TrustRadius Insights for Portainer are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Intuitive and User-Friendly Interface: Users have consistently praised Portainer's intuitive and user-friendly interface, with many reviewers stating that it is easy to navigate and provides a positive user experience. The clean and organized layout of the interface has been particularly appreciated by users, as it allows for efficient management of multiple repositories and reduces incidents. Additionally, users have found the GUI design to be visually appealing and well-suited for users of all levels of expertise.
Seamless User Access Control: Reviewers have commended Portainer's RBAC feature, which integrates seamlessly with SAML IDP services like Azure and Okta. This functionality has received positive feedback from users who appreciate the flexibility it offers in terms of user access control. Furthermore, users value the support for various authentication options provided by Portainer, as it enhances security while ensuring a smooth login experience.
Simplified Management of Complex Clusters: Many users have highlighted Portainer's capability to manage complex clusters such as Swarm or Kubernetes as one of its standout features. With this functionality, deploying new applications, stacks, and clusters becomes simpler and more streamlined. The visualization of the overall infrastructure has also been highly regarded by reviewers, as it provides a comprehensive view of all components in one place, making management and monitoring tasks easier to handle.
We are just starting to touch ground with it, but am sure it will make our lives much easier. Being a 2nd liner it is a lot easier to use it rather then going to the backend for troubleshooting, our use case for Portainer is docker only for the time being. At home am planning to use it more and more by and learn about the more advanced features provided.
Pros
Stacks
Monitoring
UI
Easy to navigate
Cons
Setting up Active Directory
Kubernetes support
Continue improving what is already in place
Likelihood to Recommend
Can't really think of any scenarios where it is less appropriate. But it really works best for simplifying container management, monitoring and troubleshooting, and centralised management. You cannot got wrong with this combination. Used mostly for microservices deployment for on prem, also used in isolated environments for testing before production deployment.
VU
Verified User
Consultant in Engineering (Information Technology & Services company, 51-200 employees)
While I work in an R&D department and have to deal daily with containers for various projects across many different servers and VMs, Portainer made it easy for me to deploy them quickly and effectively. Furthermore, maintaining and monitoring these containers, their networks, and their volumes with Portainer saves me a lot of working time. Additionally, with Portainer you have the ability to operate Docker Swarm and Kubernetes Clusters. Finally, the option of controlling a remote server using the Portainer Agent is a huge plus.
Pros
Remote monitoring, maintenance, deployment of an Environment with Portainer Agent
Easy way to deploy Containers with templates
Easy way to create networks and volumes
Easy way to customize .env files
Easy way to assign ports of container to ports outside the container
Easy way to deploy stacks
Cons
Export the deployed stacks as a template
Make stacks that were created outside Portainer, Control Total not limited, as the stacks that are deployed with Portainer
Provide more application templates
Likelihood to Recommend
From my experience if you are to to deploy containers in a large scale and across different servers and you have an easy way to do this Portainer is the right choice. Furthermore, as you may want to maintain and monitor these containers while you want a fast way to make appropriate changes and redeploy them fast then you have to use Portainer.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Engineering (Computer Software company, 1001-5000 employees)
Managing docker containers and deployments can't be any easier than this. Docker-compose and other cli tools can be ok but there are definitely many occasions where you would like to better visualize and more efficiently manage your stacks, volumes, containers, images, etc. Doing all that in any browser, on your phone as well as having web hooks are definitely a plus.
Pros
Manage docker stacks
Visualize deployments
Community support
Efficient and lightweight
Cons
Too abstracted for advanced use cases
Scalability concerns for very large use cases
Likelihood to Recommend
It's great for small to medium deployments. Has a fairly low learning curve. Use it for simplifying and streamlining management of docker containers. Offers a very friendly user interface that allows you to efficiently perform most common containers operations through a centralized view that can manage multiple environments. Fairly simple to monitor resources usage and perform troubleshooting. May not be suitable for very complex use cases
I use Portainer daily to build new containers, and update images. I create new containers for development purposes and create stacks to set up development environments. I regularly create "golden" images to test situations, and doing so in Portainer is a breeze. I can create a base image, attach to it, then install tools, configure applications, detach and save the state of the image... This is a great feature.
Pros
Image creation from running containers
Fast container deployment from app templates
Network isolation
Cons
Custom stack templates are missing. While app templates are easy, custom stack templates would be awesome... 1-click LAMP system in multiple containers
Better image management is needed
Better volume management is also needed
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
I use Portainer for manage my docker container cluster for many service that my company use. I already search other similar tools but i think Portainer is the best. Dashboard UI is very simple and complete wee all needed for operate. We face the business problem about pulling new image deployed after process CI is completed, but with webhook feature at business version is solving the problem. Good job for Portainer team.
