OpenNebula vs Spacelift comparison

OpenNebula and Spacelift are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. OpenNebula is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.5, while Spacelift is ranked #20 with an average rating of 8.0. OpenNebula holds a 6.6% mindshare in CM, compared to Spacelift’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of OpenNebula users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Spacelift users who would recommend it.

OpenNebula

Read 15 OpenNebula reviews

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3,082 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Spacelift

Read 5 Spacelift reviews

280 Views
280 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

OpenNebula

Spacelift

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

OpenNebula and Spacelift compete in the cloud infrastructure management domain. OpenNebula holds an advantage in terms of cost-effectiveness and community support, whereas Spacelift is superior in automation and integration capabilities.

Features: OpenNebula provides simplicity in virtualization management, supporting a wide range of hypervisors and offering seamless onboarding. Its open-source nature and community support are valuable. Spacelift excels with advanced automation features, continuous integration and delivery tools, and a focus on infrastructure as code, making it appealing for modern DevOps environments.

Room for Improvement: OpenNebula could enhance integration with more modern DevOps tools and expand its feature set to compete with proprietary solutions. Improving user interface design might increase usability. Spacelift could lower its pricing to be more competitive and simplify initial setup processes for new users. Providing more comprehensive documentation can assist enterprises encountering complex setups.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: OpenNebula offers straightforward deployment with strong community-driven support ideal for organizations seeking open-source solutions. Spacelift, on the other hand, provides a scalable deployment model with dedicated customer service aimed at complex enterprise needs, emphasizing personalized assistance.

Pricing and ROI: OpenNebula appeals to cost-sensitive organizations with its low setup costs and flexible expansion options, providing significant ROI by saving on licensing fees. Spacelift's higher pricing reflects its premium features and focuses on long-term value for companies prioritizing scalability and modernization, potentially offering substantial ROI for those needing advanced cloud management capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed OpenNebula vs. Spacelift Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

OpenNebula vs. Spacelift

July 2025

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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

OpenNebula

Ranking in Cloud Management

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Spacelift

Ranking in Cloud Management

20th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of OpenNebula is 6.6%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spacelift is 0.7%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

FOURES Jean-Philippe

Products Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Reliable, simple to manage, and offers great technical support

The support of VXLAN fits with our network management. Thanks to this we can propose mixed solutions using virtual resources on OpenNebula and bare metal servers hosted in our facilities linked to each other on the sale network. This use case is very useful when some applications need bare metal power (Kubernetes workers, huge databases, AI models computations, et cetera). The cluster management is very useful for splitting our different clusters (mutual vs dedicated). We can manage deployments and capacity planning without pain. The API is also really simple and it helped us to develop the Terraform provider to manage OpenNebula like any other cloud infrastructure.

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Moloko Mokubedi

Junior DevOps Engineer at Kartoza (Pty) Ltd

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"With a single click, we could set things up and initiate them."

"OpenNebula is easy to deploy and manage compared to other solutions like OpenStack."

"The most valuable feature of OpenNebula is that it scales very well."

"The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often."

"It is quite easy to deploy."

"What's best about OpenNebula that people like is that it's easy to deploy. It's also easy to manage. It's interesting because people choose OpenNebula over other solutions because of the ease of management."

"It's easy to integrate OpenNebula with our IT systems."

"OpenNebula is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize."

More OpenNebula pros

"I appreciate that I just have to connect to my AWS account with my credentials, and Spacelift handles the rest."

"Knowing the HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) makes it easier to use without issues."

"Spacelift is like an extension of Terraform, where everything can be visibly managed."

"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."

"One key feature is the Spacelift policies, which we can attach to deployments to ensure compliance with our standards."

Cons

"They have been saying for the past two and a half years that they would develop a feature to hot-add RAM and CPU, but it does not work."

"It should have a simple REST API like most other tools. It's the industry standard format. An XML-RPC API gives you an XML document that you have to convert and then do something with that. REST API endpoint provides outputs in a JSON document. I would also like to see support for user data or heat templates, which OpenStack offers, but OpenNebula doesn't have this yet."

"The storage feature that they have is a bit confusing."

"They should add more features like object storage."

"Backup features are only available in the enterprise edition. The community version lacks a good solution for making backups."

