't a showstopper, but for those that are less command line inclined it's always nice to be able to refer them to an easy to use and understand web interface
    • It's chatty: Consul is extremely chatty. Sometimes it's particularly chatty at 2am with no indication as to why and eats up quite a bit of resources. Just be sure to provision your systems that typically take a heavy load with a little extra for Consul
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • Billing can be a hassle, not the most responsive customer service/support team
    • Handles & executes most functionalities, but other platforms offer more scalability if you're seeking consistent and stable growth
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    IBM
    Consul's API is extremely user friendly. While their web interface isn't quite as "mature", it's still pretty easily navigated for the average person. Together they make a pretty easy to pick up and use tool.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    IBM
    I've never used paid support from HashiCorp, but I consider its support a good one, since they provide a lot of free resources for the community and there are good user groups supporting you on several sorts of issues. Also, HashiCorp is known as a company with a strong relationship with the community, that is easily noticed by the events HashiCorp promotes over the world.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    IBM
    Consul was easier to configure out of the box than Serf and gave us more initial options. Its easy to use tools and support were by far superior to Serf in many ways. Support alone was one of those areas that Serf could take an example from Consul to keep its customers happy.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • ICF is a lightweight service and does not require runtime configurations
    • Scalable on demand and hence there is no need to pay for runtime costs
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    IBM
    • It contains a native web UI, which in contrast to its counterparts, is handy, very intuitive and - most importantly - very informative. It leaves no room for doubt about your services "forest" health. So, for that purpose, the learning curve was almost down to non-existent. Our team managed to work seamlessly with Consul being our services API
    • Our management staff had a difficult time understanding what Consul was really all about. For technical staff it is pretty simple to understand the huge value such a tool can pose to our suite of solutions, but once our management staff took the grasp of its valuable handy set of tools, we didn't take long to start using it and keeping track of our Swarm overall health, with was a constant concern for the entire company before.
    • For load balancing purposes, we were relying pretty much on guesses before we decided to use Consul. One would check a certain node overall health and decide if we would need to spring a new instance at AWS or Digital Ocean.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • It directly affected our expenses since we do not need to deploy and maintain a set of separate applications.
    • It allowed us to pay for only the amount of time cloud functions run.
    • It saved on maintenance and monitoring of the applications it replaced.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Consul Screenshots

    Product screenshotProduct screenshot