Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Kubernetes
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Kubernetes is an open-source container cluster manager.N/A
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
OpenShift is Red Hat's Cloud Computing Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. OpenShift is an application platform in the cloud where application developers and teams can build, test, deploy, and run their applications.
$0.08
per hour
Portainer
Score 9.0 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
KubernetesRed Hat OpenShiftPortainer
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
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
KubernetesRed Hat OpenShiftPortainer
Free Trial
NoYesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
KubernetesRed Hat OpenShiftPortainer
Considered Multiple Products
Kubernetes
Chose Kubernetes
I used OpenShift v2 - which was pre-Kubernetes. (It now uses Kubernetes under the hood - but keeps it fairly hidden). Kubernetes was a ton more stable and easier to use. No more custom CLI to use in order to script together deployments. No more messy ‘push your entire code …
Chose Kubernetes
It stacks well against OpenShift. The only downside for OpenShift is the multiple operators and the custom logic implemented in the product, plus the upgrades, which tend to be a bit longer due to the more complex implementation. Overall, these are similar products but with a …
Chose Kubernetes
Kubernetes cluster is cable to manage multiple nodes on on-premises or cloud infrastructure. In Kubernetes, we can easily add new nodes when ever required. We can easily update and rollback our application hosted on Kubernetes with the help of rolling and blue green deployment. …
Chose Kubernetes
I didn't have too much experience or exposure to OpenShift but I do remember that in certain areas our organization found Kubernetes to be more useful and met our needs in comparison to OpenShift. Although I can't compare, I think it's easier to customize Kubernetes because of …
Red Hat OpenShift
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Comparing the 2, open source Kubernetes is quicker to setup by about 75%, less restrictive, and free of course, but it lacks the security and support of Red Hat, and deploying features is much harder compared to with operators. For buisiness purposes, OpenShift is just more …
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
We looked at a few other options like plain Kubernetes and some managed services, but Red Hat OpenShift stood out because it’s enterprise-ready out of the box. The built-in security, automation tools, and support made a big difference.
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
We explore a lot of services to use in. But in todays world everything is cloud and the on premise solutions are not very strong until we discover Red Hat OpenShift which still very committed to maintain on premise solutions, we select Openshift and since first day we are very …
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift was the product that my team has been using since I've joined so it has been the only product in this area that I have used. With that being said, I have really no complaints and love implemented Red Hat OpenShift in my work to help be more efficient with my …
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
greate UI UX, easy to use, even when you have no clue about any command lines, you still can manage your apps. Also, public documentation is great, if you search for anything you can find it online. A great community and a support system
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
It definitely has additional bells and vessels like SM, UI and monitoring/logging stack
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
To benefit from premium support.
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
It's a fairly different experience compared to the other environments due to the additional security
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift has a better security posture than EKS. I enjoy the console on Red Hat OpenShift more as well. I believe there is greater observability for Red Hat OpenShift.
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat runs in multiple cloud and on-premise environments, so offers a portable experience in different contexts.
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
RedHat OpenShift can run on-prem and on Azure, meaning we can get support from RedHat from two platforms, despite it being on those different platforms.
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
OpenShift can host most of them, and most come pre-packed with the OpenShift installation.
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
It is the best Enterprise ready orchestration solution for us.
Portainer
Chose Portainer
Portainer vs. Rancher: Portainer and Rancher are both popular container management platforms that support Docker and Kubernetes. However, Rancher provides more advanced features such as multi-cluster management and native support for Istio, a popular service mesh technology. …
Chose Portainer
Portainer is a lot easier to use when compared to Kubernetes. it is easy to get over whelmed by all the options in Kubernetes but portainer makes it simple to build and deploy even to Kubernetes.
