For years, when you said “containers”, you meant Docker. It was the go-to solution for developers who wanted to package, ship, and run applications—basically anything DevOps—consistently across various environments. 

But here we are in 2025, and the tide is turning. While Docker is still around, it’s no longer the undisputed king of the container world. Developers and companies are beginning to explore alternatives—some cautiously, others full throttle. The shift away from Docker is a symptom of a maturing container ecosystem. 

Docker hasn’t exactly crashed. More and more teams are adopting hybrid strategies using Docker for local development, but switching to Podman or containerd for staging and production. Then there are those who are ditching Docker entirely in favour of fully open, modular stacks.

Docker doesn’t seem to be evolving fast enough. Let’s start with the licensing drama. A few years back, Docker made the decision to put Docker Desktop behind a paywall for larger organisations. 

According to a recent blog by Devlink Tips, while individual developers and small teams could still use it for free, enterprise users were now being asked to cough up for something they previously got at no cost, and arguably, without substantial improvements. 

This didn’t sit well with a lot of teams, especially the open-source crowd and budget-conscious startups. It forced many to rethink their dependencies and ask the uncomfortable question: “Is Docker really worth it?” This is also highlighted by several discussions on Reddit where people are questioning the viability of Docker.

To some extent, it does not make sense for an enterprise to ask this question just because a tool becomes paid, as people express in the discussions, that it should be something they should be willing to pay for.

But Price Isn’t the Only Issue

Docker Desktop needs to emulate a Linux environment through virtual machines, and that’s where things get messy for any system not running Linux. Builds slow down, CPUs heat up, fans start to scream, and battery drains on Windows and macOS.

Security, too, has become a real concern. Docker relies on a daemon that runs with root privileges. While Docker has tried to patch things up over time—introducing user namespaces and rootless mode—it still feels like security was an afterthought rather than a design principle. 

Alternatives like Podman, which runs without a central daemon and can operate entirely rootless, are built with security as a core feature. For companies in regulated industries or multi-tenant environments, that kind of architecture is essential.

Then there’s Docker’s architecture itself. The cloud-native world has moved toward specialisation and modularity. Today, Kubernetes is the default orchestrator for many, Helm handles packaging, and runtimes like containerd focus solely on container lifecycle management. 

Recent developments indicate that Docker is adapting through improved Docker Hub features and enhanced Kubernetes support, but the platform now competes in a market where 36% of developers use cloud-based container tooling.

Some started moving away from Kubernetes for similar reasons, resulting in further decline.

The February 2025 Nucamp analysis revealed enterprise trends where 68% of organisations are adopting multi-cloud strategies, which require cloud-agnostic tooling. Furthermore, Docker Swarm sees a 42% increase in adoption for single-cloud deployments.

Docker initially focused on its own orchestration tool, Docker Swarm, rather than embracing Kubernetes, which has since become the dominant container orchestration platform. This strategic misstep led to Docker losing ground in enterprise container orchestration, pushing companies to adopt Kubernetes and alternatives instead.

These shifts do not eliminate Docker, but rather reposition it as one component in layered architectures that combine multiple container technologies.

There is also growing concern about vendor lock-in. While Dockerfiles are widely used, they’re not governed by an open standard like OCI (open container initiative) image specifications. If you’re betting big on Docker-specific tooling, you’re potentially locking yourself into an ecosystem that might not play nicely with the rest of the industry five years down the road.

Quite a Few Players to Fill the Gap

Podman is a favourite among teams focused on security and compliance. Built by Red Hat, it offers nearly identical CLI commands to Docker, which makes switching a breeze.

Then there’s containerd, the container runtime that was once part of Docker and has since taken on a life of its own under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. 

Kubernetes now uses containerd by default, following the deprecation of Docker support in version 1.24. It’s light, fast, and laser-focused on just one job: managing containers. This makes it ideal for production workloads across cloud platforms like AWS, GCP, and Azure.

CRI-O is another lean and mean container runtime, built specifically for Kubernetes. It strips out unnecessary features to ensure compliance and security. It’s the default runtime for Red Hat OpenShift and a rising star in environments where minimalism and performance are key.

It appears that some companies are shifting away from Docker due to its missed orchestration leadership, business model issues, security and complexity concerns, erosion of community confidence, feature bloat, and the emergence of more secure and efficient alternatives. 

But Docker might catch up again soon, that is, if it wants to. And clearly, it is still the ideal choice for many, at least the ones not running Kubernetes.

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