IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service vs. Portainer

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Score 8.2 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
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
IBM Cloud Kubernetes ServicePortainer
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
IBM Cloud Kubernetes ServicePortainer
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM Cloud Kubernetes ServicePortainer
Features
IBM Cloud Kubernetes ServicePortainer
Container Management
Comparison of Container Management features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
8.0
19 Ratings
0% above category average
Portainer
8.3
94 Ratings
4% above category average
Security and Isolation7.719 Ratings8.590 Ratings
Container Orchestration8.319 Ratings00 Ratings
Cluster Management7.719 Ratings8.475 Ratings
Storage Management7.819 Ratings8.380 Ratings
Resource Allocation and Optimization8.219 Ratings7.883 Ratings
Discovery Tools7.818 Ratings8.470 Ratings
Update Rollouts and Rollbacks8.119 Ratings00 Ratings
Self-Healing and Recovery8.317 Ratings00 Ratings
Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging8.119 Ratings8.190 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM Cloud Kubernetes ServicePortainer
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
IBM Cloud Kubernetes ServicePortainer
Likelihood to Recommend
7.7
(85 ratings)
9.0
(94 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.9
(16 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
Usability
8.7
(16 ratings)
8.4
(15 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.7
(4 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
Online Training
8.7
(15 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.6
(3 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
1.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM Cloud Kubernetes ServicePortainer
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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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
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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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
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Cons
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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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
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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Portainer
It is an excellent tool.
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Usability
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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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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Reliability and Availability
IBM
IBM's cloud is almost infallible.
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Portainer
No answers on this topic
Performance
IBM
IBM's cloud has a site in my conuntry (MEXICO) so the network latency was almost 0
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Portainer
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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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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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Online Training
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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Portainer
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
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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Portainer
It is really easy. Just follow the documentation.
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Alternatives Considered
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].
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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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Scalability
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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Portainer
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
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.
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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.
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ScreenShots

Portainer Screenshots

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