Implementing Spacelift is a structured yet flexible process that can be tailored to your organization’s infrastructure and compliance needs. Here’s a step-by-step overview of how it typically unfolds:
License and Setup Materials: First, you obtain a valid license key and installation materials from Spacelift. These include Docker images and configuration files necessary for deployment.
Environment Preparation: You prepare your infrastructure environment, which could be a Kubernetes cluster (AKS, EKS, GKE, or on-prem), or another containerized platform like AWS ECS. This step involves ensuring that all external dependencies (e.g., databases, storage, and networking) are in place.
Deployment: Spacelift is deployed into your environment using the provided Docker containers. The platform supports both cloud-based and self-hosted deployments, giving you flexibility based on your security and compliance requirements.
Initial Configuration: After deployment, you perform the first setup. This includes connecting your version control system (e.g., GitHub, GitLab), setting up cloud credentials, and defining your first stacks (infrastructure projects).
Policy and Workflow Setup: You configure policies using Open Policy Agent (OPA), define custom workflows, and set up Spaces (Spacelift’s way of organizing resources by teams, environments, or services).
Testing and Validation: You can use Spacelift’s Terraform Starter repository or your own infrastructure code to test the setup. Most users can go from zero to managing cloud resources in under 15 minutes for basic setups.
The time to implement Spacelift can vary:
Spacelift is highly customizable, making it suitable for a wide range of business needs:
Spaces: Organize infrastructure by teams, environments, or services with fine-grained access control and resource inheritance
Spacelift’s pricing is primarily subscription-based, but a few additional cost considerations are depending on your deployment model and support needs:
Setup Fees: There are no explicit setup fees for cloud-hosted plans. However, for self-hosted deployments, you may incur infrastructure costs. Spacelift estimates the baseline running cost of a self-hosted instance to be around $15 per day (approximately $450/month) even with minimal activity.
Maintenance Costs: For cloud-hosted users, maintenance is included in the subscription. For self-hosted users, maintenance involves managing your own infrastructure (e.g., AWS Fargate, Aurora RDS, KMS), which adds operational overhead and cost.
Spacelift provides a range of training and support resources to help new users onboard effectively:
Spacelift is built with enterprise-grade security in mind, offering multiple layers of protection:
SSO and MFA: Supports SAML 2.0, OIDC, and multi-factor authentication for secure user access
Spacelift follows a continuous delivery model, especially for its cloud-hosted version, which means updates and new features are rolled out frequently, often weekly or bi-weekly. These updates include performance improvements, new integrations, security patches, and enhancements to the user interface or policy engine.
For self-hosted deployments, updates are managed manually by the customer. Spacelift provides Docker images and changelogs, and it’s up to the organization to pull and apply updates at their discretion. This gives enterprises more control over when and how updates are applied, which is useful for regulated environments.
Spacelift’s policy on data ownership is designed to give customers full control over their infrastructure data:
This approach aligns with best practices in DevOps and enterprise IT, ensuring that vendor lock-in is minimized.
Spacelift is built to scale with your organization’s needs:
Auto-Attach Policies: With label-based automation, policies can be automatically applied to new stacks, reducing manual overhead as you scale
Spacelift’s architecture and licensing model are designed to support everything from small teams to large enterprises with complex infrastructure and compliance needs.
Spacelift’s terms and conditions provide a clear framework for contract renewal and cancellation:
Automatic Renewal: Unless otherwise specified in a custom agreement, subscriptions typically renew automatically at the end of each billing cycle. Customers are responsible for canceling before the renewal date to avoid being charged for the next term.
Cancellation Policy: Customers can cancel their subscription by notifying Spacelift in writing before the renewal date. For cloud-hosted plans, cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period. For self-hosted or enterprise contracts, cancellation terms may be governed by a Master Services Agreement (MSA) or custom contract.
Refunds: Spacelift has a defined Refund Policy, which states that refunds are only issued under specific conditions, such as withdrawal from the software agreement within a defined period. Refunds are not guaranteed for mid-cycle cancellations.
Termination for Cause: Either party may terminate the agreement if the other party breaches the terms and fails to remedy the breach within a specified period (usually 30 days).
Spacelift is designed with enterprise-grade compliance in mind and aligns with several key industry standards:
These measures make Spacelift suitable for use in regulated industries such as finance, healthcare, and government.
