Spacelift

What do you like best about the product?

Spacelift goes beyond the basics of managing the lifecycle of OpenTofu and other IaC tools by adding useful constructs like spaces, contexts, and integrations that make managing a large number of configurations a scalable process. The web user interface is basic, but gives easy access to all the key information

One thing that really impressed me is the quality of the integration with GitHub repositories. Spacelift not only runs OpenTofu plans automatically for pushes and pull requests, but does so without any manual configurations or boilerplate workflows in the repositories. It also handles monorepos really well, only running plans only for stacks that are actually affected by changed files. And, it's possible to promote proposed changes all from within GitHub. The spacectl CLI is similarly well integrated, making it easy to integrate into local development workflows.

What do you dislike about the product?

The web interface is rather basic. It's focussed on one entity at a time (e.g., spaces, stacks, contexts), making it hard to get holistic views of things. For example, when I'm on the page for a space, I'd ideally like some sort of overview of the stacks and contexts in the space and drill down into them. Instead, I have to go to the stacks page and filter down to the space, the contexts page and filter down to the space, etc. There's also some rough edges and odd behaviours like action panels covering up lists, and weird list item selection behaviours.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Spacelift replaces individually run GitHub Actions workflows for Terraform and OpenTofu configs with a really nice framework for managing large infrastructure deployments. It provides good controls, organization, and visibility for infrastructure stacks, so that I can focus on managing my infrastructure and not the tool itself.

What do you like best about the product?

I love how Spacelift allows our small team to efficiently manage a large number of stacks, enabling us to configure and manage our infrastructure in a clean and sensible way. The simplicity of configuring Terraform through Spacelift is particularly impressive, as it streamlines our process and allows us to manage infrastructure dependencies smoothly. I appreciate the systematic and repeatable way it facilitates the rollout of applications and infrastructure, which is crucial for maintaining our operations. Additionally, the easy initial setup and the ability to write our own modules quickly were extremely beneficial. The support from Spacelift has also been exemplary, with their team providing substantial help during the setup process through calls and hands-on assistance, ensuring we could address any problems effectively. Being a long-time user, the consistency of their support over time has made our experience with Spacelift very positive.

What do you dislike about the product?

I find it sometimes quite difficult to configure the things we need in Spacelift. The configuration process can be challenging, especially when adding new configuration items, as the context needs to exist with those items in it. This requirement is understandable but it can be a bit of a hassle and causes an overhead.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I find Spacelift enables our small team to efficiently manage numerous stacks, configuring and maintaining infrastructure simply and sensibly. It enhances our ability to handle infrastructure and applications in a systematic, repeatable manner, ultimately supporting our infrastructural scalability.

What do you like best about the product?

Delegation, I can delegate all Terraform actions - Infrastructure as a code to a dedicated place, important element state management, extremely easy to start the journey with Terraform (for example, to the people from Azure Bicep)

What do you dislike about the product?

Today I don't see any problems. Documentation and samples are clear

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

State management

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.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Positive