Chose Portainer
Portainer is a user-friendly container management platform focused on Docker, providing a simplified graphical interface. Kubernetes (K8s) is a robust container orchestration platform that automates deployment and scaling, suitable for complex container environments. Docker is …
Chose Portainer
In Kubernetes management, in my opinion I would say that Lens is superior. But if you only want to manage a few stacks, Portainer is superior because the gui offers a comprehensive way of managing all the deployed images and its versions.
Chose 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 …
Chose Portainer
The reason I chose Portainer is that graphically it wins over Yacht, it has many more options to use even in the free version. You can connect more than one environment to one panel which makes it much easier to use multiple instances of Portainer and saves a lot of time.
Chose Portainer
Had already more experience using Portainer and it was covering all immediate needs where scalability was not a concern. Definitely easier to use and to get started for anyone.
Chose Portainer
Portainer is, in my opinion, the most accessible and straight-forward means of entering the world of deploying and managing containers while also maintaining the ability to progress into advanced professional deployments and use.
Chose Portainer
Portainer seems to be the best when you start with small environments and can grow with them.
Portainer is also good for beginners with not too much knowledge about containers.
Finally the start-up with 5 nodes for free was a great benefit.
Chose Portainer
  • Ease of use
  • ability to deploy docker compose
  • Cost
Chose Portainer
Portainer has made our rapid prototyping an easy task without requesting too much, especially while deploying micro-services on a self-deployed AMI instance. Above all, Portainer enables all configurations that we were expecting to be feasible, becoming the evident choice …
Chose Portainer
Portainer is much easier to use and it's deployment is faster than other solutions which you can run locally or on-prem in a datacenter.
Also Portainer is compatible with many different kinds of environments, where other solutions can only be used on some of the well-known cloud …
Chose Portainer
Portainer was just easier to use and set up. Having had extensive experience with the community edition, it was easy to opt for business.
Chose Portainer
I have not found any application as good as Portainer.
Features
KubernetesRed Hat OpenShiftPortainer
Container Management
Comparison of Container Management features of Product A and Product B
Kubernetes
9.0
4 Ratings
10% above category average
Red Hat OpenShift
-
Ratings
Portainer
8.4
94 Ratings
3% above category average
Security and Isolation9.14 Ratings00 Ratings8.690 Ratings
Container Orchestration9.74 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Cluster Management9.74 Ratings00 Ratings8.575 Ratings
Storage Management8.24 Ratings00 Ratings8.580 Ratings
Resource Allocation and Optimization8.54 Ratings00 Ratings7.983 Ratings
Discovery Tools9.14 Ratings00 Ratings8.770 Ratings
Update Rollouts and Rollbacks9.14 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Self-Healing and Recovery9.13 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging8.84 Ratings00 Ratings8.490 Ratings
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Kubernetes
-
Ratings
Red Hat OpenShift
8.3
263 Ratings
7% above category average
Portainer
-
Ratings
Ease of building user interfaces00 Ratings8.1228 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability00 Ratings9.1251 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform management overhead00 Ratings7.9233 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow engine capability00 Ratings7.9211 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform access control00 Ratings8.6235 Ratings00 Ratings
Services-enabled integration00 Ratings8.2222 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment creation00 Ratings8.7228 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment replication00 Ratings8.5217 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification00 Ratings7.8230 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue recovery00 Ratings7.7227 Ratings00 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes00 Ratings8.5230 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
KubernetesRed Hat OpenShiftPortainer
Small Businesses
Portainer
Portainer
Score 9.0 out of 10
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.3 out of 10
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.6 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
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.6 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
KubernetesRed Hat OpenShiftPortainer
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(19 ratings)
9.1
(253 ratings)
9.0
(93 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.9
(25 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(3 ratings)
8.5
(10 ratings)
8.4
(15 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
5.5
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(125 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
6.9
(9 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
KubernetesRed Hat OpenShiftPortainer
Likelihood to Recommend
Kubernetes
K8s should be avoided - If your application works well without being converted into microservices-based architecture & fits correctly in a VM, needs less scaling, have a fixed traffic pattern then it is better to keep away from Kubernetes. Otherwise, the operational challenges & technical expertise will add a lot to the OPEX. Also, if you're the one who thinks that containers consume fewer resources as compared to VMs then this is not true. As soon as you convert your application to a microservice-based architecture, a lot of components will add up, shooting your resource consumption even higher than VMs so, please beware. Kubernetes is a good choice - When the application needs quick scaling, is already in microservice-based architecture, has no fixed traffic pattern, most of the employees already have desired skills.
