Do you want to scale your applications and website, but the thought of putting in extra effort scares you? Well, we can totally relate!
We have selected and reviewed the most reliable cheap Kubernetes hosting providers so you can choose the one that meets your needs the most.
While you want your applications to work extremely well, deploying, managing, and scaling them all manually can get overwhelming and frustrating. Being the developers of the applications and websites, you have all the rights to enjoy the benefits of immutable infrastructure.
Let us give you the good news: Kubernetes web hosting is here for the rescue! From automating many of your manual tasks to scaling your containerized applications, this web hosting service does it all like a walk in the park!
If you want to know about the Kubernetes server and the web hosting services it has in store for you, look no more as we have got all the necessary information collected for you along with the fifteen best Kubernetes hosts for you to choose from.
What is Kubernetes?
Having a large and instantly growing ecosystem, Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform that allows automating most of the manual tasks that are involved in scaling, deploying, and managing containerized applications.
It is a portable and extensible platform that is used for managing containerized workloads and services and facilitates automation and configuration both. Kubernetes is a system designed specifically for managing containerized applications (containers), a lightweight virtual machine.
If explained in simpler words, you need to build various containers to build your application and hand over the job of managing those containers on Kubernetes while you sit back and relax.
Kubernetes Features
The main features of Kubernetes include:
- Load balancing.
- Service discovery.
- Self-healing.
- Secret and configuration management.
- Automatic Bin-packing.
- Storage orchestration.
- Horizontal scaling.
- Batch execution.
- Automatic rollbacks and rollouts.
Pros and Cons of Kubernetes
Pros
- Kubernetes has a self-healing ability to ensure reliability.
- It allows developers to deploy workloads on the entire cluster.
- It can single-handedly monitor and manage various simultaneously running containers.
- The server can run any application that a container can run.
- It enables workload portability.
- It requires fewer computing resources to operate.
- You are allowed to set maximum and minimum CPU and memory resources for your containers.
Cons
- It may come as complex for a local development environment.
- Kubernetes can be confusing for new users because of its continuous development and innovation.
- Due to the complexity requires you to have an expert with in-depth knowledge of Kubernetes to run it.
15 Cheap Kubernetes Hosting Providers and Platforms
1. Kamatera – Best Kubernetes Hosting at Affordable Prices
If you’re looking for perfectly optimized and well-balanced Kubernetes servers in terms of price-to-performance ratio, then Kamatera is what you should choose without hesitation. Let’s find out Why? Because they operate a cutting-edge cloud-based infrastructure that is built with advanced hardware and modern backend technologies. Kamatera provides cloud servers, block storage, private cloud networks, load balancers, cloud firewalls, and managed cloud hosting along with hundreds of applications.
As you know, one of the primary purposes of Kubernetes is scaling and automating application developments, so going with Kamatera would be an ideal choice for Kubernetes hosting – because of the cloud infrastructure. That said, you can scale up or down whenever needed hence can reduce expenses. Kamatera equips Kubernetes servers with two versions; both are backed by Ubuntu 20.04 and Ubuntu 18.04.
Now the best part is you can deploy a Kubernetes environment without any hassle as the company offers deployment with a few clicks. All you will need to do is choose a plan with the required system specification, input your details, and you’re good to go. It is as simple as it should be, thanks to Kamatera’s intuitive and easy-to-use console panel.
Kamatera has a global coverage of up to 18 data centers located on four continents; all are built with SSDs, powerful 300% faster latest generation Intel CPUs, 40 Gbit/sec networking, redundant RAM availability, and 100+ OS image options. You can scale up servers with as many as 104 vCPUs and 512GB RAM per instance for ultimate processing as per your project requirements. Plus, each instance comes with a highly isolated environment to ensure dedicated resource allocation.
Besides utilizing your servers for K8s (aka Kubernetes), you can set up a VPS for VPN, database hosting, applications, web hosting, ERP, Email, WordPress hosting, RDP server, CRM hosting, backup, VoIP, and IoT purposes. In a nutshell, Kamatera allows multiple usages of their servers according to user’s needs with a 99.99% uptime guarantee (We’ve tested it). The company also offers highly affordable unmanaged VPS hosting starting at the same price as its cloud instances.
