Are you looking for SaltStack alternatives? When evaluating server automation alternatives to SaltStack, you will want to compare competencies and features such as configuration management, server automation, cost, analytics, community support, integration and deployment, compliance testing, and issues tracking, among others.

Configuration management and server automation are essential components of an organisation running at maximum operational efficiency. Developing software is hard enough; satisfying user demand for new features can be even more challenging. That makes automation an essential part of any IT infrastructure. As McKinsey puts it, automation at scale can have numerous benefits such as “greater workforce efficiency, increased revenue, and higher consumer satisfaction.”

SaltStack alternatives for server automation include Attune, Ansible, Terraform, Chef, Puppet, and Rudder. This article will provide details on the features and benefits of these alternatives. But before then, let’s find out more about SaltStack and its features.

What is SaltStack?

SalStack or Salt is a configuration management and server automation solution that you can deploy in the cloud, on-premise, or in a hybrid environment. You can get it up and running in minutes. It is easily deployable, scalable, and fast enough to handle thousands of servers. On top of that, you can remotely execute commands.

SaltSack also provides an automated system for monitoring and managing complex environments. With a dynamic environment that offers both agentless and agent-based configuration management, Salt can simultaneously push code to several nodes for configuration.

Another great feature of SaltStack is its SecOps capabilities. You can use it to identify and resolve issues and vulnerabilities in your infrastructure, keeping you compliant and secure.

Despite these features, you may find that you want other server automation options and features you cannot get from Salt.

SaltStack is a powerful IT automation tool, but it has some weaknesses that can be important to consider:

High Resource Consumption

• SaltStack can be resource-intensive, especially for large environments.
• The Salt master may require significant CPU and memory when managing thousands of minions.
• The event-driven model can generate high network traffic, impacting performance.

Steep Learning Curve

• Troubleshooting can be difficult due to cryptic error messages and inconsistent documentation.
• The modular design adds flexibility but also complexity in configuration.

Security Concerns

• SaltStack has had critical security vulnerabilities in the past, including CVE-2020-11651 and CVE-2020-11652, which allowed remote code execution (RCE).
• The Salt master can be a single point of failure if not secured properly, as opposed to Ansible and Attune, which by default do not require a centralized server.
• Proper firewalling and authentication are needed to prevent unauthorized access.

Scalability Challenges

• While SaltStack is designed for large environments, performance degrades at a high scale unless properly optimized.
• The Salt event bus can become a bottleneck, leading to delays in command execution.
• Managing thousands of minions may require tuning or a multi-master setup.

Less Adoption Compared to Ansible & Puppet

• SaltStack has a smaller community and fewer third-party integrations than Ansible or Puppet.
• Finding experienced SaltStack engineers can be harder than finding Ansible experts.
• Limited GUI-based management options compared to competitors. Attune has a more intuitive and easy-to-setup GUI management tool.

Complex Debugging & Logging

• Debugging SaltStack issues can be difficult due to verbose logs and unclear error messages.
• Log files are often cluttered with redundant information, making troubleshooting harder.
• The event-driven architecture sometimes leads to unpredictable behaviour in state enforcement.

Acquisition & Future Uncertainty

• VMware acquired SaltStack in 2020, and its long-term development roadmap is uncertain.
• Some features have been moved to VMware’s proprietary solutions, making users concerned about open-source support.

Top 11 SaltStack Alternatives of 2025

If you’re using SaltStack for server automation and configuration management, you might be wondering if it’s time to explore other options due to the above weakness.

As technology evolves, newer tools are stepping up to offer even more flexibility, seamless cloud integration, and improved security compliance.

So, if you’re considering a change, here are the top SaltStack alternatives to check out in 2025.

Attune

Although relatively new, Attune offers a range of advanced and innovative features that are truly amazing. It’s a server automation solution for managing, provisioning, and patching virtual and physical servers. Attune provides an easy-to-use platform for automating and orchestrating server processes. Attune offers a gentler learning curve as well as providing a user-friendly GUI compared to Saltstack. Attune also does not require a separate server and can be run as a desktop application on your workstation.

