Rackspace Managed Kubernetes (MPK)
Rackspace Managed Platform for Kubernetes (MPK) is powered by Platform9, providing a unified control plane for cluster deployment, monitoring, incident response, and upgrades.
MPK supports three environments—Rackspace bare metal, AKS, and EKS. Unique benefits include an SLA guaranteeing Kubernetes upgrades within 120 days of end of life and dedicated support, with a pod of Kubernetes-certified engineers assisting each customer.
Highly Kubernetes-conformant, MPK integrates CNCF-backed tools like Prometheus, Fluentd, Helm, and Istio. However, MPK lacks a native container registry, IAM, and storage, requiring public cloud or bring-your-own solutions.
MPK is a solid choice for teams using Rackspace for bare-metal hosting who want hands-on support and a centralized platform to manage AWS’s and Azure’s Kubernetes services.
Rancher
Rancher, by SUSE, is a Kubernetes-as-a-service solution for on-premises and cloud. Rancher can manage clusters for several Kubernetes platforms including Rancher Kubernetes Engine (RKE), K3s, AKS, EKS, and GKE.
Developers tend to find Rancher’s unified web UI easy to get started with. Rancher also provides an API and CLI and supports Terraform with its own slice of GitOps. It ships with secure administrative controls, including OAuth and other login options. Rancher has a large user base and Slack groups, making it easy to find community and support.
SUSE has introduced price hikes in recent years. Engineers have also reported performance and scalability challenges with Longhorn, SUSE’s native storage solution, and often recommend alternatives for backup storage. Rancher also supports K3k, Kubernetes in Kubernetes, which allows you to run isolated K3s clusters within a larger Kubernetes environment.
All in all, Rancher is comparable to OpenShift, but less opinionated and more modular, with a different approach to multi-tenancy. If you need multi-cloud, multi-cluster management with fewer vendor restrictions, Rancher is a solid choice. Portainer is a comparable alternative.
Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes Engine
Red Hat OpenShift is a hybrid cloud platform that streamlines Kubernetes with a developer tool chain, simplifying cluster management. It includes built-in observability, networking, security, and GitOps, making upgrades and patches easier than stand-alone Kubernetes. Unlike cloud-specific services, OpenShift is portable, running on-prem, in data centers, or across clouds.
OpenShift OpenShift Kubernetes Engine is a more pared-down version of OpenShift, offering a managed Kubernetes environment without the higher-level platform-as-a-service (PaaS) layer. It also supports Kubernetes Operators and running virtual machines alongside containers.
A potential downside is that OpenShift is much more opinionated compared to other services like AKS. It favors its own oc CLI over kubectl, and some Helm charts and Operators may need adjustments due to its stricter security model.
OpenShift is suitable for on-prem deployments, hybrid teams managing VMs and containers, and Red Hat customers. If a portable, enterprise-ready Kubernetes distribution with built-in security and automation is what you seek, OpenShift is a strong contender.
Scaleway Kubernetes Kapsule
Scaleway, an EU-based cloud provider, offers Kubernetes Kapsule, a managed Kubernetes service focused on autoscaling and resilience. Scaleway also provides Kosmos for multi-cloud Kubernetes deployments.
Kapsule features a sleek UX, strong customer support, and flexible cluster management via API, CLI, and Terraform. You pay only for the nodes you use, making it cost-effective for personal clusters or experimentation. Scaleway’s application library includes pre-configured images for common add-ons. Kapsule is also CNCF-certified, ensuring compliance with standard Kubernetes APIs.
A major drawback with Scaleway is the few regions it supports—only France, the Netherlands, and Poland—hindering a truly global reach. Some find the lack of certain features, like advanced load balancing and DNS, to be a deal breaker. Users also report slow provisioning times, outages, and reliability issues.
Due to its limited feature set and geographic distribution, Kapsule seems best-suited to side projects and EU-based startups needing an affordable option that aligns with European data protection regulations.
VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG)
VMware’s Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) is a Kubernetes platform that streamlines networking, authentication, monitoring, logging, and ingress control. Built partially on open source, it leverages Cluster API to manage multiple clusters. TKG performs well and offers both CLI and UI options.
However, TKG is no longer multi-cloud—since v2.5, TKG dropped support for AWS and Azure workloads. Now focused almost entirely on VMware vSphere, it’s unsuitable as an agnostic Kubernetes control plane. Managing Kubernetes across clouds requires Tanzu Mission Control (TMC) alongside native services like EKS, AKS, or GKE.
Another challenge is Tanzu’s convoluted branding and documentation—even VMware employees struggle to explain its SKUs. Meanwhile, Broadcom’s takeover of VMware resulted in steep price hikes. VMware has also deprecated a handful of Tanzu packages, raising questions about VMware Tanzu’s long-term viability.
If you’re deeply invested in vSphere and virtual machines, you can absorb higher costs, and you don’t need a true multi-cloud solution, TKG may be a fit. Otherwise, more flexible and more future-proofed alternatives exist.
Honorable mentions
There are countless other managed Kubernetes platforms, and more continue to emerge alongside niche clouds, like Hetzner or Spectro Cloud. Other comparable, fully-faceted Kubernetes managed platforms include OVHCloud Managed Kubernetes and Civo Kubernetes.
Tencent Kubernetes Engine (TKE) and Huawei Cloud Container Engine (CCE) are other options for those in the Asia-Pacific region.
The big players also offer their own stripped-down flavors of Kubernetes management. For instance, AKS Automatic and EKS Auto Mode provide frictionless developer experiences to automate cluster deployments and operations. And Google Cloud Anthos is emerging as a hybrid multi-cloud solution.
Plenty of other solutions specialize in more niche Kubernetes management functions. For instance, other managed services focus on universal control for multi-cluster, multi-cloud management, such as Portainer, Rafay, Omni, Liquo, and Kube Clusters.
For the edge or small container deployments, slim options include MicroK8s, K3s, and K0s, while Vultr Kubernetes Engine provides a more managed experience. Kubespray, a developer favorite, provides an open-source toolset for deploying Kubernetes clusters in slim configurations.
The right tool for the job
Plug-and-play Kubernetes services take a lot of the hassle out of cluster management. But it all depends on scale—managed services may not be necessary if you’re not running many clusters simultaneously. Smaller deployments often opt for simpler container runtimes, like Docker Compose or Nomad. Others turn to platform-as-a-service alternatives, like Heroku, Fly.io, or Cloud Run.
Depending on your needs, you may only require specific tools. For instance, Karpenter is a popular open-source tool strictly for autoscaling cluster nodes. Or, perhaps you only need a dashboard like Devtron or a UI like Aptakube or Octant.
Alternatively, building may be better than buying if you anticipate needing more granular control at the infrastructure level and you have the wherewithal. With the right technical chops, you might consider sticking with built-in kubeadm and hosting Kubernetes yourself for ultimate control.
Evaluating managed Kubernetes services boils down to two main factors: how much you want to manage and what third-party services you need, says Michael Levan, principal consultant and advisor. While automated services can remove infrastructure management, they may not always integrate well with certain third-party tools. “It really comes down to, like anything in the cloud, how much control you want to give away,” he says.