When it comes to pricing, you can choose between 16 different configurations. The entry Kubernetes plan costs as low as $6 per month with 2GB of RAM, 20GB of SSD space, 1 vCPU, and 5TB bandwidth. Alternatively, they also have a customized option that allows you to configure a custom server by selecting each aspect of the instance as per your requirements. Each package includes a free public IP address as well.
We recommend Kamatera if your priority concerns are high uptime, lightning-fast speed, and an easy-to-use control panel. Luckily, you can try Kamatera services FREE for 30 days.
Key Features
- Instant launch within 60 seconds.
- Entire SSD-backed cloud platform.
- K8s optimized servers.
- Easy scalability on the fly.
- Simple management and API access.
- Professional customer support.
- 18 Data centers worldwide.
- Redundant resource availability.
Pros
- 100+ OS images.
- One fit for all purposes solutions.
- Suitable for production and development projects.
- They have pretty low prices with good specs.
- 99.99% Uptime SLA.
- No single point of failure.
- Load balancers and firewalls.
Cons
- No PayPal for purchasing, only cards.
2. Vultr – Cheapest Kubernetes Hosting Plans
Vultr offers an elegant and modern dashboard that is not only user-friendly but also makes sure that you don’t have to spend much time managing clusters and, therefore, has come up with a fully managed Kubernetes service to do the job for you.
All the hard work of managing your applications is taken care of by Vultr, allowing you to operate easily and scale without putting much effort and time. The K8s Engine by Vultr is certified by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, which means you can easily move your network to Vultr as it meets the portability standards.
You get to enjoy various additional Kubernetes tools on Vultr, including Vultr Cloud Control Manager, which allows combining Vultr features into your cluster. The Vultr Container Storage Interface tool is specially introduced to connect your Kubernetes clusters with Vultr’s high-speed block storage. Condor is basically a self-managed solution that allows you the freedom to control the control plane and other components as you require.
Some of the famous integrations of Vultr Kubernetes include Helm charts, external DNS, cert-manager, cluster auto-scaler, and cluster API. Helm charts let you streamline Vultr CSI and CCM installation, while external DNS is excellent for synchronizing exposed Kubernetes services and ingressing them with Vultr’s DNS.
The cert-manager is great for automating the process of issuing TLS certificates from various sources, and the cluster auto-scaler lets you adjust the size of your K8s cluster. The cluster API integration is yet to launch, which will simplify the provisioning, operating, and upgrading of various clusters.
Unlike big tech clouds that are known for charging around 70 USD per month for providing control planes in their Kubernetes services, the Vultr platform stands out as the Kubernetes Engine lets you enjoy a control plane absolutely free of cost. What makes it our top favorite is the fact that using the Vultr K8s engine, you only get to pay for associate resources (like block storage or load balancers) and underlying worker nodes.
Key Features
- Container orchestration.
- Free control plane.
- Scalability to scale applications as workload increases.
- Resilience for automatic health checking and failover.
- Immutable infrastructure.
- Resource-efficient.
Pros
- The control panel of Vultr is feature-rich
- Wide choices of data centers.
- Hosting services are reliable.
- Very user-friendly design and interface.
- Account activation is quick.
Cons
- No phone support or live chat option.
3. Akamai (Linode) – Cheap Kubernetes Hosting with Great Uptime
Akamai offers a fully managed container orchestration engine you can get to enjoy easy and fast Kubernetes cluster deployments. The Linode Kubernetes Engine (LKE) is a fully managed solution that lets you manage and deploy containerized applications and workloads. Not only is this easy to use, but the pricing is also very simple, along with providing infrastructure efficiency.
LKE gives you the privilege of managing, configuring, and provisioning your clusters in just a few steps, and you just have to click a button and deploy instantly. 99.99% uptime is guaranteed, along with providing additional replicas, all thanks to the high availability control plane.
Through Akamai, you can enjoy maximum efficiency out of your resources, and for that, you are allowed to distribute your containers across the clusters. The Horizontal Cluster Autoscaling lets you destroy or create resources in real-time and automatically scale clusters to meet your demands. Using the helm charts, controllers, and operators, you are allowed to deploy popular apps.
LKE is great because it supports integration with almost all the popular K8s tools like helm, ranchers, operators, and more. The platform is quite developer-friendly and portable since it allows you to integrate Kubernetes management with your own infrastructure, along with giving you the chance to create and manage your LKE cluster directly using the Linode API.
