Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Rancher VS Spacelift.io

Compare Rancher VS Spacelift.io and see what are their differences

Rancher logo Rancher

Open Source Platform for Running a Private Container Service

Spacelift.io logo Spacelift.io

Collaborative Infrastructure For Modern Software Teams
  • Rancher Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-24
  • Spacelift.io Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-08

Spacelift is the most flexible management platform for Infrastructure as Code that helps DevOps teams manage their infrastructure-as-code performance for maximum optimization of scaling businesses.

Founded in 2020, Spacelift allows teams to manage complex cloud infrastructures simultaneously, providing visibility and collaboration. It’s a hybrid of super-specialized, narrowly focused IaC automation tools and very generic CI/CDs like Jenkins or CircleCI. Thanks to Spacelift, teams are able to boost their productivity, automate manual processes, and ensure control and compliance.

Spacelift is the only IaC management solution that extends IaC DevOps to encompass the complete set of IaC frameworks including Terraform, Pulumi, and CloudFormation, with Ansible coming soon. Offering a consolidated approach to IaC is beneficial to engineering teams in large corporations that have been acquiring smaller companies that bring different infrastructures and to smaller but diverse organizations aiming to empower application developers.

We have raised over $22M in funding to advance the automation, control and scalability of infrastructure as code. Among our investors are Insight Partners, Blossom Capital, Hoxton Ventures, Inovo Venture Partners, and the founders of Supercell and Yelp.

Rancher features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Rancher provides an intuitive interface for managing Kubernetes clusters, making it accessible for both seasoned DevOps professionals and those new to container orchestration.
  • Multi-Cluster Management
    Rancher simplifies the management of multiple Kubernetes clusters, whether they are on-premise, in the cloud, or a combination of both, from a single dashboard.
  • Comprehensive Monitoring
    Rancher includes built-in monitoring and alerting features using Prometheus and Grafana, providing robust insights into cluster health and performance.
  • Security and Access Control
    Rancher offers detailed Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) policies to ensure that users have appropriate permissions, enhancing security and compliance.
  • Integrated CI/CD Pipelines
    Rancher integrates seamlessly with popular CI/CD tools, streamlining the development and deployment process across multiple environments.
  • Scalability
    Rancher is designed to easily scale with your needs, supporting a large number of clusters and nodes efficiently.
  • Open-Source
    Rancher is an open-source project, which means it is free to use and benefit from community contributions and transparency.

Possible disadvantages of Rancher

  • Complex Initial Setup
    While Rancher simplifies ongoing management, the initial setup and configuration can be complex and time-consuming for newcomers.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running Rancher can be resource-intensive, requiring substantial CPU and memory, which might be a concern for smaller environments or budgets.
  • Potential Overhead
    Introducing Rancher adds an additional layer between the user and the Kubernetes clusters, potentially introducing latency and an extra point of failure.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite its user-friendly interface, Rancher encompasses a wide array of features that require time and effort to learn and utilize fully.
  • Limited Vendor Support
    Some cloud providers have more robust support and native tools for their Kubernetes services, which might make Rancher less appealing if tight integration with a specific provider's ecosystem is required.

Spacelift.io features and specs

  • Infrastructure as Code Support
    Spacelift supports popular IaC tools like Terraform, Pulumi, and CloudFormation, facilitating efficient infrastructure management and automation.
  • Scalability
    Spacelift is designed to handle infrastructure of various sizes, allowing for seamless scaling as project demands increase.
  • Policy as Code
    It enables the use of policy as code with customizable policies in Rego, providing security, compliance, and cost control capabilities.
  • Integration Capabilities
    Spacelift provides integrations with major cloud providers, VCS systems, and CI/CD tools, enhancing its extensibility and workflow automation.
  • Collaboration Features
    Offers collaboration tools like team management, approvals, and notifications to improve teamwork and communication among developers.

Analysis of Spacelift.io

Overall verdict

  • Spacelift.io is generally regarded as a good choice for teams looking to streamline their infrastructure management. Its robust feature set, focus on modern DevOps practices, and compatibility with a wide range of tools make it a solid option for businesses and developers managing complex cloud environments.

Why this product is good

  • Spacelift.io is known for its strong DevOps capabilities, focusing on infrastructure as code (IaC) management. It offers features like policy as code, continuous integration and deployment for IaC, and supports tools like Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi, and more. The platform is praised for its flexibility, collaboration tools, security measures, and automation capabilities which enhance efficiency and consistency in managing cloud infrastructure.

Recommended for

    Spacelift.io is recommended for DevOps teams, cloud infrastructure engineers, and organizations that are leveraging infrastructure as code practices. It is particularly beneficial for those using multi-cloud strategies or looking for efficient ways to manage and automate their cloud infrastructures with tools like Terraform, CloudFormation, and others.

Rancher videos

Slime Rancher Review - Worthabuy?

More videos:

  • Review - 2019 Honda Rancher 420 Review Long term 1000 plus KM
  • Review - TEST RIDE: 2015 Honda Rancher 420

Spacelift.io videos

Spacelift Introduction

More videos:

  • Review - Infrastructure as Code at scale with Spacelift.io's Marcin Wyszynski [DevOps Deployed Ep 08]

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Rancher and Spacelift.io)
DevOps Tools
88 88%
12% 12
Developer Tools
78 78%
22% 22
Infrastructure As Code
0 0%
100% 100
Cloud Computing
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Rancher and Spacelift.io

