Apache Tomcat vs. Red Hat OpenShift

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apache Tomcat
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Tomcat is an open-source web server supported by Apache.N/A
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 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.N/A
Pricing
Apache TomcatRed Hat OpenShift
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apache TomcatRed Hat OpenShift
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache TomcatRed Hat OpenShift
Considered Both Products
Apache Tomcat
Chose Apache Tomcat
Tomcat's configuration is simpler because it's a plaintext file that anyone can read -- and a script can manage. It's easier to monitor via Grafana. And it integrates well with software load-balancers.
Chose Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat is very smooth tool compared to other applications. Since there are very less feature it's very smooth. NGINX server doesn't need Apache Tomcat we can directly deploy so it faster comparatively. In my working time I have never come across the UI of NGINX. Apache …
Chose Apache Tomcat
We work with Java, and we needed to integrate Tibco RV which had a Java library. Node was not so easy to manage in the backend and we opted for something more known. As said we still love Tomcat and we heard a lot of bad experiences with NodeJS, quite tricky and slow to learn. …
Chose Apache Tomcat
Commercial application servers are available that support enterprise application needs, but many times this is overkill for most web applications running in the cloud, particularly for independent software vendors. The capabilities and management tools provided with these …
Chose Apache Tomcat
Tomcat is open source. No need to pay anything. Supported by community. Plugins for other APIs are available.
Chose Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat is lightweight but performs well, even when running multiple applications. Its performance and security features are the reasons for choosing Apache Tomcat among its competitors. Also, there is a huge community support than other products.
Chose Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat is used for our cloud-based apps when testing on our local machines. Oracle WebLogic is used for our older on-prem apps. Thus, it's difficult to compare them apples-to-apples. However, Apache Tomcat is not really meant to run in production for our older apps …
Chose Apache Tomcat
We considered between Tomcat and WebLogic and then choose Tomcat as it is much simpler and have all the features we need, also we need to integrate Tomcat with our Gitlab pipeline and Tomcat is well supported with its API set. In the future we plan to move our system to Azure …
Chose Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat is more lightweight and much quicker to deploy, so compared to JBoss or Weblogic it's much more efficient and cost effective for deploying small apps. The instances start up almost immediately and almost no maintenance is needed from the admins. There is also no …
Chose Apache Tomcat
  • I like it because it is lightweight in comparison to JEE containers
  • Easy to learn and use
  • It does not require too much knowledge to start using it
Chose Apache Tomcat
Tomcat stacks up against the others very well due to its adoption in the open source community, low total cost of ownership, maintenance, and ease of deployment. It's much more lightweight than Websphere or Weblogic and provides most of the features most developers would need, …
Chose Apache Tomcat
We use WebLogic as an enterprise level large application container. We have a big WebLogic cluster, hosting our core applications. We also use tomcat to build a quick POC and some light-weighted RESTful service for a cloud-native initiative, so the relationship should be …
Chose Apache Tomcat
Eclipse Jetty is the best alternative for Apache Tomcat because which is also an open-source and lightweight servlet container like Tomcat. A major advantage of this over Tomcat is that Jetty server can easily be embedded with the source code of web applications. Since it …
Chose Apache Tomcat
Tomcat is definitely easier to implement, continues to be supported and further development to enrich the existing feature set carries on. It is the industry, de facto standard. With third party vendors offering support for the industry standard, utilizing another solution is …
Chose Apache Tomcat
As I have described before, Tomcat has competition from Jetty & frameworks like Netty.
Also with NodeJs, lot of web application server side development and API development is beign done using javascript & Nodejs. So there is some decline in the use of Apache Tomcat. Though it is …
Chose Apache Tomcat
Tomcat is a more lightweight container in comparison to Oracle's Glassfish server. Glassfish however, became an enterprise product and can offer better after sales service.
Chose Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat is a much wider open standard than Microsoft IIS. It also seems to use fewer resources and is simpler to maintain. Troubleshooting when an issue arises is difficult. We had trouble managing the Tail logs when something strange happened. Logging is very complex and …
Chose Apache Tomcat
Well WebLogic is very complex. Most of what happens with WebLogic requires servers to be restarted, which isn't always possible. Also, Oracle tries to force you to only use their GUI interface for most of the administration, which could be done directly in the files, but are …
Chose Apache Tomcat
Relative to other solutions that worked with the Spring framework, Tomcat was the best. It worked exactly as desired and made releasing production builds a very smooth process. However, if I were able to choose, I would use one of the newer scripting languages that has a server …
Chose Apache Tomcat
GlassFish seemed to be fairly comparable in terms of easy of configuration and deployment, but we didn't do any side-by-side performance comparisons. Tomcat was better-known by the team, has more online forum support, and met the requirements of our project. Tomcat is fairly …
Chose Apache Tomcat
It's clear that JBoss is a full JEE stack implementation while Tomcat isn't, but if you don't need the whole JEE stack there are many lightweight alternatives that implement the required feature with Tomcat.
Red Hat OpenShift
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Nothing like OpenShift. Actually, this was our first one. We toyed with maybe doing raw Kubernetes, but with an enterprise company you need an enterprise product.
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
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
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
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Red Hat Quay
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
had troubles with the stability of the whole cluster system. Red Hat OpenShift worked from the beginning
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 Ansible Automation Platform
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Even though Red Hat OpenShift has more overhead than many other Kubernetes flavors, we have selected Red Hat OpenShift because of it's focus on Security and because of it's excellent vendor support.
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
It was microsoft hypervisor and vmware.
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Alibaba Cloud Elastic Compute Service (ECS)
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
scalability and ease of managing deployments
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
At agency there is no other competitor that can accomplish what we've been able to put together with a partnership with Red Hat.