What makes it the user’s favorite is the fact that there are no management fees. This means you don’t have to pay anything for the managed Kubernetes control plane, unlike other cloud services. All you need to pay for is the node balancers, compute instances, and block storage volumes.
As compared to AKS (Amazon AWS) and GKE (Google Cloud), this platform charges absolutely nothing for providing the feature of cluster management. The named platforms charge around 0.1 USD per hour, which makes a total of around $72 per month.
Key Features
- Etcd Backups
- Self-service version upgrades
- Automated recovery
- Persistent storage
- DNS management
- Load balancing
- Aggregation layer and metrics pipeline
Pros
- Comes with great monitoring tools
- Provides you with an operating support system
- SLA uptime is great
- The platform is quite simple to use
- Moving large data across websites is faster through Linode
Cons
- There is no live chat support for customers
4. DigitalOcean – Best Kubernetes Hosting for Developers
DigitalOcean offers managed Kubernetes service that doesn’t let you go through the complexities of handling the control plane and containerized infrastructure and allows you to deploy Kubernetes clusters in minutes. To help grow your business like no other, the managed service by DigitalOcean has some amazing features in store for you to benefit from. With their free control plane and inexpensive bandwidth, you are going to save your money and scale up quite quickly.
You are allowed to enjoy the launching of your website or application faster using DigitalOcean Kubernetes. It also lets you go from deploying once a month to almost multiple times a day. With a free, quick-to-spin-up and scale and a high-availability control panel, you can easily remove even a single point of failure. This maximizes the reliability that is offered by this platform compared to the competitors.
Additionally, the smart and automated adjustments to the number of nodes in your clusters let you scale automatically and ensure controlled costs and high performance. You can easily focus on building great apps while DigitalOcean manages everything else through their managed Kubernetes.
DigitalOcean also provides the control panel for free, unlike various other cloud companies that charge more than $70 per month. The pricing for Kubernetes depends completely on resources required by your clusters, such as load balancers and block storage.
The managed Kubernetes hosting starts at $10 per month, which is simple, and along with including the free control plane, it also scales automatically and increases availability. You can also add the high availability feature of $40 per month, and overages above pooled transfer will be charged at $0.01 per GB.
Key Features
- High availability control plane
- Deploy K8s server in minutes
- Full Kubernetes compatible API
- Auto-scaling
- Auto upgrades
- Simplified Day-2 OPS
- Open API
- Global availability
Pros
- Let’s schedule automatic upgrades
- Allows vertical and horizontal scaling of both
- The managed services let you focus completely on building your app
- Just a few clicks are required to deploy
- Doesn’t have a single point of failure
Cons
- It can prove to be a little hard for beginners
- No live support is available
5. Virtuozzo
No wonder that managed Kubernetes web hosting, along with multi-cloud availability, is a dream come true for developers, and Virtuozzo provides you with exactly that. This platform has a pre-packaged cluster solution that is available specifically for automated installation.
The production-ready environment on Virtuozzo is suitable for easily containerizing applications and running hyper-scalable micro-services to keep them resilient to failures. It also makes sure to implement CI or CD automation for development at higher speeds in shorter release cycles.
The elastic containers allow you to have extra savings for providing better and more efficient resource utilization, while provision purpose-driven clusters allow you full ownership to make sure there are no conflicts between the development teams.
Virtuozzo simplifies the management in such a way that there is no need for customer involvement whatsoever. It provides integrated billing, automated installation, scaling, and updates to simplify the whole experience of the users.
With minimal time and effort, you can easily satisfy your clients with their requirements for scalable Kubernetes clusters for their projects. The Multiple cloud availability means you will have your clusters available on multiple clouds with no vendor lock-in and full interoperability. Through this, you can easily achieve high availability across various data centers and automatically scale your clusters vertically and horizontally.
Virtuozzo makes sure to give you cost efficiency by charging pay-per-use for Kubernetes pricing. The automatic scaling takes place based completely on real consumption of the resources and not on the server size, which is definitely great.
You won’t ever have to over-allocate beyond your needs since the platform allows you to get the required number of resources, including CPU and RAM, without having the need to reserve them in advance. The platform fully manages all the tasks while remaining within the stated confines, and you do not need to pay extra, especially during idle times or low use.
