Spacelift vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

Spacelift and VMware are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Spacelift is ranked #20 with an average rating of 8.0, while VMware is ranked #2 with an average rating of 7.8. Spacelift holds a 0.7% mindshare in CM, compared to VMware’s 11.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Spacelift users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Spacelift

Read 5 Spacelift reviews

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81 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Automation

Read 170 VMware Aria Automation reviews

4,692 Views
2,059 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Spacelift

VMware Aria Automation

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

VMware Aria Automation and Spacelift compete in the automation software category. VMware Aria Automation seems to have the upper hand in enterprise-level features and integrations, while Spacelift stands out with its simplicity and modern interface.

Features: VMware Aria Automation offers extensibility and integration capabilities ideal for complex environments. It includes infrastructure automation, multi-machine blueprints, and integration with other VMware products. Spacelift integrates seamlessly with Terraform, provides a user-friendly interface, and supports infrastructure as code, making it appealing for uncomplicated cloud management. Additionally, it incorporates GitOps for DevOps workflow support. The primary distinction is VMware's comprehensive customization and integration versus Spacelift's emphasis on ease of use.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Automation could benefit from better documentation, easier platform integration, and enhanced user interfaces. The complexity in managing its components is another area for improvement. Spacelift lacks features for complex deployments, particularly in orchestration and dependency management. The SaaS version of Spacelift surpasses the self-hosted one, suggesting a need for feature parity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Automation is generally deployed on-premises or in private clouds. While the technical support is commendable, some complexity in deployment phases exists. In contrast, Spacelift focuses on public cloud deployment simplicity, offering community-driven support praised for its effectiveness. VMware has established customer support, whereas Spacelift relies more on community resources.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Automation, while expensive, is viewed as valuable due to its feature-rich offerings, particularly for large enterprises. Its pricing is often bundled with other VMware products, a point of contention for some users. Spacelift offers a more cost-effective solution compared to competitors like Terraform Enterprise, making it appealing for enterprises aiming for reduced expenses. VMware’s pricing is higher but justified by its features, whereas Spacelift is noted for significant cost savings through effective use.

To learn more, read our detailed Spacelift vs. VMware Aria Automation Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Spacelift vs. VMware Aria Automation

June 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

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

VMware Aria Automation

Ranking in Cloud Management

2nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

170

Ranking in other categories

Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Spacelift is 0.7%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 11.1%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

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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Le Quang Long

Cloud Engineer at BIDV - Ngân hàng TMCP Đầu tư & Phát triển Việt Nam

Significantly streamlined operations with good automation that helps with simplifying workflows

It helps me build a big catalog and provide it to my end users. It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method. I do not meet many people to operate it live beforehand. It operates for both of my products, but as a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products.

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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

"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."

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

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

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

"usability; Ease of use, the GUI, is probably the best feature, so that really anybody can use it. You don't have to be technical to be able to deploy a VM. I find it to be intuitive and user-friendly. Regarding some of the files that you feed it, you don't have to do a ton of development. You can feed it pretty standard configuration files. You don't have to be a developer, you don't have to know C# or Java or the like to get it going."

"The most valuable feature is the consistency it delivers, at the end of the day. We know that we have consistent images based off consistent Blueprints, check-pointed or QA'ed in a consistent manner."

"It is very stable, especially for high availability features."

"The infrastructure has helped us to greatly increase our agility."

"usability; It's very user-friendly. It is not hard to go and find things. There is a one-click Help that you can use to find all the documentation you need to manage it."

"Having an enterprise service catalog and being able to automate various parts of our infrastructure are among the most important components."

"I can make a blueprint with an Active Directory deployment. With everything prepared, people can start installing our products."

"The most valuable features are the Catalog View and the access control business group. Access provisioning is probably the main use case for us, so we can separate access to different Catalog items among the different business groups and have that tied back to our AD LDAP systems."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

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

"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."

"Deploying and configuring the solution takes a lot of time."

"It does go down from time to time. We have some issues with the appliances sometimes and we have to do reboots in the middle of the day. That affects the ability for them to deploy."

"The stability is 95 percent. There are some situations where it gets a little bit clumsy. When it gets really big, when you're dealing with a very large deployment, it can be a little bit difficult, but it's better than nothing. It does a significant job, given what it's tasked to do."

"One of the features that's a struggle today is some of the public cloud extensibility. Some of the plugins that are native to vRA and vRO, I'd like to see them come out earlier for vRO. I understand that in vRA, the plugins are a little bit more polished because the VRA is the GUI. But we'd like to see them released earlier in vRO, prior to a GUI being released. Azure, for example, is a public cloud provider but we have some instability issues with the plugin in vRO. It's okay for us if we separate the vRA from vRO plugin releases. So I'd like to see some increased stability in some of those public cloud plugins."

"I have not found this solution to be user-friendly. It's really complicated. The demo shows that you can automate anything but they only show basic scenarios. If you want to do anything more complicated than that, it becomes very complicated to set up."

"Stability has gotten a lot better. However, the vRO aspect, when you have a multi vRA head, is a little bit finicky still. vRO still needs to stay on one appliance and be one application, because, when you have two, you can't see runs on the other one that are happening when you're not logged into that one."