Pros
Webhook
Good UI Dashboard and simple also
Manage docker swarm easily
Pull image and run container directly from dashboard
Cons
I think for docker swarm visualizer need improvement
Webhook feature i think must be community version also
Likelihood to Recommend
Mantain docker swarm cluster for our microservice. I think Portainer is very well suite than others. Easily to manage cluster and change to other cluster, manage user, manage container with feature auto pulling from docker registry. Easily deleting imae that unused by container with tag for easily delete for free space
Our development environment is fully containerized and we used Docker Desktop earlier and the functionality and the price I wasn’t happy, tried rancher it was too complicated and not seemed user friendly, and tried Dockage that was too simple and couldn’t do everything, but the Portainer is simply perfect, able to connect multiple environments, able to update images simply, I got free 3 nodes so I’m using one for my homelab and there was a dedicated widget to connect my Portainer, setup is also very simple, hope the Portainer team doesn’t change the perfect ui and make it too complicated for intermediate users.
Pros
Connect multiple environments
Free key upto 3 nodes
Simple ui for everyone to understand
Cons
IMAP or POP3 Notifications when any containers stopped or something goes wrong
I couldn’t find podman related things better if they add or make it easy to access
Likelihood to Recommend
For developers who maintain their local environment container and a person who runs a home lab with self hosted docker images this Portainer is best since the UI is very simplified.
But for someone is very advanced and wanted to manage production level containers or Kubernetes I don’t think Portainer would support well. I didn’t see any options on that.
I use Portainer each day to manage a few servers with all our company services deployed there. In my free time, I use Portainer to manage my Kubernetes cluster, and all my docker instances. The features that come with the business license are awesome, specially: OAuth (which I use in both my personal and job accounts), Automatic stack updates, GitOps features that support monitoring my stacks in GitHub... All of them are a huge save of time, and I highly recommend using the s3 backup feature. Just to be safe in case of disaster
Pros
GitOps Management of my stacks
Kubernetes Cluster Management
Home Server Management with a friendly GUI
Audit logging
Oauth integration
Backup Management
Image versioning monitoring
Cons
Templates should be more use, but they receive little to no advertisement
Likelihood to Recommend
If you want to manage docker services in a comfortable way, this tool, it's awesome. But it should be used in scenarios where you expect to manage a thousand of docker containers. The strong point of Portainer it's, in my opinion, a home server or a production server with just a bunch of stacks deployed. In my opinion, it lacks the capacity to manage thousands of services in an easy way.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Engineering (E-Learning company, 11-50 employees)
I personally use it to take care of any docker container that I have. It simplify a lot of work when stopping or changing projects. It might be used on a wider scale to help k3s environments to be used not only be devOps or engineer with enough knowledge, but also by project manager and other people with less knowledge on this part. Might be tricky to understand how to set up for the first time, but their knowloedge database is stuffed enough to have the answer of our questions.
Pros
Graphical docker gestion
Environment datas globally managed
K3s management with a simplified window
K3s deployment with pre-defined environment
Cons
First complex set up is a bit hard without explanation
Large gap between the use of Portainer on local and once it's used by a group
Good for people without knowledge on Docker and K3s, but hard for them to set it up
Likelihood to Recommend
One of the well suited moment is for the day to day use of Docker or K3s. To limit too much interaction and to limit the learning of complex command lines (even more for K3s with sub-modules), and to have a clear understanding through the use of the graphical interface.
Portainer is a great tool to manage docker installs via a web frontend, and has great tools for managing docker compose files with their stack feature. Another nice feature is connecting multiple docker installs to a single portainer instance using their portainer agents. In general it just makes live easier for day to day management of docker installs.
Pros
Easy to manage docker compose files via their stacks.
Easily access docker instances via your web browser.
Connecting to multiple docker instances of different machines with a single portainer instance.
Cons
Keeping feature parity with all features of docker and docker compose.
Making it easier to update your portainer install, without the need to use an (ssh) terminal.
Make it easier to integrate monitoring of containers into the frontend.
The remote management agent really needs an option for authentication for added safety.
Likelihood to Recommend
It works very well in scenarios where you want to easily manage one or multiple docker installs, however make sure that the multiple installs are connected in their own seperate (V)LAN. The agents you have to install don't come with authentication so that is not very safe to just plainly run even on your own LAN.
The ease of use to view running container and their logs on various machines is just fantastic. Really helpful in debugging and getting to know the running containers. Previously this would take me around 10 minutes to check every machine. Portainer just makes it happen in a few clicks!
Pros
Listing running containers
Viewing logs of containers
Ability to view multiple machines at once
Cons
Can you also integrate grafana and prometheus for showing the machine resource consumption?
Likelihood to Recommend
Managing multiple machines and the containers running in them