Read full review
Red Hat
Red Hat OpenShift, despite its complexity and overhead, remains the most complete and enterprise-ready Kubernetes platform available. It excels in research projects like ours, where we need robust CI/CD, GPU scheduling, and tight integration with tools like Jupyter, OpenDataHub, and Quiskit. Its security, scalability, and operator ecosystem make it ideal for experimental and production-grade AI workloads. However, for simpler general hosting tasks—such as serving static websites or lightweight backend services—we find traditional VMs, Docker, or LXD more practical and resource-efficient. Red Hat OpenShift shines in complex, container-native workflows, but can be overkill for basic infrastructure needs.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Pros
Kubernetes
  • Complex cluster management can be done with simple commands with strong authentication and authorization schemes
  • Exhaustive documentation and open community smoothens the learning process
  • As a user a few concepts like pod, deployment and service are sufficient to go a long way
Read full review
Red Hat
  • We had a few microservices that dealt with notifications and alerts. We used OpenShift to deploy these microservices, which handle and deliver notifications using publish-subscribe models.
  • We had to expose an API to consumers via MTLS, which was implemented using Server secret integration in OpenShift. We were then able to deploy the APIs on OpenShift with API security.
  • We integrated Splunk with OpenShift to view the logs of our applications and gain real-time insights into usage, as well as provide high availability.
Read full review
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
Read full review
Cons
Kubernetes
  • Local development, Kubernetes does tend to be a bit complicated and unnecessary in environments where all development is done locally.
  • The need for add-ons, Helm is almost required when running Kubernetes. This brings a whole new tool to manage and learn before a developer can really start to use Kubernetes effectively.
  • Finicy configmap schemes. Kubernetes configmaps often have environment breaking hangups. The fail safes surrounding configmaps are sadly lacking.
Read full review
Red Hat
  • I wouldn't necessarily say there is look everyday technology transform. I can see a trend wherein Red Hat OpenShift is adopting all the new technology trends and helping their customers align with their priorities and the emerging technology trends. I wouldn't call out various scope for development every day. There is scope for development. It is all how the organizations adopt it and how they deliver it to their customers. I don't want to call out there is scope for development. It's happening. It is a never ending process.
  • At the moment, I don't have anything to call out. We are experiencing Red Hat OpenShift and we can see every day they're coming up with new features as and when they come up with new features, we want to experience it more and more. We are looking for opportunities wherein this can be leveraged to help our users and partners.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Kubernetes
The Kubernetes is going to be highly likely renewed as the technologies that will be placed on top of it are long term as of planning. There shouldn't be any last minute changes in the adoption and I do not anticipate sudden change of the core underlying technology. It is just that the slow process of technology adoption that makes it hard to switch to something else.
Read full review
Red Hat
This is the current strategy for the company, most of the products in the organisation are aligning to Openshift and various use cases it support. Also lot of applications are being developed for AI use case, openshift.AI provides opportunity to host and leverage the AI capabilities for these applications
Read full review
Portainer
It is an excellent tool.
