Heroku Platform vs. IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Heroku Platform
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
The 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
Score 9.2 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
Heroku PlatformIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Editions & Modules
Production
$25.00
per month
Advanced
$250.00
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Heroku PlatformIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Heroku PlatformIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Heroku PlatformIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Heroku Platform
8.1
43 Ratings
1% below category average
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
-
Ratings
Ease of building user interfaces7.626 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability8.243 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform management overhead7.642 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow engine capability8.329 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform access control7.042 Ratings00 Ratings
Services-enabled integration8.041 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment creation8.738 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment replication8.637 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification8.241 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue recovery8.438 Ratings00 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes8.443 Ratings00 Ratings
Container Management
Comparison of Container Management features of Product A and Product B
Heroku Platform
-
Ratings
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
7.5
14 Ratings
4% below category average
Security and Isolation00 Ratings7.514 Ratings
Container Orchestration00 Ratings8.214 Ratings
Cluster Management00 Ratings7.714 Ratings
Storage Management00 Ratings7.514 Ratings
Resource Allocation and Optimization00 Ratings7.414 Ratings
Discovery Tools00 Ratings6.814 Ratings
Update Rollouts and Rollbacks00 Ratings7.614 Ratings
Self-Healing and Recovery00 Ratings7.713 Ratings
Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging00 Ratings7.014 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Heroku PlatformIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Small Businesses
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Score 9.0 out of 10
Portainer
Portainer
Score 9.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.5 out of 10
Docker
Docker
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.5 out of 10
Docker
Docker
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Heroku PlatformIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Likelihood to Recommend
6.9
(47 ratings)
8.1
(79 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.5
(6 ratings)
8.9
(16 ratings)
Usability
9.2
(17 ratings)
8.7
(16 ratings)
Availability
8.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.7
(19 ratings)
7.7
(4 ratings)
Online Training
6.0
(1 ratings)
8.7
(15 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(3 ratings)
7.6
(3 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Heroku PlatformIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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IBM
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is ideal for deploying modern applications on a microservices architecture -- where easy scaling and ability to update are important. IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service also handles automated deployments and load balancing very well, particularly if you're already working in the IBM Cloud ecosystem. There are applications less suited to IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service -- such as very small applications, where managing an IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service cluster would be overkill. Also, users not familiar with container organization might find IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service to be a challenge to manage effectively.
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Pros
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.
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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.
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Cons
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.
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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
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Likelihood to Renew
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.
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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.
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Usability
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.
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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.
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Reliability and Availability
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.
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IBM
IBM's cloud is almost infallible.
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Performance
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.
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IBM
IBM's cloud has a site in my conuntry (MEXICO) so the network latency was almost 0
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Support Rating
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.
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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)
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Online Training
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.
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Implementation Rating
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.
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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.
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Alternatives Considered
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.
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IBM
The IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is quite flexible platform with profitable Cloud functions performance and the data security through IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is nice. To manage container easily and process huge amount of data at the same time, the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is amazing ad the platform deployment is very easy after training.
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Scalability
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
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Return on Investment
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.
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IBM
  • IKS can provide around 30% savings when it comes to operational costs since Kubernetes is designed to run applications in most machines in the most efficient manner possible.
  • Managed Kubernetes can save a company time by 45% since Managed Kubernetes usually is seamlessly updated, without any interruptions with the workload. IKS fall into this benefit.
  • We heard people had saved in maintenance downtimes when it comes to Kubernetes by a factor of 10 so IKS can contribute to more flexible and distributed services with virtually no downtime.
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