Why Docker Business over Alternatives
Docker Business empowers your development team and engineering organization
Alternatives offer only partial solutions
Rapidly ship high-quality secure applications
Docker Business empowers development teams and engineering organizations to boost productivity, enhance security, and foster innovation, ultimately enabling developers to spend more time on delivering competitive advantages and value to their businesses through high-quality applications.
Benefits of Docker Business over alternative approaches
Streamline enterprise administration
Docker Business offers centralized management with a web-based console that includes compliance, adoption insights, and productivity metrics. Alternatives lack centralized admin, adoption insights, and robust enterprise admin capabilities.
Increase developer team and engineering organization productivity
Docker Business enhances productivity with robust enterprise features, accelerating delivery and leveraging backups, debugging, and security. Alternatives lack the scale, support, and features needed for efficient, secure development, leading to slower, riskier processes and a smaller partner ecosystem.
Scale securely
Docker Business offers a powerful container registry, certified secure and trusted content, software supply chain vulnerability analysis, image management, and policy enforcement. Alternatives offer basic security but lack integrated supply chain capabilities, requiring extra tools, services, and engineering.
Enterprise-grade support and training
Docker Business provides enterprise-grade professional support, priority case routing, proactive monitoring, a dedicated customer success manager, and extensive training. Most alternatives lack official SLA-backed support, relying instead on community resources with very limited professional options and training.
Consider the total cost of ownership (TCO)
If you decide to pursue open-source and DIY alternatives, you must ensure doing so is a worthwhile use of your engineering resources due to the amount of resources and budget required to integrate and maintain the alternative solution. Docker Business is an integrated suite of products that work together out of the box with enterprise-grade security and 24-hour SLA commercial support.
Comparison of Docker Business and alternatives
The following compares capabilities of Docker Business and DIY OSS-Based Alternatives
| Docker Business | DIY w/ Docker Engine | Alternatives | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Integrated product suite engineered, maintained, and supported by Docker | Docker containerization technology | Stand-alone containerization tools | |
| Container build, run, manage (Docker Desktop) | |||
| Container runtime | |||
| Kubernetes integration | |||
| OS compatibility (macOS, Linux, Win.) | limited | ||
| Enhanced enterprise security | limited | limited | |
| Private extensions & marketplace | limited | limited | |
| Container management app | limited | limited | |
| Image registry (Docker Hub) | |||
| Private and public repos | limited | limited | |
| Native integration with image registry | limited | limited | |
| Marketplace functionality | - | - | |
| Fully integrated vulnerability analysis | - | - | |
| Secure & trusted content | - | - | |
| Remote build (Docker Build Cloud) | |||
| Cloud-based container build | - | - | |
| Multi-platform support (ARM /AMD) | - | - | |
| CI tool integration | limited | limited | |
| Parallel remote builds | - | - | |
| Shared team build cache | - | - | |
| Container vulnerability analysis (Docker Scout) | |||
| Vulnerability analysis and reporting | limited | limited | |
| Security SDLC integrations | limited | limited | |
| External system integration w/ API | - | - | |
| Policy library and evaluation | - | - | |
| Alerting and notifications | - | - | |
| CVE suppression and exception | - | - | |
| Container testing (Testcontainers Cloud) | |||
| Inner loop integration testing | - | - | |
| Central test dashboard | - | - | |
| Test infra. provision & cleanup | - | - | |
| Local and cloud testing | - | - | |
| Testing with real dependencies | - | - | |
| Additional capabilities (Docker Business) | |||
| Integrated solution (Integrated suite of products that enhance productivity, scalability, security) |
Engineered & maintained by Docker for devs, teams, orgs, enterprises |
limited Easy integration with Docker products with manual intervention |
- Not an integrated suite of products that work together |
| Enterprise administration (Central mgmt, compliance, RBAC, logs, SSO, SCIM, Auto LCM) |
Enterprise-ready for large development teams and organizations |
limited Limited enterprise admin. Requires manual intervention |
limited Limited or no enterprise admin capabilities |
| Enterprise / commercial support (Enterprise-grade, 24-hour support response for all products) |
Proven support processes, strong SLO/A, robust documentation |
limited Community-based support. Strong docs and knowledge base |
limited Community-based support or limited subscription support |
| Partner and tool ecosystem
(Tech providers, dev toolchains, registries, extensions) |
Large and highly useful ecosystem for developers |
limited Can leverage the Docker ecosystem |
limited Limited, smaller, or no ecosystem |
Docker Business for your team and organization
Alternative approaches require additional products, ongoing engineering, continuous maintenance, and risk mitigation. Docker Business offers a secure enterprise-grade integrated solution and extensive professional support, freeing developers to focus on rapidly shipping high-quality, secure applications.