Gravitational vs Replicated: What are the differences?

Comparison of Gravitational and Replicated

Gravitational and Replicated are two popular platforms that provide tools and services for deploying and managing applications in secure and scalable environments. Although both platforms share similar goals, there are key differences that set them apart.

1. Deployment Model: Gravitational focuses on providing a solution for security-conscious organizations by enabling them to deploy their applications in isolated, auditable, and tamper-proof environments. It utilizes a client-server architecture and provides tools to enable secure remote access to applications.

On the other hand, Replicated focuses on simplifying the distribution and management of applications for software vendors. It primarily enables vendors to create installers that can be easily deployed on customer infrastructure, allowing for easy updates and monitoring.

2. Customization and Flexibility: Gravitational offers a highly customizable deployment model, allowing users to define custom access controls, networking, and authentication mechanisms. It also provides advanced security features, like advanced access logging and two-factor authentication.

In contrast, Replicated focuses on simplicity and ease of use. While it offers some configuration options, it is more opinionated in terms of the deployment model and focuses on providing a streamlined experience for software vendors and their customers.

3. Scalability and High Availability: Gravitational provides features like cluster federation and automatic failover to ensure that applications remain scalable and highly available. It also supports multi-region deployments to distribute applications closer to users and reduce latency.

Replicated, on the other hand, doesn't explicitly provide built-in scalability features. Its primary focus is on simplifying the deployment and management processes, and scalability considerations are left to be handled by the underlying infrastructure or additional technologies.

4. Community and Ecosystem: Gravitational has a growing community and offers a range of solutions, including Teleport for secure access and Gravitational Lens for monitoring and visualization. It also provides open-source components that allow for greater customization and extensibility.

Replicated has a mature ecosystem and a strong focus on the software delivery ecosystem, with integrations for CI/CD tools and cloud providers. It also has partnerships with various vendors, which allows for easy integration and support for third-party tools.

5. Pricing and Licensing Model: Gravitational employs a subscription-based pricing model, where customers pay based on the number of users and the features they require. This allows for more flexibility in terms of scalability and usage.

Replicated offers different pricing tiers, based on the scale and feature set customers require. It also provides a free tier for individual developers or small teams to get started.

In summary, Gravitational is focused on secure and customizable deployments for security-conscious organizations, while Replicated emphasizes simplicity and ease of use for software vendors and their customers. Gravitational offers more customization options, scalability features, and a growing community, while Replicated has a mature ecosystem and offers ease of integration with existing software delivery processes.