"The UI, monitoring, and alerting could benefit from further improvements."

"There are no payment gateways in OpenNebula."

"As with all enterprise software licensing, the pricing is not intuitive and must be negotiated; grandfathered contracts are better than anything offered today."

More OpenNebula cons

"If you are a small enterprise organization, below 500 people, I would not recommend it."

"The self-hosted version does not have a lot of features compared to the SaaS version, such as cloud integrations for Azure and GCP."

"In the free version, there's no straightforward way to be notified once a deployment is finished."

"Synchronization can be difficult when using older and newer versions with Kubernetes and HashiCorp."

"Spacelift currently lacks features that can help with complex type deployments and coordination for major deployments."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."

"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."

"The solution is open source so is free."

"OpenNebula gives good value for money."

"The licensing for OpenNebula used to be free, but now it's no longer free. A customer contacted me asking to move to another provider because of the changes in the licensing terms for OpenNebula. I have no information on how much the OpenNebula license is because the customer pays for it, and I only do the integration."

"OpenNebuoa has recently come up with a new subscription model that is economical and a lot of new customers are choosing this as it is an easy subscription model."

"It is a bit expensive product."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

University

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Educational Organization

11%

Media Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about OpenNebula?

The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenNebula?

OpenNebula gives good value for money.

See all answers

What needs improvement with OpenNebula?

The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement. Another area for improvement is the integration with hardware to manage the lower layer of the n...

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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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Spacelift?

See all answers

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.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 13% of the time

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Compared 12% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs OpenNebula

Compared 9% of the time

Morpheus vs OpenNebula

Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 69% of the time

Scalr vs Spacelift

Compared 31% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

OpenNebula

August 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Spacelift

July 2025

Download Spacelift product report

Overview

OpenNebula provides the most simple but feature-rich and flexible solution for the comprehensive management of virtualized data centers to enable private, public and hybrid IaaS clouds. OpenNebula interoperability makes cloud an evolution by leveraging existing IT assets, protecting your investments, and avoiding vendor lock-in.

OpenNebula is a turnkey enterprise-ready solution that includes all the features needed to provide an on-premises (private) cloud offering, and to offer public cloud services.

OpenNebula

Spacelift provides a sophisticated infrastructure management platform with key features such as Drift Detection and Terraform integration, simplifying complex deployments and enhancing user workflows through an intuitive interface.

Spacelift excels in modernizing infrastructure management by integrating smoothly with Terraform, using a pull request-based approach for visibility into logs. It automates change detection using GitOps from GitHub and supports AWS connectivity with credential management. Despite its strengths, some users find room for improvement in supporting smaller enterprises and offering more seamless cloud integrations with self-hosted versions. Handling of HashiCorp Vault secrets and cumbersome notification webhooks may require additional setup effort.

What are the most valuable features?

Drift Detection: Ensures user edits are managed effectively, reducing configuration discrepancies.
Terraform Integration: Seamless compatibility with Terraform for robust infrastructure management.
GitOps: Automates change detection from GitHub, ensuring efficient workflows.
Compliance Policies: Helps maintain infrastructure within regulatory guidelines.
Stack Execution: Enables runs with label attachments for organized operations.

What benefits or ROI can users expect?

Improved Deployment Control: Default plan prompts support structured and controlled deployments.
Streamlined Terraform Management: Enhanced visibility into logs aids in transparent and efficient operations.
Efficient AWS Interactions: Credential management simplifies connections, making operations more fluid.
Dynamic Infrastructure Handling: Supports significant projects by replacing tools like Terraform Enterprise.

In specific industries, Spacelift is primarily utilized for infrastructure management and deployment across platforms like AWS, Azure, and GCP. In banking architecture, it replaces Terraform Enterprise, ensuring secure and efficient operations. Projects like Google Fiber benefit from its capability to import and manage data effectively, engaging users with HashiCorp Language and GitHub for CI/CD integration.

Spacelift

Sample Customers

Akamai, BBC, Fermilab, Terradue, Surf Sara, Produban, Netways, ESA, China Mobile, BlackBerry, Deloitte, Fuze, Telefonica, Trivago, Nokia, Encore Tech, Beeks.

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Buyer's Guide

OpenNebula vs. Spacelift

July 2025

Free Report: OpenNebula vs. Spacelift

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