Key Features
- Hyper scalability
- Multi-cloud availability
- Easy start with automated installation
- Simplified management
- Cost efficiency
- Flexible automation
Pros
- Automatic scaling of clusters either horizontally or vertically
- No manual intervention is needed, and automatic installation is available within a few clicks
- Allows you to mix and match cloud options according to your project’s needs
- Built-in web SSH and intuitive UI give a single point of management
- You have to pay only for consumed resources
Cons
- SSH is tricky to use
- No free trial is available
6. OVHcloud
Are you looking for managed Kubernetes to orchestrate your containers, but putting in extra money scares you? Well, OVHcloud is here for the rescue! The platform stands out among competitors as it provides you with free managed Kubernetes, which is basically the most popular tool for container orchestration available in the market these days.
OVHCloud is excellent for deploying your applications, scaling them up, and making them more resilient and can easily be used by companies of almost every size. They are suitable to be used even in multi-cloud or hybrid infrastructures.
You are allowed to host any kind of workload on the managed Kubernetes powered by OVHcloud public cloud instances due to the availability of load balancers and additional disks integrated into it. The teams of this platform are experts in hosting, deploying, monitoring, and maintaining all the internal components of the solution in good condition.
To get the most out of this platform, you only need to follow a few simple steps, including creating your Kubernetes cluster, adding instance-based nodes, and finally connecting to K8s to start deploying your containers. The deployment process on this platform is extremely easy, from development to production, and most of the tasks are handled by the team while you focus on making your app better.
There is good news from this platform regarding billing. Their managed services are absolutely free of cost, and you don’t have to invest anything at all except for your time when needed.
The free-of-charge services include major tasks like Kubernetes hosting, deployment, updates for the cluster’s master components, and operational maintenance for your nodes. The only payment that is required from this platform is for computing resources and storage hosting, while there are no charges for the traffic.
Key Features
- Role-based access control
- Persistent volumes
- Multiple versions and upgrades
- The load balancer and auto-scaling
- Basic interface
- Auto-scaling nodes
- Integration with the vRack
- Guaranteed resources
- Highly scalable object storage solutions
Pros
- Lets you enjoy unlimited on-demand storage through S3 API
- Provides you with fully guaranteed resources that are suitable for a wide range of uses
- The OVH control panel allows you to add, delete or configure your nodes
- You are also allowed to add persistent volume to your worker nodes to ensure durability for your application data
- All your nodes will be monitored by the team
Cons
- Lacks technical, account, and billing support
7. Google Cloud
Google Cloud has introduced Google Kubernetes Engine, which provides quite a simple way to scale, manage and deploy Kubernetes compared to the competitors. What makes it stand out is the fact that it allows new users to use 300 USD in free credits for trying out Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).
It also lets you start quickly with a single click cluster and then scale up to 15000 nodes. The platform leverages a control plane with high availability that includes regional and multi-zonal clusters both. The industry’s first four-way auto-scaling introduced by this platform helps you eliminate operational overhead.
Google Cloud is excellent when it comes to speeding up the development of your K8s apps without having to compromise on security. You can easily develop a wide variety of apps using this platform with support for server-less, stateful, and application accelerators. You can secure and speed up each stage of deploying and building a life cycle using Kubernetes native CI/CD tooling.
Additionally, you are allowed to choose any channel that fits your business needs. Regular, rapid, and stable release channels are a part of this platform offering support levels and having different cadences of node upgrades.
The GKE offers a free tier that is only applied to zonal and autopilot clusters and provides around 74.4 USD per month of credits in the billing account. When you use only a single autopilot or zonal account, these credits are enough to cover the whole cost of the cluster for a month.
If you are left with unused free tier credits, they can’t be used for any other purpose and can’t be rolled up. Without the two clusters of zonal or autopilot, a cluster management fee is charged, which is around 0.1 USD per cluster per hour and applies to all the rest of GKE clusters irrespective of cluster size, mode of operation, or topology.
Key Features
- Two modes of operation
- Pod and cluster auto-scaling
- Prebuilt Kubernetes applications and templates
- Container native networking and security
- Ease of migrating traditional workloads to GKE containers
- Highly scalable and affordable cloud database solutions
- A broad range of data centers worldwide
- Powered by top-notch infrastructure
Pros
- Allows you to develop a wide variety of apps
- Let’s you choose the channel that fits your business needs
- Google Site Reliability Engineers constantly monitor your clusters and their computing
- Automatic upgrades are available for the control plane and nodes
- It also provides automatic node health repair to avoid failures
Cons
- Only zonal and autopilot clusters are free
- It doesn’t have a government cloud
8. AWS EKS – Highly Scaleable Kubernetes Hosting for Enterprises
A survey from CCNF declared that the Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) is basically the most used managed Kubernetes service these days. Although coming with lesser amounts of pre-configured solutions, the EKS allows you to have more control over your clusters since you get to manage quite much of that yourself.