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
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
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 …
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Ease of use and stability in one vendor support
Features
Apache TomcatRed Hat OpenShift
Application Servers
Comparison of Application Servers features of Product A and Product B
Apache Tomcat
9.2
Ratings
15% above category average
Red Hat OpenShift
-
Ratings
IDE support10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Security management9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Administration and management8.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Application server performance8.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Installation10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Open-source standards compliance10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Apache Tomcat
-
Ratings
Red Hat OpenShift
8.2
Ratings
3% above category average
Ease of building user interfaces00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Scalability00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Platform management overhead00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Workflow engine capability00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Platform access control00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Services-enabled integration00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Development environment creation00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Development environment replication00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Issue recovery00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apache TomcatRed Hat OpenShift
Small Businesses
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache TomcatRed Hat OpenShift
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.3
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
7.6
(0 ratings)
Availability
6.0
(0 ratings)
5.5
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(0 ratings)
5.3
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache TomcatRed Hat OpenShift
Likelihood to Recommend
Tomcat is more than enough to deploy most of the mid-end web applications without any problem but for the high-end applications which require high scalability and high availability, which might need some tune-ups with the support of expertise in this regard. Otherwise, you may realize numerous performance issues, memory leaks, server crashes etc.
Read full review
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
Pros
  • Fast to start up, which is useful when we need to just check that our changes are working correctly.
  • Free, which allows us to not be involved with the finance/legal team about using it.
  • Bundled with Spring Boot, which makes it even more convenient for our testing.
Read full review
  • One thing is the way how it works with the GitHubs model on an enterprise business, how the hub and spoke topology works. Hub cluster topology works the way how there is a governance model to enforce policies. The R back models, the Red Hat OpenShift virtualization that supports the cube board and developer workspace is one big feature within. So yes, these are all some features I would call out.
Read full review
Cons
  • tomcat is just part of the J2EE specification implementation, majorly focusing on the servlet (front-end) part. If you requires the full J2ee stack, like EJB support, you need consider other containers like Weblogic
  • tomcat's cluster level support is very limited
  • tomcat's admin/configuration is not so intuitive, and default logging needs a lot of improvement
Read full review
  • So I don't know that this is a specific disadvantage for Red Hat OpenShift. It's a challenge for anything that Kubernetes face is. There's an extremely large learning curve associated with it and once you get to the point where you're comfortable with it, it's really not bad. But beating that learning curve is a challenge. I've done a couple presentations on our implementation of Red Hat OpenShift at various conferences and one of the slides I always have in there is a tweet from years ago that said, "I tried to teach somebody Kubernetes once. Now neither of us knows what it is."
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
We have a huge knowledge of the product within our company and we're satisfied with the performance.
Read full review
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
Usability
Tomcat has a very rich API set which allows us to implement our automation script to trigger the deployment, configure, stop and start Tomcat from the command line. In our projects, we embedded Tomcat in our Eclipse in all of the developer's machines so they could quickly verify their code with little effort, Azure Webapp has strong support for Tomcat so we could move our application to Azure cloud very easy. One drawback is Tomcat UI quite poorly features but we almost do not use it.
Read full review
The virtualization part takes some getting used to it you are coming from a more traditional hypervisor. Customization options are not intuitive to these users. The process should be more clear. Perhaps a guide to Openshift Virtualization for users of RHV, VMware, etc. would ease this transition into the new platform
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Tomcat doesn't have a built-in watchdog that ensures restart upon failure, so you have to provide it externally. A very good solution is java service wrapper. The community edition is able to restart Tomcat upon out of memories exceptions.
Read full review
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
Performance
Tomcat support to customize memory used and allow us to define the Connection pool and thread pool to increase system performance and availability, Tomcat server itself consume very little memory and almost no footprint. We use Tomcat in our production environment which has up to thousands of concurrent users and it is stable and provides a quick response.
Read full review
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
Support Rating
Well, in actuality, I have never needed support for Apache Tomcat since it is configured and ready-to-go with no configuration needed on my end.
Read full review
Every time we need to get support all the Red Hat team move forward looking to solve the problem. Sometimes this was not easy and requires the scalation to product team, and we always get a response. Most of the minor issues were solved with the information from access.redhat.com
Read full review
In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
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
Online Training
No answers on this topic
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
Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
The learning curve is quite high but worth it.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Commercial application servers are available that support enterprise application needs, but many times this is overkill for most web applications running in the cloud, particularly for independent software vendors. The capabilities and management tools provided with these applications are superior to Tomcat, but most times unnecessary for the vast majority of web applications developed in Java.
Read full review
We utilized the Thycotic Secret Service to manage all our application secrets, resulting in seamless integration with our applications. We developed all the applications using Red Hat Fuse (currently migrated to Quarkus). We used the built-in Kali Linux support of OpenShift to manage and configure the services and API. Additionally, the Red Hat Developer Studio facilitates faster development.
Read full review
Scalability
It's very easy to add instances to an existing deployment and, using apache with mod proxy balancer, to scale up the serving farm
Read full review
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
Return on Investment
  • It has simplified administration efforts, thus saving much time to focus on other projects and issues.
  • It saves us in costs, as there are no licensing requirements.
  • It gives us the ability to manage all of our java applets in one place, so as to be able to host both development and production systems on one server.
Read full review
  • It has allowed us to see where we need to be in the container world. I'm going to call it a net neutral impact, not negative or positive. It has given us a sense of what we are ready for and what we're not ready for. You know where you stand.
  • You don't know what you don't know, so it helps us know what we want to know.
Read full review
ScreenShots