Spacelift

I use Spacelift  to deploy my applications, particularly AWS  applications and infrastructure to my personal AWS  account.

I introduced Spacelift  to the company I was working with. Although they were not fully convinced initially, through a POC, my manager liked it. However, they did not fully adopt it because they were changing their technology infrastructure.

I appreciate that I just have to connect to my AWS account with my credentials, and Spacelift handles the rest. I particularly like the GitOps feature, which automatically picks up changes from my GitHub  projects. 

It also offers the default plan feature, prompting for confirmation before applying any changes. This helps manage costs effectively, as it prevents unintentional deployments that could incur expenses.

There are a few areas for improvement. For instance, getting notification webhooks is not easy. In the free version, there's no straightforward way to be notified once a deployment is finished. 

Spacelift requires creating a notification policy, which involves using the open policies framework. However, this feature is not available on the free plan. Additionally, for each new project, I need to create a new IAM  role, which is not optimal. It would be better if I could use a single role for all interactions with my AWS account.

I found out about Spacelift sometime last year, but we can say I've been using it since the beginning of this year, in January.

I've never experienced any stability issues with Spacelift. It has been reliable without any bugs or breakdowns.

Scalability hasn't been a major test for me since I've mostly dealt with small projects and a small company with a few clients. However, there was a time we scaled our infrastructure by deploying the same module five times, and Spacelift handled it all at once.

I have never had to contact their support team for any reason.

Positive

I could have used Jenkins , which is not so easy to set up. I could have used CodeBuild , which is not that hard but would have required more effort compared to Spacelift.

Spacelift is really easy to set up. I just create my account, my project, and then create a stack. I add the name of my stack, provide my GitHub  account, and add my AWS credentials. Whenever I push to my GitHub, Spacelift executes the plan and gives me errors if there are any.

I've never checked the pricing because I enjoy using it for free. Besides the notification feature, I haven't needed any paid features.

If you want to get off the ground quickly without spending too much time setting up your GitOps or infrastructure development, Spacelift is the tool for you. It allows you to start as soon as possible.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We are using Spacelift  for the bank's architecture. We use different scripts that belong to Spacelift  and work with Teams in TF formats. We use HashiCorp Language, compile sections from Spacelift, and forward them to the architecture, using GitHub . Actions are triggered, and TF files are distributed on our infrastructure on AWS .

HashiCorp support is very good.

The Vault system is a little complicated and confusing when exchanging secrets using HashiCorp Vault  systems. Synchronization can be difficult when using older and newer versions with Kubernetes  and HashiCorp.

We have been using Spacelift for around one and a half years.

During my use of Spacelift, there were no bugs. Knowing the HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) makes it easier to use without issues.

Spacelift provides a stable function and feature. It is stable with AWS . Using on-prem can be a little unstable, requiring us to handle it ourselves.

The support team has been good. They respond on time and are knowledgeable, as seen in their Slack  channel or by email.

Positive

Spacelift is not cheap. More security, resilience, and stability require investment. However, effective utilization by a team can justify the cost.

I recommend Spacelift for others as it is a stable tool for DevOps, especially alongside Terraform . Spacelift offers a service to manage Terraform , allowing you to configure, build, and compile services, and send them to your current infrastructure.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We have adopted this tool to replace Terraform Enterprise. It is a CICD tool for Terraform-related deployments. Currently, we are utilizing it for AWS, but we plan to extend it to multi-cloud, including Azure and GCP.

By using Spacelift, we have been able to cut down our costs significantly from spending around three million dollars a year on Terraform Enterprise to around sixty thousand dollars. It has been fast and efficient, providing significant savings to our organization.

Spacelift operates differently compared to Terraform Enterprise. It has stacks where you can execute your runs. 

A valuable feature of Spacelift is that you can attach labels, and it is a modernized tool for infrastructure deployments. It is pull request-based, and you can see all the Terraform plan and apply logs on the pull request itself, which is not available across any other CI/CD tools.

The self-hosted version does not have a lot of features compared to the SaaS version, such as cloud integrations for Azure and GCP. We did some feature requests, and they are working on these improvements.

I have been using Spacelift for one and a half years.

We have no issues with stability. It has been working fine all the time.

It is highly available and scalable. We can launch a number of workers to match any number of deployments. We have around five thousand stacks in Spacelift without any issues.

The customer service needs improvement. Currently, we have a vendor contract through which we generally send an email, but there is no proper support system similar to AWS. It is something that can be improved significantly.

Positive

We previously used Terraform Enterprise and switched to Spacelift for its modern features and cost savings.

We went from spending three million dollars a year on Terraform Enterprise to spending sixty thousand dollars with Spacelift, saving us a significant amount.