It is one of the most trusted ways to start, run and scale Kubernetes applications in the cloud or even on-premises. Some famous customers who use EKS include Snapchat, Babylon, and HSBC. Amazon EKS lets you explore multiple ways of configuring various K8s worker nodes, including VPC, ALB, and EKS.
There are security patches that are automatically applied to your clusters’ control plane to ensure a more secure environment. In order to deploy your applications on the cloud using Amazon EKS, you need to follow a few simpler steps starting from creating Kubernetes clusters, selecting either AWS fargate or Amazon EC2, running apps, and finally, view and explore running Kubernetes apps.
To get started with Amazon EKS, you need to set up and log in to your AWS account, learn all the steps from blogs and videos and start building with Amazon EKS.
For each Amazon cluster that you create through EKS, you have to pay around 0.1 USD per hour. What makes it stand out is the fact that you can easily use a single cluster for running various applications by taking advantage of IAM security policies and Kubernetes namespaces. If you are using Amazon EC2, you only get to pay for the resources that you have used.
When you decide to use Amazon Fargate, the price is calculated based on the memory resources and vCPUs used. The prices start getting calculated from the moment you download your container image until the Amazon EKS pod terminates. The AWS pricing calculator allows you to easily calculate your monthly costs using AWS.
Key Features
- Service Integrations
- Managed Control Plane
- EKS Add-ons
- Hosted Kubernetes Console
- Managed node groups
- Windows and ARM support
- Support for IPv6
- Service discovery and mesh
- VPC native networking
- Load balancing
- Serverless compute
- Hybrid deployments
Pros
- 95% service level agreement available
- Pod security applies cluster-wide, which is very easy to apply
- Integration with a strong AWS ecosystem
Cons
- It has the most manual steps for upgrading the clusters
- No automatic node health repair
- You have to take care of various tasks yourself
9. Microsoft Azure – Free Kubernetes Hosting for 12 Months
Using a fully managed Kubernetes service from Azure, you can easily deploy and manage containerized applications without having to put much of your efforts and time. The AKS (Azure Kubernetes Services) provides you with serverless Kubernetes, an integrated CI/CD experience, and enterprise-grade governance and security.
You can rapidly develop, scale, and deliver your applications with confidence using Azure by uniting your operations and development team on a single platform. This platform guarantees that you are allowed to operate with ease, ship faster, and scale confidently without facing any hassle or issue. You can also accelerate the development of containerized applications by defining, deploying, debugging, and upgrading even the most complex Kubernetes applications.
Using AKS, you can have built-in automated provisioning and enjoy increased operational efficiency. With automated repair, scaling, and monitoring, you can quickly get up and run your applications with minimized infrastructure maintenance.
With Azure, you can enjoy saving money by using deeply discounted capacity. Additionally, the availability zones allow you to have higher availability and protect your applications from data center failures. Not only this, the Azure Advisor is especially there to manage and optimize the Kubernetes deployments with personalized recommendations in real-time.
When it comes to AKS pricing, you are only required to pay for the compute resources that you utilize. This means you will only need to pay for the associate network and storage resources, and virtual machines used.
Additionally, you can clearly take advantage of no-charge cluster management, which eases out the majority of the tasks for you. It also provides cost-saving options that are great for catering to your workloads and offers one-year reserved, three-year reserved, and Spot options to choose from.
For a one-year reserved option, the pricing is more predictable, giving prioritized compute capacity and monthly payment options, and this option is great for steady-state usage.
You can achieve higher savings for the three-year reserved option and have instances running continuously by committing to a longer term. The Spot option lets you take advantage of Azure’s unused capacity at significant cost savings.
Key Features
- Elastic provisioning
- End-to-end development experience
- Most comprehensive authentication
- Authorization capabilities
- Dynamic rules enforcement across multiple clusters
- Availability in more regions
Pros
- Availability of newer Kubernetes versions ASAP
- Automatic node health repair is provided
- The control plane is free of cost
- Azure offers a variety of free services
- A broad range of servers and data centers across the globe
- The developer environment is quite good
Cons
- Network policies can’t be enabled for existing clusters
- The semi-manual process to upgrade cluster components
Related article you might like to read: Microsoft Azure Alternatives
10. IBM Cloud
Do you want to run Kubernetes on enterprise-grade and want to experience a managed certified K8s solution? Look no more, as IBM Cloud is here to look after your needs. The platform allows you to deploy highly available clusters and manage containerized apps in a native Kubernetes solution without any hassle.
The features that this platform has in store for you make Kubernetes super easy and let you enjoy continuous availability, scalability, and also workload diversity. The IBM Watson APIs are specifically designed to extend the capabilities of your apps.
Through IBM Cloud Kubernetes, you can have security, drive innovation and scale your apps without putting in much effort. For a consistent experience, the platform provides tools and APIs that let you have consistency even when working on the cloud’s infrastructure. You can also ensure compliance in resources, guard your cluster infrastructure, all thanks to the excellent security it comes with, and isolate compute resources from any kind of mishap or harm.
Various open-source technologies can be added to your Kubernetes cluster, including Knative on the IBM cloud, Istio on the IBM cloud, and Tekton on the IBM cloud. Knative is great for building, deploying, and running cloud-native, Istio is great for connecting, securing, and managing networks of micro-services, and Tekton is great for creating K8 native CI/CD pipelines.
The pricing of IBM cloud Kubernetes is super flexible in that you get to enjoy a free tier and lets you access 50+ products. Additionally, you are allowed to create a free account and provided with around 200 USD credits that you can use on anything.
You can easily run your workloads on an hourly basis and review, modify, plan for and estimate your clusters to control costs. IBM cloud is great because it provides you with great managed services while also saving you many expenses that are associated with updating, managing, and maintaining an infrastructure environment.
Key Features
- Secure clusters
- Self-healing containers
- Native Kubernetes
- Leverage IBM Watson
- Intelligent scheduling
- Logging and monitoring
Pros
- The platform’s support is available in different regions and zones
- The installation process is quite easy
- Deliver powerful tools and intuitive user experience
- Allows you to design your own clusters
- Allows quick transition to different projects
Cons
- The free tier lacks many important options
11. GiantSwarm
Offering fully managed and open-source Kubernetes hosting, GiantSwarm has all the flexibility and support that you require from a platform. The technology that has been used in this platform lets you unlock the new operating system with complete freedom and flexibility.
Developers have built the Giant Swarm tool kit for developers, so all the needs and requirements have been taken into consideration to come up with a platform that has various amazing features to benefit from. For other platforms, the right technology is either accelerator or differentiator; however, with Giant Swarm, it is both. Additionally, their customer support is great, which is available 24/7 to help you anytime you ask for it.
Customer support is always ready to help you out so that you are always on the right track and don’t have to face any issues with the platform alone. The team is always up to date, provides live issue resolution, acts as your SRE team complete with the pager, and also provides you with constant fixes and upgrades. Their status quo is evolution which means that the community is extremely active.
They provide constant assessment and co-innovation, make you skip the learning curve by sharing Slack channel, and give you full access to workload clusters and management. Through all these amazing offerings, you can easily become a cloud-native powerhouse without putting in much effort and time.
The technologies that they use are great enough to power your cloud-native success along with providing speed, commitment, and innovation. When it comes to Kubernetes, they take the whole burden away from their customers and remove the complexity of running Kubernetes, which makes it definitely stand out among competitors.
Moreover, they provide various webinars on Kubernetes to make it super easy for you. These webinars include topics like how to break apps with K8s, making FinOps work with Kubernetes, Navigating Helm to deploy apps on Kubernetes, and many more. So, if you are a beginner, these webinars are going to save you a lot of struggle to learn more about Kubernetes.
Key Features
- CaaS everywhere
- The cloud-native platform is configurable
- No lock-in
- 100% open source
- Enterprise proven high security
- Live issue resolution
- 24/7 support from the team
- Constant assessment and upgrades
Pros
- Makes the learning curve easy to skip through webinars and slack channels
- You get to have full access to workload clusters and management
- Let’s you enjoy the freedom of choosing your desired tools
- Allows you to build a cloud-native stack according to your demands
Cons
- N/A.