You no longer have to worry about enabling digital enablement projects, Attune allows organisations to accelerate builds and releases while enhancing security. In addition, it’s a cross-platform solution that is written in Python and available on Mac OS, Windows, and Linux. Attune supports many scripting languages, and you can execute scripts on Bash, CMD, or PowerShell. On top of all that, Attune’s Node automation features allow the setup of Docker on Raspberry Pi and the configuration of Home Labs to run with ease.

Features and benefits of Attune

• Easy-to-use interface for full-stack orchestration and automation for the entire server stack
• Agentless architecture & multi-server coordination
• It provides powerful file-generation capabilities as well
• Shareable and portable processes
• Attune allows you to quickly create automated jobs without learning a new coding language or reinventing the wheel by copying and pasting existing scripts

Crossplane

Crossplane is an open-source tool that allows you to manage cloud infrastructure and services using Kubernetes-style declarative configuration. It simplifies provisioning and managing resources across multiple cloud providers, providing a unified and consistent approach to infrastructure management.

Ideal for organisations adopting Kubernetes-native infrastructure automation, Crossplane streamlines cloud operations and enhances flexibility.

Whether you’re managing multiple cloud environments or looking to improve automation, Crossplane offers a robust, scalable solution for modern infrastructure needs.

Here are some key features:

• Unified management across multiple cloud providers
• Kubernetes-native infrastructure automation
• Declarative configuration for easy setup
• Open-source with a growing community
• Scalable and flexible for modern infrastructures

Massdriver

Massdriver automates cloud infrastructure and application deployments while prioritising security and compliance. It provides pre-configured modules and policies to ensure best practices are followed during the deployment process.

Designed for organisations that focus on security and governance, Massdriver offers a seamless balance between automation and compliance enforcement.

With its robust framework, it ensures your infrastructure remains secure and adheres to required standards, making it an excellent choice for teams seeking to streamline deployment while maintaining strong compliance practices across cloud environments.

Key features include:

• Automated cloud infrastructure and app deployments
• Pre-configured modules and policies for best practices
• Strong focus on security and compliance
• Ensures governance and compliance throughout the deployment
• Ideal for organizations prioritizing secure infrastructure management

DevStream

DevStream is an open-source DevOps toolchain manager that simplifies the installation, configuration, and management of your DevOps tools. It streamlines complex toolchain setups, boosting efficiency and maintaining consistency across development environments. Ideal for teams looking to reduce manual effort, DevStream offers a reliable way to manage your DevOps stack.
With its user-friendly approach, it ensures smoother workflows and better control over your toolchain, making it a great solution for teams seeking automation and simplicity in their DevOps processes.

Key features include:

• Simplifies installation and management of DevOps tools
• Promotes efficiency and consistency across environments
• Ideal for teams seeking minimal manual intervention
• Open-source with flexible customization options
• Streamlines complex toolchain setups for smoother workflows

Ansible

Ansible is a server automation and configuration management solution that is similar to SaltStack Enterprise. The core feature of Ansible is to automate the entire software development process. It does this by provisioning servers, patching, security & compliance, and automating build and deployment procedures.

As an agentless architecture, Ansible can manage and connect dynamic environments with nodes called Ansible Modules. Ansible stands out from other Saltstack alternatives with its lightweight nature, intuitive interface, and rapid deployment.

Features and benefits of Ansible

• Ansible connects and supports several CI/CD tools such as Jenkins
• Rapid deployment of applications
• Simplified release procedures by reducing workload complexity
• Exceptionally efficient and frees up development time
• Streamlines your software releases and reduces complexity
• Provides easy setup and usage for Ansible playbooks
• Provides an agentless architecture meaning you don’t have to install any extra software on client systems

Puppet

Puppet is another option to check out as one of the popular saltstack alternatives. Puppet makes it easy to deploy, configure, and manage servers. Puppet is also a configuration management solution that enables continuous deployment, build, patching, task scheduling, security, and compliance. Puppet uses a Master-Slave configuration that communicates through a secure encrypted channel enabled by SSL.

The beauty of Puppet is that you can move your infrastructure easily and rapidly through integration and deployment pipelines. Adding to that, you get consistency in your infrastructure and multiple data centres with greater flexibility.