Read full review
Usability
Kubernetes
It is an eminently usable platform. However, its popularity is overshadowed by its complexity. To properly leverage the capabilities and possibilities of Kubernetes as a platform, you need to have excellent understanding of your use case, even better understanding of whether you even need Kubernetes, and if yes - be ready to invest in good engineering support for the platform itself
Read full review
Red Hat
As I said before, the obserability is one of the weakest point of OpenShift and that has a lot to do with usability. The Kibana console is not fully integrated with OpenShift console and you have to switch from tab to tab to use it. Same with Prometheus, Jaeger and Grafan, it's a "simple" integration but if you want to do complex queries or dashboards you have to go to the specific console
Read full review
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)
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Kubernetes
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
Redhat openshift is generally reliable and available platform, it ensures high availability for most the situations. in fact the product where we put openshift in a box, we ensure that the availability is also happening at node and network level and also at storage level, so some of the factors that are outside of Openshift realm are also working in HA manner.
Read full review
Portainer
No answers on this topic
Performance
Kubernetes
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
Overall, this platform is beneficial. The only downsides we have encountered have been with pods that occasionally hang. This results in resources being dedicated to dead or zombie pods. Over time, these wasted resources occasionally cause us issues, and we have had difficulty monitoring these pods. However, this issue does not overshadow the benefits we get from Openshift.
Read full review
Portainer
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Kubernetes
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
Their customer support team is good and quick to respond. On a couple of occassions, they have helped us in solving some issues which we were finding a tad difficult to comprehend. On a rare occasion, the response was a bit slow but maybe it was because of the festival season. Overall a good experience on this front.
Read full review
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!
Read full review
In-Person Training
Kubernetes
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
I was not involved in the in person training, so i
can not answer this question, but the team in my org worked directly
with Openshift and able to get the in person training done easily, i did not
hear problem or complain in this space, so i hope things happen
seamlessly without any issue.
Read full review
Portainer
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Kubernetes
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
We went thru the training material on RH webesite, i think its very descriptive and the handson lab sesssions are very useful. It would be good to create more short duration videos covering one single aspect of openshift, this wll keep the interest and also it breaks down the complexity to reasonable chunks.
Read full review
Portainer
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Kubernetes
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
No answers on this topic
Portainer
It is really easy. Just follow the documentation.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Kubernetes
Most of the required features for any orchestration tool or framework, which is provided by Kubernetes. After understanding all modules and features of the K8S, it is the best fit for us as compared with others out there.
Read full review
Red Hat
The Tanzu Platform seemed overly complicated, and the frequent changes to the portfolio as well as the messaging made us uneasy. We also decided it would not be wise to tie our application platform to a specific infrastructure provider, as Tanzu cannot be deployed on anything other than vSphere. SUSE Rancher seemed good overall, but ultimately felt closer to a DIY approach versus the comprehensive package that Red Hat OpenShift provides.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Kubernetes
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
It's easy to understand what are being billed and what's included in each type of subscription. Same with the support (Std or Premium) you know exactly what to expect when you need to use it. The "core" unit approach on the subscription made really simple to scale and carry the workloads from one site to another.
Read full review
Portainer
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Kubernetes
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
This is a great platform to deployment container applications designed for multiple use cases. Its reasonably scalable platform, that can host multiple instances of applications, which can seamlessly handle the node and pod failure, if they are configured properly. There should be some scalability best practices guide would be very useful
Read full review
Portainer
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Kubernetes
  • Because of microservices, Kubernetes makes it easy to find the cost of each application easily.
  • Like every new technology, initially, it took more resources to educate ourselves but over a period of time, I believe it's going to be worth it.
Read full review
Red Hat
  • That is a complicated question and one that's not easy for me to answer. There's a lot of factors that go into all of the stuff that we just don't have an easy way of measuring. And we realize that while we're implementing Red Hat OpenShift, we've tried to start measuring some of that stuff, but we don't have a baseline to go on. So it's hard to say. What I can tell you is general experience with the platform has been extremely positive from the development aspect. Teams have been very, very happy with the speed at which they're able to do stuff. They've been happy with that. The way it works in one environment is exactly the way it works in the next environment because we don't have configuration drift, that type of thing, and has had very positive impacts. But we didn't have a baseline to start with. So I can't talk about getting there faster or anything like that.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Portainer Screenshots

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