Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Spinnaker comparison

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs. Spinnaker

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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

Red Hat Ansible Automation ...

Ranking in Release Automation

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Configuration Management (1st), Network Automation (1st), AWS Pro Service Providers (1st)

Spinnaker

Ranking in Release Automation

9th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 4.2%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spinnaker is 2.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Release Automation Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform	4.2%
Spinnaker	2.0%
Other	93.8%

Release Automation

Featured Reviews

Manas Kashyap

DevOps Engineer at Elevenxcapital

Automation has transformed server patching and has reduced months of work to minutes

The best features that Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers is that it does not require any additional resources inside the servers. Python is the only requirement, and since Python is already present inside the servers, we can run it from our location and it automatically deploys things and does the work for us. The minimal requirements and easy deployment have definitely impacted my daily work and my team's efficiency. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is one of the best features that we depend on. We have evaluated other options, but Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was the best choice because it has saved us a tremendous amount of time. We do not need to manually intervene in the servers or install third-party software to maintain these things. It is very easy to write playbooks for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Ansible Galaxy contains many playbooks that are readily available and ready to be used. It is highly configurable with Jinja templating, making it easy to maintain. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has positively impacted my organization. Previously, we needed to go into the servers and maintain them manually, which used to take a lot of time. For 200 to 300 servers, the maintenance took about one to two months. New patches would arrive and we would have to repeat the process. Now, it is a one-night work or a 10 to 15 minutes task. We write a playbook, maintain an inventory, and roll out the updates and it starts working for us. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform uses conditional clauses and has rollback options, functioning like a standard coding language that is simple to use. There is definitely a reduction in errors with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform because we have playbooks written with all the necessary clauses and rollback options. Manual work automatically creates more errors, whereas in automation, we have written sets that we do not forget every time we run it. We have protected written sets that we execute consistently.

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Anurag Bandyopadhyay

Product Development Engineer at Razorpay

Useful to create custom pipelines

Regarding areas for improvement, one significant issue is the lack of maker-checker flows to ensure that newly created pipelines are accurate and tested. We currently use an in-house abstraction over Spinnaker to verify pipeline specs, environment variables, etc. It would be beneficial if Spinnaker could offer this functionality within their product.

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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

"The most valuable features of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform are the agentless platform and writing the code is simple using the Yaml computer language."

"I like Ansible's ease of use. If you have Linux skills, you can create a reusable template for the dependencies and other configurations. I can store the templates in a repository and share them with my customers or other developers. It's a popular solution, so there is a large user base that can share templates."

"It is quick to production. It has an API in the back which allows for integrations."

"The setup is pretty straightforward."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don’t need an agent for it to work."

"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is easy to integrate; the platform is simple to use."

"It has made our infrastructure more testable, as we are able to build our infrastructure in CI and are more confident that what we are deploying will work without breaking everything."

"This solution allows us to stitch a lot of different parts of the workflow together."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform pros

"The most valuable feature of Spinnaker is the rollback."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its intuitive interface for converting existing Kubernetes specs into working pipelines. It's easy for anyone to deploy anything on any environment when they need to test or deploy for a specific merchant or use case. Instead of going into the specs and changing different variables, they can do it through the UI, which is very useful."

"Spinnaker is used for automating a variety of deployment tasks, infrastructure, provisioning tasks, and all kinds of things."

"There is a good community around the product that makes troubleshooting possible."

Cons

"We are very satisfied with what we have. From a management point of view, whatever makes it easier for my team to help customers write their own playbooks would be something very beneficial. Everything is going as a service. Creating playbooks can become much more consumer-oriented so that customers do not need to contact us to write their own playbooks."

"The documentation for the installation step of deployment, OpenStack, etc., and these things have to be a bit more detailed."

"Improvements should be made in terms of execution speed, which is, I believe, the most lacking feature. Aside from that, re-triggering a failed task is another useful feature."

"For a couple of the API integrations, there has been a lack of documentation."

"It could be easier to integrate Ansible with other solutions. No single tool can do everything. For example, we use Terraform for infrastructure and other solutions for configuration management and VMs."

"We are not using the Dashboard a lot because we have higher expectations from it. The default Dashboard from Tower doesn't give that much information. We really want to get down into more than if the job succeeded or what was the percentage of success. We want to get down to task-level success. If, in a job, there are ten tasks, we want to see this task was a success, and this was not, and how many were not. That's the kind of granularity we are looking for, that Tower does not give right now."