"in general, it took us a long time to get it off the ground. We had a lot of issues upfront and we determined that we just needed to scrap it. I think we scrapped it two or three times before we actually got it built the way we wanted, and we're still not where we need to be. We have had downtime. There have been some issues, but we're also two iterations behind on version."

"I would like to see support for Google Cloud and Azure. Because they don't support Google and Azure today, we need something that's cohesive with our entire landscape. There is a gap right now with VMware. If you want support for these environments, you have to go elsewhere right now."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a bit expensive product."

"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster. We can react more quickly to customers' demands."

"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."

"From a budget point of view, the pricing is a bit on the higher side."

"vRealize automation really should be a front door to the whole VMware suite of products."

"It is an expensive product. After VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, there was a rise in the price of VMware Aria Automation."

"The solution is free of cost."

"Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors."

"So much can be done with the Open Source side, and especially for smaller shops. I personally think the pricing for Enterprise is hard to justify."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Educational Organization

11%

Hospitality Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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.

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What needs improvement with Spacelift?

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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.

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What's the difference between VMware vRA (automation) and vROps (operations)?

vROP is a virtualization management solution from VMWare. It is efficient and easy to manage. You can find anything you need from the software interface. It provides complete visibility over applic...

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Is there any way to try VMware Aria Automation for free?

When it comes to VMware Aria Automation, you have three choices for free runs: Hands-on Lab (HOL) Advanced lab A free trial I cannot describe in detail the second and third options as my company ...

See all answers

Which sectors can benefit the most from VMware Aria Automation?

I was looking at VMware Aria Automation case studies recently and I got the impression that three main kinds of companies were using it most often: Social organizations Financial institutions and ...

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Spacelift

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

June 2025

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Also Known As

No data available

VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack

Overview

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

VMware Aria Automation is a cloud management tool that allows companies to simplify their cloud experience through a modern automation platform. The solution is designed to deliver self-service clouds, multi-cloud automation with governance, and DevOps-based security and infrastructure management. It helps organizations improve IT agility, efficiency, and productivity through its various features.

VMware Aria Automation has multiple use cases that include the following:

Self-service multi-cloud: VMware Aria Automation can be used to deliver consistent self-service consumption. Another use case in this area is for delivering infrastructure across VMware Clouds as well as public clouds.
Multi-cloud governance: The solution can be used to manage cost, performance, networking, configuration, and security at scale for multi-cloud environments. VMware Aria Automation offers all this with an everything-as-code approach.
DevOps for infrastructure: Through VMware Aria Automation, companies can enable a powerful infrastructure as code platform with support for iterative development and infrastructure pipelining.
Kubernetes automation: Users can utilize VMware Aria Automation to automate the management of Kubernetes clusters and namespaces with support for vSphere with Tanzu.
Security operations: VMware Aria Automation facilitates event-driven automation to deliver full-service IT system compliance enforcement and vulnerability remediation.

VMware Aria Automation Features

VMware Aria Automation has various features that allow users to easily perform operations. Some of the solution's capacities include:

VMware Cloud agnostic template: This feature allows organizations to use a single cloud template to deploy with Infrastructure as a Code. Deployment options include VMware Cloud as well as major public cloud platforms such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and more.
Extensibility and customization: This VMware Aria Automation feature allows users to get full extensibility and customization. This can be achieved through Aria Automation Orchestrator, Action-Based Extensibility (ABX), and built-in integrations with common third-party tools.
Self-service multi-cloud: This feature enables users to request and provision infrastructure resources. It can be done across clouds using a unified and consistent Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) consumption layer, idempotent REST API, and self-service catalog.
Centralized policies and governance: VMware Aria Automation offers a feature for users to manage multiple clouds with templatized cloud and policy definition, automated remediation, and cloud environment visibility.
Configuration management: Through this feature of the product, day 1 and 2 control can be achieved for virtualized and cloud environments. This can be done with intuitive configuration automation, compliance enforcement, and vulnerability remediation.
Infrastructure pipelining: Through this feature, organizations can access user-friendly release automation pipelines. They can be specifically tailored for CI/CD in infrastructure use cases.

VMware Aria Automation Benefits

VMware Aria Automation offers its users various benefits. Some of the biggest advantages that the solution brings to companies that utilize it include:

VMware Aria Automation provides faster time to market for companies through offloading manual tasks with advanced workflows and agile templating.
The solution offers high levels of security and control.
This product is suitable for beginners, as it offers a self-service consumption experience for users.
VMware Aria Automation accelerates innovation through Infrastructure as Code and DevOps principles.
The product provides users with flexibility, as it is compatible with the most popular public cloud solutions.
The solution offers fast deployment because of all natively integrated functions.

Reviews from Real Users

Awais J., CTO/CEO at a tech services company, likes VMware Aria Automation because it saves a lot of time, provides more visibility, and has extensive automation capabilities.

An IT consultant at a government rates VMware Aria Automation highly because the product gives you flexibility to analyze and consume resources.

VMware

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual

Buyer's Guide

Spacelift vs. VMware Aria Automation

June 2025

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