The cost savings with Spacelift have been substantial, from three million dollars a year with Terraform Enterprise to sixty thousand dollars.

We used Terraform Enterprise previously.

If someone has a bigger infrastructure and manages it themselves, Spacelift could be beneficial as it saves time and increases productivity.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We use Spacelift  to deploy all of our infrastructure with Terraform . It serves as a SaaS offering, allowing us to effectively manage our infrastructure deployments through the cloud version.

Spacelift  has helped us a lot with scaling our infrastructure deployment. Before using it, deploying a new stack was cumbersome. Now, it is relatively easy. Additionally, Spacelift has automated everything for us, making it really easy to deploy from Salesforce .

One key feature is the Spacelift policies, which we can attach to deployments to ensure compliance with our standards. The user interface is also user-friendly, allowing for seamless integration. The integration with Terraform  is also noteworthy, as it simplifies our processes a lot.

Spacelift currently lacks features that can help with complex type deployments and coordination for major deployments. It would be helpful if Spacelift had features that allowed us to orchestrate major deployments and stack dependencies more effectively.

I have been using Spacelift for three years.

The stability of Spacelift is very high, probably a nine out of ten. We have a high level of confidence when we deploy, knowing that it will work ninety-nine percent of the time.

At our scale, we definitely need Spacelift to be scalable, especially since we have many Terraform projects. Features that allow us to perform bulk actions on several stacks really help us scale. The scalability is essential and rated eight out of ten.

The customer service is good. We communicate with them via Slack , which makes it easy to get in touch. They are keen to listen to all feature requests, although it doesn't mean they will implement them. I would rate them probably seven out of ten.

Neutral

We were using Atlantis  before switching to Spacelift because it has more features.

The initial setup was relatively easy, taking about one day to set up everything. Only two people were involved in the initial setup. That said, now every engineer can deploy their own stack.

Two people were involved in setting up the Spacelift account initially, and now just two people are required for maintenance.

Spacelift has provided organizational value by making infrastructure deployment less cumbersome and relatively easy compared to our previous methods.

I don't have visibility on the pricing, setup cost, and licensing as I was not involved in signing the contract.

We were using Atlantis  before Spacelift.

It is advisable to put even the Spacelift configuration in Terraform. It helps a lot to scale.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We used it in one of our biggest projects, Google Fiber. The client, Google, already had inbuilt data from templates, and they wanted to import everything into Spacelift to automate using the platform. So, complimentary account can be created so we can try it ourselves. It's a SaaS-based application.

We've integrated it with source control management tools like GitLab and Bitbucket. The scheduling and state management features are pretty good using Spacelift.

It integrates with tools like Terraform and Kubernetes for policies, but we haven't worked on the compliance part.

Spacelift streamlines collaboration among our development and operations teams. We use it for CI/CD as well.

It can handle automation strategies. Whenever you put your YAML files and integrate them with Spacelift, it will scan the code and show where you need to make changes.

The most useful feature we found is management and Drift Detection. It allows us to manage when users edit files within the state sector.

If you are a small enterprise organization, below 500 people, I would not recommend it.

We've been using it for around nine months, and it hasn't broken down for us so far.

We've only used it on one project, but it's a very large project from Google. They might have some users, but ultimately it's managing infrastructure. We use it with around 10-15 people within our team.

We haven't contacted customer service and support. However, I connected with someone from the Spacelift product team on LinkedIn. I went through their blog posts and guides, and they explained how it works. There are also tutorials on the Spacelift website.

We've done a good amount of proof of concept (POC) work on Spacelift because we were comparing it with Terraform and Terraform Cloud. 

Spacelift is like an extension of Terraform, where everything can be visibly managed. 

Every tool has its pros and cons. We haven't found any alternative tools for Spacelift, and as of now, we haven't found anything lacking based on our product requirements, but that might change in the future.

The initial setup is easy. It's a software as a service (SaaS), similar to Terraform Cloud, but it goes beyond Terraform Cloud. You just need a couple of tools to run it. It's not a complex tool that requires setting up Kubernetes or anything like that. It's pretty easy.

You can manage things without Spacelift. If you are a small enterprise organization, below 500 people, I would not recommend it. If you are greater than 10,000 or 20,000 people, you'll be getting good revenue, so it would be good to have Spacelift. 

It's okay to recommend it to your client, but it's not advantageous for small or mid-level organizations because things can be managed without it.

It is a bit expensive product. 

It's pretty easy to learn to use Spacelift. Whatever tool you learn is useful when you're in a technical field and growing at a technical level. It's good to learn multiple tools. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten.