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Spacelift vs VMware Aria Operations 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.6
Spacelift streamlines deployment, cuts costs, and simplifies operations, proving valuable for larger organizations despite some smaller ones finding it unnecessary.
Sentiment score
7.2
VMware Aria Operations enhances VM efficiency, reduces costs, optimizes performance, and improves infrastructure with initial investment and substantial returns.
We are just pushing code from Git to GitHub, which then sends it to Spacelift, checking for drifts and starting continuous deployment.
Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
The metrics show that fewer employees are needed, money is saved based on past experiences with different cloud management or Infrastructure as Code management tools, and efficiency has improved significantly in terms of Infrastructure as Code deployment.
Senior Cloud In Meeting at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Anything that reduces the amount of work needed to do repetitive tasks is a bonus.
Senior Devops Engineer at SAM Seamless
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.1
Spacelift's customer service is praised for Slack responsiveness, though some suggest email support improvements; generally rated 7-9/10.
Sentiment score
6.6
VMware Aria Operations is praised for customer service but faces mixed reviews on technical support efficiency and responsiveness.
I have asked them various queries, and they provided perfect solutions along with good detailed documentation.
Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
The customer support is fantastic as they reply over Slack immediately and get to work on a solution whenever I need them.
Senior Manager - Platform Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The SLO and SLA being really fast to answer.
Dev Ops Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
They remain in the top 25% of vendors.
IT Solution Architect at DCS
I rate the customer service and support for VMware very highly, at nine out of ten.
Team Lead Virtualization at Hybrid Tech
I would rate technical support around eight or nine.
Owner at Micronet Systems
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.5
Spacelift efficiently handles growing server demands and multiple Terraform projects, praised for scalability, though on-premises may need adjustments.
Sentiment score
7.4
VMware Aria Operations is praised for its scalability, efficient resource management, and seamless integration with various VMware solutions.
Spacelift's scalability is very good as it scales very well with the environment because I can add agents to it with more workload, so it's quite excellent.
Senior Manager - Platform Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Spacelift can handle increased workloads well, managing more servers as our organization grows, and it is indeed scalable.
Lead Dev Ops Engineer at Red Nucleus Solutions LLC
Based on the requests and the Linux Docker machines I provision, it becomes more stable, and the runs happen very quickly.
Senior Cloud In Meeting at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
I consider VMware Aria Operations to be very scalable, earning a high rating of nine out of ten.
Team Lead Virtualization at Hybrid Tech
I find VMware Aria Operations to be quite scalable for my needs.
IT Solution Architect at DCS
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Spacelift is highly stable and reliable, with users experiencing no issues and finding it easy to use.
Sentiment score
7.8
VMware Aria Operations is reliable and stable, with minor issues occasionally arising, often linked to improper setup.
The solution is not very stable.
IT Solution Architect at DCS
I have never experienced any downtime or lost connectivity.
Senior System Network Analyst at Net spa
I find the stability of VMware Aria Operations to be impressive, rated as a stable nine out of ten.
Team Lead Virtualization at Hybrid Tech
 

Room For Improvement

Spacelift users seek improved onboarding, clearer pricing, better integrations, enhanced UI, AI support, and simpler configuration and management.
VMware Aria Operations faces user interface complexity, integration issues, high costs, steep learning curve, and needs better documentation.
It can improve areas in scalability and integrate some open-source tools.
Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
The engineering team behind Spacelift is very responsive whenever I submit a feature request, and there's a very good chance I would see it within the next year.
Senior Manager - Platform Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The OPA policy writing is not very beginner-friendly either, and the error messages when a policy fails are not always clear.
Senior Cloud Platform Engineer at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
Stability is a significant area that needs improvement as I experience frequent disconnections and interruptions in data collection.
IT Solution Architect at DCS
Customers have commented on the pricing issues, noting that doubling the price is not normal.
Founder and CEO at Zed
The primary issue is the pricing, which is very expensive for my company's budget.
Senior System Network Analyst at Net spa
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise users find Spacelift cost-effective for team use, with a free 14-day trial but no on-premises installation.
Enterprise reviewers find VMware Aria Operations costly, exceeding budgets, prompting some to consider alternatives for better value.
The next standard plan costs three hundred ninety-nine dollars per month for ten concurrent users.
Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
The spaces have been a major aspect of managing things, and the contacts for the resources I provide internally in Spacelift are quite affordable, effective, and useful.
Senior Cloud In Meeting at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
My experience with pricing shows that the setup cost is reasonable, and the licensing also seems reasonable.
Lead Dev Ops Engineer at Red Nucleus Solutions LLC
The pricing is very expensive for my company's budget.
Senior System Network Analyst at Net spa
The pricing and cost of VMware Aria Operations increased significantly after Broadcom acquired VMware.
IT Solution Architect at DCS
This makes the cost complex to determine individually.
Team Lead Virtualization at Hybrid Tech
 

Valuable Features

Spacelift enhances multi-cloud infrastructure management with Git integration, policies as code, easy collaboration, and efficient deployment features.
VMware Aria Operations offers comprehensive monitoring, management, and scalability with predictive analytics, real-time visibility, and vCenter integration.
We can apply those policies in Spacelift, and the RBAC and access policies features are really excellent in Spacelift, which we do not find in any of the other competitor tools.
Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Spacelift has positively impacted my organization by reducing manpower, as it reduced the efforts of resources in the team, where previously a job done by two or three engineers can now be easily managed by one engineer using Spacelift.
Technical Lead at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
You create so many different modules and so many different versions. Having a very easy way to navigate and search through them all, and the fact that you can actually see the commit ID and description really helps in discovering what was actually in that version of the module.
Senior Devops Engineer at SAM Seamless
It allows me to perform deep monitoring and logging of the entire environment, providing a quick alarm and warning system through email.
Team Lead Virtualization at Hybrid Tech
The valuable features of VMware Aria Operations include the single pane of glass for all my environments, which allows a deep dive into the metrics.
IT Solution Architect at DCS
The most valuable features of VMware Aria Operations are its stability, ease of use, and extensive range of features.
Founder and CEO at Zed
 

Categories and Ranking

Spacelift
Ranking in Cloud Management
14th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
AI Software Development (20th)
VMware Aria Operations
Ranking in Cloud Management
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
376
Ranking in other categories
Virtualization Management Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Spacelift is 1.3%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations is 3.9%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Operations3.9%
Spacelift1.3%
Other94.8%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

G Srivastava - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Automation of cloud infrastructure has transformed how our team manages Terraform workflows
Spacelift has other features beyond Terraform, including Ansible, Pulumi, Terragrunt, and it also helps with Kubernetes, although we haven't used it for the other tools. We have only used it for Terraform Infrastructure as Code, and it has helped us significantly. One standout feature compared to Terraform Cloud is the ability to apply policies. For example, we want to restrict engineers in our team from building servers with a particular SKU, such as in Azure, where we do not want to run servers with a SKU higher than the standard D4sv5. We can apply those policies in Spacelift, and the RBAC and access policies features are really excellent in Spacelift, which we do not find in any of the other competitor tools. The pricing is also competitive compared to Terraform Cloud. The access policy features allow us to assign specific policies since we have three environments in our company: Dev, QA, and Prod. We assign policies so that anyone can run code from Dev and QA servers, but we assign a policy for specific people, such as managers, to run code in Prod. This is a very good feature from Spacelift that we have implemented for the access policy. Spacelift has positively impacted our organization as a CI/CD tool for application deployment and development. Although we use other CI/CD tools like Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions, there wasn't a specific tool for Terraform Infrastructure as Code until Spacelift came along. It allows us to easily configure our servers and build a number of them on our cloud. While other CI/CD tools have started to include configuration features, Spacelift offers many other benefits that make it an excellent tool to use.
AldoDomini - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Network Analyst at Net spa
Have faced limitations due to high costs but have maintained reliability over time
The primary issue is the pricing, which is very expensive for my company's budget. We cannot afford to pay such a large fee. We are not Microsoft or BMW; we are a small company. As a small company, I have no power to negotiate directly with VMware. Perhaps larger companies have more opportunity to contract directly with VMware, but I do not have that leverage. The only path I can follow is to change solutions. Net.spA is a company working in the field of waste management. We are not a technological company, so we do not have a large margin to justify purchasing and maintaining the VMware infrastructure at current costs.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
9%
Construction Company
7%
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business66
Midsize Enterprise61
Large Enterprise281
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Spacelift?
I don't have much experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing as that's handled by a different team. With pricing and setup costs, I don't have anything to compare it with regarding other to...
What needs improvement with Spacelift?
Regarding improvements needed in Spacelift, it's difficult to say because I have been using it for a while now and haven't seen many areas where I would want to see something new because much of wh...
What is your primary use case for Spacelift?
My main use case for Spacelift is that I primarily use it for Terraform, focusing on module versioning and deployment. Recently, we started exploring the blueprints option, but the primary focus re...
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...
Is VMware Aria Operations a user friendly solution?
In terms of user-friendliness, VMware Aria Operations is one of the best solutions out there. It is not overly complex to set up and you can rely on the technical support to provide you with assis...
What is the most useful new feature of VMware Aria Operations?
For me, the alerts features are the most unique part of this product, no matter the current name it uses. When they introduced the new version of VMware Aria Operations, they also introduced more a...
 

Also Known As

No data available
VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), vCenter Operations Manager (VCOPS)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Science Applications International Corporation, Tribune Media, Heartland Payment Systems, Telkom Indonesia, Columbia Sportswear, iGATE, CSS Corp, Angel Broking, Adira Finance, Hipskind, Beiersdorf Shared Services, Innovate Mas Indonesia, Adobe, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi , Join Experience S.A, Borusan Holdings, Department of Transport - Abu Dhabi
Find out what your peers are saying about Spacelift vs. VMware Aria Operations and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.