Features and benefits of Puppet

• Offers multi-platform support for Linux, Windows, Mac OS, Solaris, and more
• Built with C++ and Ruby
• Provides continuous monitoring and configuration management for all hosts
• Enhances scalability and reduces manual errors
• Centralised configuration management
• Extensive community usage with over 30,000 organisations using it including Red Hat, Siemens, and Google
• Provides comprehensive documentation and references

Chef

Chef is a well-known product for managing configuration and servers. Put simply, it simplifies complex automation processes and provides consistent and well-structured configuration across multiple servers. Through continuous monitoring, it can also ensure adherence to compliance and standards.

One key feature of Chef is its integration capabilities. It enables automatic provisioning and configuration of new machines such as GCP, AWS, and Azure.

Features and benefits of Chef

• Written in Erlang and Ruby
• Enables rapid and consistent scaling
• Provides data center and cloud management services
• Ensures a high level of server uptime
• Configuration modes include server/client and standalone
• Offers multi-platform support, including Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Solaris, FreeBSD, RedHat/CentOS, and Fedora
• Large and active community support

RUDDER

Next on this list is Rudder. It is an open-source configuration management tool that is based on the CFEngine. One of its best features is its advanced asset management function. It makes configuration management easier by identifying nodes and their features. It can run either via a user interface or scripts.

Rudder provides user-friendly continuous automation and compliance tools through a web-based, role-based approach.

Features and benefits of Rudder

• Relies on local agents’ installation for every managed system
• Written in C language and capacity of up to 10,000 nodes
• Provides a web interface that uses Scala
• Keeps infrastructure and data centre compliant over time by checking every rule
• Made for production use

Terraform

Terraform is also one of the most popular SaltStack alternatives for server automation and configuration management. Terraform is one of the most popular IT automation tools on the market. It provides an easy-to-use interface and support for many different cloud environments. With an open-source IaC, you can manage a variety of cloud services via a CLI.

Terraform comes with the HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) built-in, making it easy to write declarative commands that server administrators can execute.

Features and benefits of Terraform

• Offers multi-platform support ensuring compatibility with Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD, Mac OS, and more.
• Out-of-the-box HCL support for describing resources using blocks, arguments, and expressions.
• Reduces human error and automates resource provisioning.
• Utilises a unified workflow to manage several public clouds and services.

ArgoCD

ArgoCD is a CD tool for Kubernetes. ArgoCD ensures the desired state of a Kubernetes cluster matches the desired configuration stored in a Git repository. ArgoCD, like SaltStack, is an automation tool, though it is used to target Kubernetes deployments. ArgoCD is GitOps-centric and is designed to deploy and maintain Kubernetes applications by continuously syncing from a Git repository.

• Kubernetes manifests (Helm files, resources defined in YAML files) are stored in Git.
• ArgoCD continuously monitors Git and applies updates automatically.

ArgoCD defines applications declaratively and can detect when a Kubernetes cluster has deviated from the desired state. Should issues arise, ArgoCD offers a rollback feature to revert to a previous version. ArgoCD uses Git as a source of truth; any changes pushed to the repo trigger a CD job to change the application running on the Kubernetes application.

Rundeck

Rundeck is an Open-source automation tool that provides Job Scheduling, workflow orchestration and access control for executing scripts and commands across multiple nodes. Like Saltstack Rundeck is an automation tool that provides a GUI. However, whereas Rundeck is primarily used as a job scheduler, Salstack is focused on Configuration Management, Infrastructure automation and remote execution ensuring that systems maintain a desired state.

Rundeck also does not track system stat,e, unlike configuration management tools like Saltstack. Rundeck like saltstack Supports both Agentless and Node Agents.

Finally, Rundeck can be used to trigger Saltstack commands as part of its workflows, allowing you to use Rundeck as an Orchestration Layer while using Saltstack for Configuration Management.

Choosing The Best SaltStack Alternatives: Server Automation Tool

The truth is that selecting the right server automation tool or SaltStack alternatives is never simple. Even with this list, you have to consider several factors, most importantly your organisation’s requirements. What is your preference, agentless or agent-based? Is it more convenient to have configuration management, continuous monitoring, and server automation all rolled into one or something more specific? These are questions for you to consider when choosing the best server solution for you.