Two good tools, built for different scopes
Both provision cloud infrastructure. The real question is whether you need to orchestrate IaC across your whole estate, or get Kubernetes workloads from catalog to production.
Spacelift is an infrastructure-as-code orchestration platform for Terraform, OpenTofu, Terragrunt, Pulumi, CloudFormation, Ansible and Kubernetes manifests. It adds stack dependencies, OPA policy as code, drift detection and private workers, as SaaS or self-hosted.
It is built for infrastructure. Application builds, GitOps delivery of services and per-PR app environments sit outside its scope and are handled by other tools.
- Best-in-class IaC orchestration
- OPA policies on plans and runs
- Infra-focused, app delivery is separate
- You write and maintain the modules
Atmosly is an internal developer platform for Kubernetes. It provisions clusters and cloud resources through guardrails, ships code with visual CI/CD and GitOps, and gives developers governed environments without a ticket.
Its provisioning is catalog-driven and Kubernetes-centric: clusters, add-ons and the resources next to them, not arbitrary IaC. It is fully managed, and the SquareOps services team can implement and run it for you.
- Clusters and resources from a governed catalog
- Visual CI/CD and native GitOps for apps
- Preview environments and cloning
- Fully managed, zero upgrade toil
Spacelift governs infrastructure. Atmosly ships what runs on it.
Keep Spacelift for the wider IaC estate if it serves you. Atmosly covers the Kubernetes side end to end: clusters from a catalog, application delivery and self-serve environments.
Kubernetes clusters without writing a module
In Spacelift you write or source the Terraform for every cluster and add-on, then govern the runs. Atmosly offers EKS, GKE and AKS clusters, add-ons and databases as catalog items, behind the guardrail flow you design.
- Create or import any cluster, public or private
- Add-ons version-pinned: ingress, cert-manager, secrets
- Auto-approve under threshold, one-click revert
The application half, on the same platform
Spacelift deploys infrastructure, not your services. Atmosly takes a running workload, packages it as a blueprint and wires a pipeline around it: build, test, GitOps deploy, verification, promotion and rollback.
- Visual editor or YAML, same engine
- Rolling, blue-green and canary deploys
- Multi-stage promotion with approvals and audit
Developers get app environments without filing tickets
Spacelift templates give developers infrastructure stacks. Atmosly gives every PR a running copy of the app with policies inherited from prod, and clones a full stack for a new tenant or region in one step.
- Preview environment per PR, auto-expires on merge
- Clone services, config and datastores in one step
- Curated Helm marketplace with pinned versions
Spacelift vs Atmosly, capability by capability
We kept Spacelift's genuine wins in the table. They're marked so you can see them at a glance.
Spacelift's strengths are real and broad: IaC orchestration, policy as code and drift detection across any cloud resource. Atmosly's case is the Kubernetes path from cluster to running app, on one platform.
Which one is right for your team?
It depends on scope, and on who you want running the platform.
- IaC orchestration is your primary need
- You run large Terraform or OpenTofu estates
- Policy as code on every infra run is essential
- You need drift detection across all cloud resources
- App delivery already lives in other tools
- Your infrastructure work centers on Kubernetes
- You want clusters from a catalog, not modules to maintain
- App CI/CD and GitOps should sit next to provisioning
- Developers need a preview environment per PR
- You'd like a partner (SquareOps) to implement and run it
If orchestrating Terraform or OpenTofu across a large estate with policy as code is the core need, Spacelift is excellent, and Atmosly can sit beside it. If you want Kubernetes clusters, app delivery and environments on one managed platform, that's Atmosly.
Connect a cluster freeFrom Spacelift to Atmosly at your own pace
No rip-and-replace. Keep Spacelift for the infrastructure it governs well, connect a cluster read-only, and let Atmosly take over the Kubernetes path one workload at a time.
Rather not do it yourself? The SquareOps services team can run the migration and day-2 operations for you.
Managed Kubernetes servicesWhat teams comparing Spacelift ask
Not covered? An engineer replies within one business day.
consult@squareops.comNot in the same way. Spacelift orchestrates any Terraform, OpenTofu, Pulumi or CloudFormation code. Atmosly provisions Kubernetes clusters, add-ons and nearby cloud resources from a governed catalog, then builds and deploys the apps that run on them.
Yes, and many teams should. Keep Spacelift for networking, accounts and broad infrastructure, and use Atmosly for Kubernetes clusters, application delivery and developer environments.
Application CI/CD with native GitOps, per-PR preview environments, environment cloning, a curated Helm marketplace and a service catalog that shows each service's owner, pipeline, environments and deploy status.
Yes. Every request runs through guardrails: cost caps and approval thresholds, region and instance allow-lists, and required settings such as encryption and backups, with auto-approval under a threshold and one-click revert. It is not a general policy-as-code engine over arbitrary IaC, which is where Spacelift is stronger.
You usually don't move everything. Connect a cluster read-only, ship one workload through an Atmosly pipeline, and use the catalog for new Kubernetes resources while Spacelift keeps running the rest. The SquareOps services team can plan the split with you.
Any conformant Kubernetes cluster: EKS, GKE, AKS or self-managed, public or private, including on-prem and bare metal. You import the cluster you already run, read-only, in minutes.
No. It runs on your own clusters on standard Kubernetes, Helm and Git, so what you build stays portable.
Atmosly is fully managed SaaS, agent- or API-based and read-only by default. The Enterprise tier can self-host the control plane in your own VPC, and SquareOps can run day-2 operations for you.