What users are saying about
159 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 7.6 out of 100
Based on 159 reviews and ratings
89 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 8.7 out of 100
Based on 89 reviews and ratings
Feature Set Ratings
- IBM Cloud Foundry ranks higher in 1 feature set: Platform-as-a-Service
Platform-as-a-Service

7.5
Heroku Platform
75%
7.9
IBM Cloud Foundry
79%
IBM Cloud Foundry ranks higher in 7/11 features
IBM Cloud Foundry ranks higher in 7/11 features
Ease of building user interfaces

7.9
79%
27 Ratings
7.3
73%
10 Ratings
Scalability

6.9
69%
44 Ratings
8.9
89%
21 Ratings
Platform management overhead

8.1
81%
43 Ratings
8.8
88%
12 Ratings
Workflow engine capability

7.0
70%
29 Ratings
7.7
77%
17 Ratings
Platform access control

6.0
60%
43 Ratings
10.0
100%
1 Rating
Services-enabled integration

6.8
68%
42 Ratings
7.8
78%
20 Ratings
Development environment creation

8.7
87%
39 Ratings
8.4
84%
19 Ratings
Development environment replication

8.0
80%
38 Ratings
7.0
70%
6 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification

7.5
75%
42 Ratings
5.0
50%
8 Ratings
Issue recovery

7.7
77%
39 Ratings
8.0
80%
17 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes

8.0
80%
44 Ratings
8.2
82%
19 Ratings
Attribute Ratings
- Heroku Platform is rated higher in 1 area: Likelihood to Renew
- IBM Cloud Foundry is rated higher in 1 area: Likelihood to Recommend
Likelihood to Recommend

6.7
Heroku Platform
67%
48 Ratings
8.9
IBM Cloud Foundry
89%
29 Ratings
Likelihood to Renew

9.5
Heroku Platform
95%
6 Ratings
7.0
IBM Cloud Foundry
70%
1 Rating
Usability

9.2
Heroku Platform
92%
17 Ratings
IBM Cloud Foundry
N/A
0 Ratings
Availability

8.0
Heroku Platform
80%
2 Ratings
IBM Cloud Foundry
N/A
0 Ratings
Performance

9.0
Heroku Platform
90%
2 Ratings
IBM Cloud Foundry
N/A
0 Ratings
Support Rating

8.7
Heroku Platform
87%
38 Ratings
IBM Cloud Foundry
N/A
0 Ratings
Online Training

6.0
Heroku Platform
60%
1 Rating
IBM Cloud Foundry
N/A
0 Ratings
Implementation Rating

9.0
Heroku Platform
90%
6 Ratings
IBM Cloud Foundry
N/A
0 Ratings
Likelihood to Recommend
Heroku Platform
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.

Verified User
C-Level Executive in Corporate
Financial Services Company, 11-50 employeesIBM Cloud Foundry
As it is an open-source platform as a service, it is very easy to operate, scale, and deploy regardless of what programming language and framework it's written in. However, it could be improved in terms of scalability. There should be proper documentation for easier and clearer understanding to make the process smooth.
Software Quality Assurance Engineer
Nextbridge Ltd.Information Technology & Services, 501-1000 employees
Pros
Heroku Platform
- 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.

Verified User
C-Level Executive in Other
Consumer Services Company, 1-10 employeesIBM Cloud Foundry
- Simplicity - the command line tool provided can get you up and running within minutes.
- Resourceful - IBM Cloud Foundry is built on top of the open source Cloud Foundry technology, so any resources you find online about Cloud Foundry generally can be applied.
- Feature rich - provides all the necessary features for a cloud based platform, such as auto-scaling, 0 downtime deployment.

Verified User
Director in Information Technology
Information Technology & Services Company, 1-10 employeesCons
Heroku Platform
- 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.
Co-Creator
Flights MachineLeisure, Travel & Tourism, 1-10 employees
IBM Cloud Foundry
- Need: VISUALIZATION CAPABILITIES! Particularly with the Conversation Service.
- Need: Annotation capabilities for dialog nodes in Conversation Service.
- Need: Search/querying capabilities in Conversation Service
- Need: Clearer documentation of the S2T service. I had to use a third party website for an understanding of how to use this.
Solution Analyst — Machine Assisted Service Enagagement
AutodeskComputer Software, 5001-10,000 employees
Pricing Details
Heroku Platform
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
$85 per month
Heroku Platform Editions & Modules
Edition
Production | $25.001 |
---|---|
Advanced | $250.001 |
- per month
Additional Pricing Details
—IBM Cloud Foundry
General
Free Trial
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
$0.07 Per GBH
IBM Cloud Foundry Editions & Modules
Edition
Community Runtimes | $0.071 |
---|
- Per GBH
Additional Pricing Details
—Likelihood to Renew
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 9.5
Based on 6 answers
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.
Software Engineer
ShiptInternet, 51-200 employees
IBM Cloud Foundry
IBM Cloud Foundry 7.0
Based on 1 answer
No answer on this topic is available.
Usability
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 9.2
Based on 17 answers
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.
Chief Technology Officer
TrustRadiusComputer Software, 1-10 employees
IBM Cloud Foundry
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 8.0
Based on 2 answers
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.
Chief Technology Officer
TrustRadiusComputer Software, 1-10 employees
IBM Cloud Foundry
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Performance
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 9.0
Based on 2 answers
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.
Chief Technology Officer
TrustRadiusComputer Software, 1-10 employees
IBM Cloud Foundry
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 8.7
Based on 38 answers
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.

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Information Technology and Services Company, 1-10 employeesIBM Cloud Foundry
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Heroku Platform
Heroku Platform 9.0
Based on 6 answers
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.
Backend Engineer
DoistInternet, 11-50 employees
IBM Cloud Foundry
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Heroku Platform
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.
Web & Mobile Developer
Bluefire ProductionsComputer Software, 11-50 employees
IBM Cloud Foundry
CF is what we initially went with to establish a development pipeline and start our cloud journey, now we are expanding this and although we are now pulling in many other tools and functions around CF, it is not being replaced. It stands out as having a key place working ‘with’ git, Kubernetes, IBM cloud etc, not against or segregated from it.

Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology
Financial Services Company, 10,001+ employeesReturn on Investment
Heroku Platform
- 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.
Director, Illinois Science & Technology Coalition
Illinois Science and Technology CoalitionEducation Management, 1-10 employees
IBM Cloud Foundry
- IBM Bluemix is mainly a foundation enabler at this stage, although our business plan does look promising.
- The low cost of development on Bluemix for a start-up like us is so helpful......we had no spare cash for this project besides what we could save or borrow at first, and that wasn't much. We are still trying to attract venture capital to cover the main Cordova Coding effort plus the launch "Cash Burn".
- Features like push notifications, mobile-back end, and world-beating security help us to sell our SaaS products/services.
- The pure (usually!) functionality of IBM products and services is very rewarding to work with.They are so insightful and thoughtful, to say naught of clever!
Director
IT Cloud Solutions AustraliaInformation Technology and Services, 1-10 employees