Exoscale Scalable Kubernetes Service vs KubeSphere
Exoscale Scalable Kubernetes Service
exoscale.com
KubeSphere
kubesphere.ioSide by side
| Figure | Exoscale Scalable Kubernetes Service | KubeSphere |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $65/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 8 |
| Spec score · Container Orchestration Software | 7.9 (#10) | 8.9 (#2) |
| Headquarters | Lausanne, Switzerland | Beijing, China |
| Integrations | Exoscale lists Kubernetes Cloud Controller Manager, Karpenter, Terraform, Packer, Vault, Pulumi, and Crossplane among its integrations. | Official materials identify integrations or ecosystem collaboration with Jenkins, Grafana, Loki, Higress, KubeKey, OpenELB, KubeEye, Fluent Operator, and OpenFunction. |
| Intended users | Exoscale describes its cloud platform as built to help European teams develop cloud-native applications and specifically mentions developers and data engineers. | The product site describes benefits for infrastructure teams, developers, operations teams and end users deploying applications on Kubernetes. |
| Purpose | SKS is a managed Kubernetes service for deploying, scaling, and hosting containerized applications in Europe. | KubeSphere is a Kubernetes-based distributed operating system for cloud-native application management with a plug-and-play architecture for third-party applications. |
| Support | All Exoscale customers receive included ticket support, with paid support plans offering faster response times and additional channels or coverage. | KubeSphere Enterprise offers one-stop professional technical support services. |
Plans
Exoscale Scalable Kubernetes Service
- Starter ClusterFree
- Pro ClusterPrice not published
KubeSphere
- KubeSphere Backup FreeFree
- KubeSphere Community EditionFree
- KubeSphere Community EditionFree
- KubeSphere Backup Basic$65 a month
- KubeSphere Backup Standard$200 a month
- KubeSphere Backup Enterprise$340 a month
- KubeSphere Backup ExclusivePriced on request
- KubeSphere EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
Exoscale Scalable Kubernetes Service
Exoscale Scalable Kubernetes Service (SKS) is a managed Kubernetes service for deploying, scaling and hosting containerized applications in Europe. It is available through web and APIs, with a free Starter Cluster and a Pro Cluster billed hourly; the Pro price is not shown as a numeric amount. Exoscale operates the control plane and provides upgrades, and says fully managed clusters can start in less than one minute. Starter includes a managed control plane, CLI, API, Terraform integration and automatic control-plane patch upgrades. Pro adds a highly available control plane, etcd backups, a 99.95% SLA and Karpenter autoscaling. Network Load Balancers handle ingress, while the CSI driver attaches block or object storage for stateful workloads. Authentication, network policies, role-based access and Kubernetes Audit provide control and visibility. Every release passes CNCF conformance tests. SKS is vanilla Kubernetes, so monitoring, GitOps and security tools are not installed by default. Customers receive ticket support, with paid plans offering faster responses and additional coverage.
KubeSphere
KubeSphere is a Kubernetes-based platform for managing cloud-native applications, with a plug-in architecture for third-party applications and open-source tools. Its Community Edition is an open-source container platform and costs nothing, with free-forever availability for a self-managed Kubernetes platform. The platform supports multi-tenancy and multi-cluster management, with monitoring, event and audit-log queries, tenant log collection, alerting and notifications. Delivery features include Jenkins-based CI/CD and automated Source-to-Image and Binary-to-Image workflows. KubeSphere supports online or offline installation, one-click upgrades and cluster scaling across infrastructure environments. Its REST API backend includes an API server and controller manager. Enterprise adds image security hardening, two-factor authentication, vulnerability fixes and permission controls at platform, cluster and application levels. Enterprise is available by on-demand subscription or private deployment, with extensions available by subscription; pricing is available from sales. Its lightweight architecture can run with 2 CPU cores and 4 GB of memory.