Rancher Reviews

Kubernetes Alternatives 2023: Top 8 Container Orchestration Tools
Rancher is an open-source container orchestration platform. With it, you can manage production containers across different platforms, including on-premises and the public cloud. As a Platform as a Service, it simplifies container management by allowing access to a set of available open source technologies, rather than having to build platforms from scratch.
Top 12 Kubernetes Alternatives to Choose From in 2023
Rancher also offers integration with popular container runtimes and networking solutions, making it an excellent choice for teams seeking a comprehensive PaaS solution for their Kubernetes deployments.
Source: humalect.com
11 Best Rancher Alternatives Multi Cluster Orchestration Platform
Create a Kubernetes cluster, then link it to Rancher to use Rancher with Kubernetes. Rancher offers a web-based dashboard, an API, tools for deploying and scaling containerized apps and services, and resources for managing and monitoring your cluster.
Docker Alternatives
An open-source code, Rancher is another one among the list of Docker alternatives that is built to provide organizations with everything they need. This software combines the environments required to adopt and run containers in production. A rancher is built on Kubernetes. This tool helps the DevOps team by making it easier to testing, deploying and managing the...
Source: www.educba.com
Heroku vs self-hosted PaaS
All in all I’m intrigued by Rancher but since I am looking for something simple then it is too advanced and resource intensive for my small side projects. I will however look into Rancher a bit more later and try to deploy one of my projects to it. That will probably be a blog post in it’s own!
Source: www.mskog.com

Spacelift.io Reviews

Top 10 Most Popular Jenkins Alternatives for DevOps in 2024
Spacelift connects to popular VCS providers, including GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket, and Azure DevOps. It integrates with your pull request workflows to allow developers to make infrastructure changes while respecting policies and guardrails enforced by administrators. Spacelift also defends against drift by automatically detecting and remediating unexpected changes in your...
Source: spacelift.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Spacelift.io should be more popular than Rancher. It has been mentiond 108 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Rancher mentions (24)

  • Terraform code for kubernetes on vsphere?
    I don't know in which extend you plan to use Kubernetes in the future, but if it is aimed to become several huge production clusters, you should looks into Apps like Rancher: https://rancher.com. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • I want to provide some free support for community, how should I start?
    But I think once you have a good understanding of K8S internal (components, how thing work underlying, etc.), you can use some tool to help you provision / maintain k8s cluster easier (look for https://rancher.com/ and alternatives). Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Don't Use Kubernetes, Yet
    A few years, I would have said no. Now, I'm cautiously optimistic about it. Personally, I think that you can use something like Rancher (https://rancher.com/) or Portainer (https://www.portainer.io/) for easier management and/or dashboard functionality, to make the learning curve a bit more approachable. For example, you can create a deployment through the UI by following a wizard that also offers you... - Source: Hacker News / almost 3 years ago
  • Building an Internal Kubernetes Platform
    Alternatively, it is also possible to use a multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud approach, which combines several cloud providers or even public and private clouds. Special tools such as Rancher and OpenShift can be very useful to run this type of system. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • Five Dex Alternatives for Kubernetes Authentication
    Rancher provides a Rancher authentication proxy that allows user authentication from a central location. With this proxy, you can set the credential for authenticating users that want to access your Kubernetes clusters. You can create, view, update, or delete users through Rancher’s UI and API. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
View more

Spacelift.io mentions (108)

  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2025)
    Spacelift | Remote (Europe) | Full-time | Senior Software Engineer | $80k-$110k+ (can go higher) We're a VC-funded startup building an infrastructure orchestrator and collaborative management platform for Infrastructure-as-Code – from OpenTofu, Terraform, Terragrunt, CloudFormation, Pulumi, Kubernetes, to Ansible. On the backend we're using 100% Go with AWS primitives. We're looking for backend developers who like... - Source: Hacker News / 2 days ago
  • Kubernetes Multi-Tenancy
    Finally, don't forget to automate your cluster provisioning and management processes with IaC. Configuring clusters as code via tools like Terraform and Pulumi makes Kubernetes infrastructure management simpler and more scalable, whether you're operating one cluster or many. Use Spacelift to unify your IaC tools and build dependable provisioning, configuration, and governance workflows. - Source: dev.to / 5 days ago
  • The Complete Guide to OpenTofu: Why It’s Time to Ditch Terraform
    Here’s the story : When HashiCorp switched Terraform from the Mozilla Public License (MPL) 2.0 to the restrictive Business Source License (BSL) 1.1, the community didn’t just complain – they acted. Within weeks, major players like Gruntwork, Spacelift, Harness, and Env0 came together to create OpenTofu, ensuring that a truly open-source IaC tool would continue to exist. - Source: dev.to / 9 days ago
  • 16 DevOps Metrics You Should Be Tracking
    Spacelift is an IaC management platform that helps you implement DevOps best practices. Spacelift provides a dependable CI/CD layer for infrastructure tools including OpenTofu, Terraform, Pulumi, Kubernetes, Ansible, and more, letting you automate your IaC delivery workflows. - Source: dev.to / 16 days ago
  • Terraform Length Function: Examples For Lists, Maps & Strings
    Terraform is really powerful, but to achieve an end-to-end secure Gitops approach, you need to use a product that can run your Terraform workflows. Spacelift takes managing Terraform to the next level by giving you access to a powerful CI/CD workflow and unlocking features such as:. - Source: dev.to / 19 days ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Rancher and Spacelift.io, you can also consider the following products

Kubernetes - Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers

Scalr - Scalr is cloud management software for public & private infrastructure

Terraform - Tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently.

env0 - The Best Way to Manage Your Terraform and Infrastructure as Code Manage, deploy, scale, and control all your Terraform, Terragrunt, Pulumi, and related frameworks

Puppet Enterprise - Get started with Puppet Enterprise, or upgrade or expand.

CloudBolt - CloudBolt’s hybrid cloud management platform enables enterprise IT departments to efficiently build, deploy, and manage private and public clouds.