"It should support more integration with different products."

"For Ansible Tower, there are three tiers with ten nodes. I would like them to expand those ten nodes to 20, because ten nodes is not enough to test on."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform cons

"Every time it goes to run a pipeline, it just generates a lot of data, and its database is not exactly tuned out of the box, meaning it is not tuned for high scalability."

"Spinnaker's configuration setup is too complicated and should be made easy."

"Regarding areas for improvement, one significant issue is the lack of maker-checker flows to ensure that newly created pipelines are accurate and tested. We currently use an in-house abstraction over Spinnaker to verify pipeline specs, environment variables, etc. It would be beneficial if Spinnaker could offer this functionality within their product."

"Log-wise, we need to understand why something has failed so that we can understand and try to fix it the moment the issue is reported. The solution could use more robust monitoring."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We went with product because we have a subscription for Red Hat."

"Ansible Tower is pretty expensive."

"We have to be mindful of how we use Ansible because of the licensing model. I am not saying that it is unfair or we do not find value in it. Because we are trying to automate so many different things, we have to be mindful of what we are doing and how we are doing it because we are trying to stay in compliance with it."

"The cost is determined by the number of endpoints."

"The cost is high, but it still works well."

"The solution is inexpensive compared to other products."

"I don't see the pricing or licensing features, but from what I understand, it is fairly reasonable."

"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an expensive solution. There may be additional fees to use advanced features."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform pricing and cost advice

"Spinnaker is an open-source product. The tool is completely free for users."

"Spinnaker is a free-to-use, open-source solution."

"The solution is open-source."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	25
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	48

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is the difference between Red Hat Satellite and Ansible?

Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management have been outstanding. If you have a large environment, patching systems is much ...

How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that the set up will take depends on the kind of technical architecture that your org...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was very simple. There is no pricing and no licensing required, as Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Spinnaker?

The solution is open-source.

What needs improvement with Spinnaker?

What is your primary use case for Spinnaker?

Spinnaker's main use case is deployment. We use it to create custom pipelines instead of manually deploying our HAN files. This allows us to deploy different services for staging, production, and o...

VMware Aria Automation vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

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Product Reports

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Download Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform product report

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform report

Release Automation

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Also Known As

Ansible, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Subscription on AWS

No data available

Overview

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform streamlines IT operations with features like a simplified GUI and extensive module support. Its agentless architecture and YAML ease make it an adaptable choice for managing diverse infrastructures efficiently.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers a robust automation framework that supports multiple environments and integrates well with various applications. Its agentless Python-based architecture facilitates efficient server management and rapid update deployment. Users benefit from centralized management through Ansible Tower, role-based access control, and dynamic inventory. However, improvement areas include documentation, API integration, network support, and UI scaling. Enhanced community contributions could address module availability and compatibility gaps.

What are the most important features of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?

Agentless Architecture: Leverages Python for seamless management without needing local agents.
Extensive Module Support: Provides modules for managing multiple environments effectively.
Ansible Tower GUI: Offers a centralized interface for easy automation management.
Role-Based Access Control: Ensures user-specific permissions for improved security.
Integration Capabilities: Connects with a variety of applications to enhance functionality.
Dynamic Inventory: Automatically updates inventory, simplifying large infrastructure management.

What benefits and ROI should one consider?

Automation Efficiency: Significantly reduces manual intervention, saving time and resources.
Adaptability: Easily integrates with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, and Azure.
Security Compliance: Automates compliance checks, ensuring up-to-date security protocols.
Cost Management: Lower operational costs through streamlined processes.
Scalability: Supports infrastructure growth without requiring major adjustments.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and technology, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is used for network management, security compliance, and configuration tasks. Organizations utilize its capabilities for cloud and on-premises deployment, infrastructure provisioning, and workflow orchestration. Many integrate it with tools such as Puppet or Terraform to enhance CI/CD processes, benefiting from its agentless design in adapting to cloud environments.

Red Hat

Spinnaker provides application management and deployment to help you release software changes with high velocity and confidence. Spinnaker is an open-source, multi-cloud continuous delivery platform that combines a powerful and flexible pipeline management system with integrations to the major cloud providers. If you are looking to standardize your release processes and improve quality, Spinnaker is for you.

Spinnaker

Sample Customers

HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank

Information Not Available

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs. Spinnaker