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AWS Control Tower vs Spacelift comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS Control Tower
Ranking in Cloud Management
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Spacelift
Ranking in Cloud Management
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of AWS Control Tower is 1.3%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spacelift is 1.0%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
AWS Control Tower1.3%
Spacelift1.0%
Other97.7%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Unified security management ensures comprehensive compliance for account safety
Control Tower offers many valuable features for managing all account security. I can manage user security and user IAM, firewall, and other security-related tasks via Control Tower. The unified security management is a crucial aspect, and whenever an AWS organization is used, Control Tower is typically included to ensure comprehensive compliance fulfillment.
Moloko Mokubedi - PeerSpot reviewer
The GitOps feature automatically picks up changes from my GitHub projects
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.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"One of the standout advantages is the fine-grained control it offers in terms of permissions and privileges."
"Security is the most valuable feature of Control Tower."
"It aligns well with the customer's needs and it ultimately fosters a strong customer-company relationship."
"AWS Control Tower is a tool specifically designed for multi-account management. It offers the advantage of highly granular management."
"It offers automated recommendations for security and policies, creating a landing zone and providing a list of policies."
"Compliance is the most valuable feature."
"The most significant benefit of Control Tower is its capability to align with our organization's standards."
"It provides a central point for account management, access control, and compliance monitoring."
"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."
"I appreciate that I just have to connect to my AWS account with my credentials, and Spacelift handles the rest."
"One key feature is the Spacelift policies, which we can attach to deployments to ensure compliance with our standards."
"Spacelift is like an extension of Terraform, where everything can be visibly managed."
"Knowing the HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) makes it easier to use without issues."
 

Cons

"The process of closing an AWS account using Control Tower needs improvements to simplify it, especially when managing multiple accounts."
"There is a sync issue within the organization. It is important that the system syncs automatically instead of requiring me to manually choose sync options."
"There is a sync issue within the organization."
"It could be improved by having a more intuitive graphical interface. It could also include other coding languages like PowerShell and Python, as it would be beneficial for DevOps recommendations."
"AWS should provide more resources, examples, and tutorials."
"AWS Control Tower should improve its fast execution. It also needs more tools for triggering and monitoring AWS services. AWS Control Tower needs more tracking as well."
"It would be beneficial if AWS offered the capability to seamlessly deploy your infrastructure to another region to ensure continuous availability and redundancy."
"There should be more automation security tools in the Control Tower."
"In the free version, there's no straightforward way to be notified once a deployment is finished."
"The self-hosted version does not have a lot of features compared to the SaaS version, such as cloud integrations for Azure and GCP."
"Spacelift currently lacks features that can help with complex type deployments and coordination for major deployments."
"If you are a small enterprise organization, below 500 people, I would not recommend it."
"Synchronization can be difficult when using older and newer versions with Kubernetes and HashiCorp."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's affordability depends on the value it brings to specific organizations."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the pricing an eight."
"I believe it's free of charge or comes at a very low cost. It's an additional feature. Even if there is a fee, it's minimal. AWS seems to assist customers in gaining a comprehensive view of their security setups within AWS. Using Control Tower is highly recommended, especially as your company grows and involves Active Directory, various departments, and different architectural aspects. It becomes more advisable to leverage Control Tower rather than managing these aspects manually, especially for larger organizations."
"It is expensive but it is an investment in my opinion."
"It is cost-effective and the associated cost is quite minimal."
"It operates on a pay-as-you-go model, meaning we are charged only for the services we actively use within it."
"AWS Control Tower is not really that expensive."
"The cost is reasonable, but there are opportunities for improvement in terms of pricing for larger enterprises."
"It is a bit expensive product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Educational Organization
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Educational Organization
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Control Tower?
The most intriguing feature is the automatic generation of user accounts. Leveraging Active Directory and global company settings, AWS Cloud Tower enables the creation of AWS user accounts based on...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Control Tower?
Control Tower within the AWS Organization does not have a charge. It is free and does not incur additional charges.
What needs improvement with AWS Control Tower?
I believe AWS Control Tower could be improved. I compare it with Huawei Cloud's enterprise project, which is a similar concept but different implementation. In Huawei Cloud, you partition in one si...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Spacelift?
I've never checked the pricing because I enjoy using it for free. Besides the notification feature, I haven't needed any paid features.
What needs improvement with Spacelift?
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. Spa...
What is your primary use case for Spacelift?
I use Spacelift to deploy my applications, particularly AWS applications and infrastructure to my personal AWS account.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Control Tower vs. Spacelift and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.