Two good tools, built for different scopes
Both deliver to Kubernetes. The real question is whether you need multi-cloud deployment depth enough to run Spinnaker, or want Kubernetes delivery as a managed platform.
Spinnaker is an open-source, multi-cloud continuous delivery platform created at Netflix and now a CD Foundation project. It deploys to Kubernetes, AWS, Google Cloud, Azure and more, with pipeline stages, manual judgments and automated canary analysis through Kayenta.
That power comes with operational weight: around ten microservices to run, tune and upgrade, and a steep learning curve. Builds come from Jenkins or another CI, and environments and provisioning live elsewhere.
- Mature canary analysis with Kayenta
- Deploys across many clouds
- Many services to operate and upgrade
- CI and environments live elsewhere
Atmosly is an internal developer platform for Kubernetes. Its pipelines run from source to production with rolling, blue-green and canary deploys, approval gates, post-deploy verification and one-click rollback, GitOps-native underneath.
Around delivery it provisions clusters and cloud resources through guardrails and gives developers preview environments. It is fully managed and agent-based, and the SquareOps services team can implement and run it for you.
- Canary, blue-green and rolling deploys
- Build, test and deploy in the same pipeline
- Governed provisioning and preview environments
- Fully managed, no services to operate
Spinnaker deploys. Atmosly deploys and runs the platform.
If Kubernetes is where you deploy, you can keep progressive delivery, drop the Spinnaker operations work, and get provisioning and preview environments on the same control plane.
Progressive delivery without a Spinnaker install
Atmosly pipelines build and test the image, roll it out with canary or blue-green, verify it with smoke and synthetic checks, and promote it through approvals. There is nothing to host behind it.
- Canary, blue-green and rolling strategies
- Post-deploy hooks and synthetic checks
- One-click rollback to any prior release
The cluster, not just the server group
Spinnaker deploys into infrastructure that already exists. Atmosly also creates it: EKS, GKE or AKS clusters, node groups, add-ons and databases from a catalog, checked against your guardrails.
- Create or import any cluster, public or private
- Cost caps, region and instance allow-lists
- Escalate above threshold, one-click revert
Test the release in its own environment before the canary
Spinnaker deploys into environments that already exist, so teams queue for a shared staging. Atmosly gives every pull request a governed environment with prod's policies, and removes it on merge.
- Ready in about 2 minutes, no tickets
- Clone a full stack for a tenant or region
- Curated Helm marketplace with pinned versions
Spinnaker vs Atmosly, capability by capability
We kept Spinnaker's genuine wins in the table. They're marked so you can see them at a glance.
Spinnaker's wins are real: canary analysis, multi-cloud targets and an open-source license. Atmosly's case is Kubernetes delivery plus provisioning and environments, without a platform to operate.
Which one is right for your team?
It depends on scope, and on who you want running the platform.
- You deploy to VMs and many clouds, not only Kubernetes
- Automated canary analysis is central to your releases
- You already operate Spinnaker successfully
- You have a team to run its services
- Free and open source is a requirement
- Kubernetes is where your workloads run
- You want progressive delivery without operating it
- Builds, tests and deploys should live in one pipeline
- Developers need preview environments without tickets
- You'd like a partner (SquareOps) to implement and run it
If you deploy across many clouds and VM targets and have a team to run Spinnaker, it is powerful and proven. If Kubernetes is your target and you want progressive delivery plus provisioning and environments without the operations weight, that's Atmosly.
Connect a cluster freeFrom Spinnaker to Atmosly in an afternoon
No big-bang migration. Connect read-only, rebuild one Spinnaker pipeline in Atmosly, and move the rest service by service.
Rather not do it yourself? The SquareOps services team can run the migration and day-2 operations for you.
Managed Kubernetes servicesWhat teams comparing Spinnaker ask
Not covered? An engineer replies within one business day.
consult@squareops.comSpinnaker is an open-source continuous delivery platform that deploys to many clouds and targets, with mature canary analysis. Atmosly is a managed internal developer platform for Kubernetes that covers build and deploy plus provisioning, preview environments and governance.
Yes. Rolling, blue-green and canary strategies are built into Atmosly pipelines, with post-deploy verification, approval gates and one-click rollback. Spinnaker's Kayenta goes deeper on metric-scored canary analysis, so compare the two if that is central to your releases.
Yes. Atmosly is fully managed and agent-based, so there are no microservices to host, scale or upgrade. Spinnaker is self-hosted unless you use a commercial distribution.
Yes. You can keep Spinnaker for VM and other non-Kubernetes targets while Atmosly handles Kubernetes delivery, provisioning and environments, and move pipelines over one at a time.
No. Atmosly runs builds with Docker, Buildpacks or Kaniko, and tests, in the same pipeline that deploys. You can also keep Jenkins and let Atmosly handle CD and post-deploy.
Not very, and it is incremental. Connect a cluster read-only, rebuild one pipeline in Atmosly and run it next to Spinnaker until you trust it, then move the rest one service at a time. The SquareOps services team can run the migration for you.
Any conformant Kubernetes cluster: EKS, GKE, AKS or self-managed, public or private, including on-prem. Atmosly is built for Kubernetes workloads, so if you also deploy to VMs or serverless, Spinnaker covers targets Atmosly does not.
No. It runs on your own clusters on standard Kubernetes, Helm and Git, so what you build stays portable.