12. Rackspace
All of the software and support that you need to run, deploy and manage secure Kubernetes are hard to find under one roof, but Rackspace Technology has made sure to provide you with all of them together. Along with providing a multi-cloud service experience, the platform also provides managed Kubernetes and cluster services across the distributed clouds.
The sudden transition to Kubernetes may leave your business facing various challenges; however, The Managed Platform by Rackspace makes sure to solve all the common customer challenges through its amazing features. Their specialized support team consists of certified administrators to provide you with the support that you are looking for.
The extremely talented team of Rackspace includes a lead architect, CKA certified engineers, and an engagement manager to work together as a unit and provide you with the activities that you expect from this platform. The provided activities include using infrastructure as a code to provide operational management for the entire stack, designing, and deployment of MPK, alerting and monitoring responses for clusters.
Other activities include cluster services, underlying infrastructure, upgraded assistance for all infrastructure applications, and Kubernetes supported cluster services. Sound identity posture, security management with timely upgrades, network protection along with runtime security and container image scanning are various other activities that are taken care of by the team.
The platform has expertise on Kubernetes Certified service providers, 500+ managed K8s clusters, and 50+ certified administrators. Their major approach is to provide you the engagement for your app or websites that you must be expecting from the platform.
The engagement services include consulting and advisory services for giving you the right strategy for getting where you want to be, professional services for providing and building solutions to help get the most out of your applications, and managing services to manage, optimize and operate various elements of your cloud.
Key Features
- High scalability
- Enterprise-grade security
- Rackspace Kubernetes Stack
- Scalable deployments
- One-click virtual machine deployments
- Portability across clouds
- Easy migration of containers
- Greater flexibility and acceleration
Pros
- The Sign-up process is quite simple
- Provides you with loads of options on what you need
- The uptime is quite quick
- Establish and maintain performance targets through routine audits
- Time upgrades for providing security management
Cons
- The pricing of this platform is tricky to figure out
- There are too many options that can be difficult for beginners to understand
13. Alibaba Cloud
Alibaba Cloud has proved to be a leading Kubernetes container provider, specifically in the Asian Pacific region, all thanks to the features it has to offer. Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) allows you the freedom to deploy your applications in scalable and high-performance containers and provides you with the benefit of lifetime management of containerized applications.
Plus, ACK integrates storage, virtualization, security capabilities, and networking like no other platform. Along with all the features it has in store for its users, it also provides excellent support and professional services for the user’s satisfaction.
The platform ensures end-to-end security for your applications so that all your data is safe and away from any kind of adverse mishap. It also supports permission management within an enterprise and which is available for users having Alibaba cloud accounts and also for RAM users.
The ease of use of this platform is something worth appreciating. This is because the creation of clusters and containers is extremely easy, even for beginners. You are also not left on your own once you create your containers or clusters since the lifecycle management they offer for containerized applications is there for you throughout. The high efficiency and reliability of the platform allow you to create large containers within seconds.
The billing of this platform depends completely on the cluster type that you choose. There are various billable items that provide the billing rules of ACK. These billable items include cluster management that is different for different cluster types.
A managed cluster is free of charge, while the professional managed cluster charges you around 0.09 USD/hour, making it a considerably cheap Kubernetes hosting provider.
The dedicated Kubernetes cluster, registered cluster, and the managed edge cluster are all free of charge. The other billable item is the cloud services in which you are charged for cloud resources used by your ACK clusters.
Key Features
- Communication between different hosts
- Supports volume management
- Supports automatic log collection
- Container and VM monitoring
- Reschedule workloads
- Authorizing RAM users
- RBAC authorization management system
- Create or delete clusters
- Resource management
- Integration with VPCs
- High availability
- Horizontal scaling
- Disaster recovery
Pros
- Improves efficiency in deploying Kubernetes resources
- You are allowed to deploy your clusters across zones for higher availability
- It supports multi-cluster and cluster federation management
- It also supports auto-scaling and application monitoring
- Provides a high-performance network plugin
Cons
- Some of the tools are not as advanced
14. Platform9
Platform9 provides you with fast and easy access to Kubernetes anywhere, and what else do you want from a platform? It is the simplest SaaS-managed platform that lets the users scale, build and operate Kubernetes clusters and cloud-native apps that too either across an edge or on private and public clouds.
Bonus: there is an option of signing up for free and along with giving you the privilege of chatting live with a Cloud-native expert in case of any kind of confusion. The managed services by Platform9 are extremely easy to use, along with the ease of cluster management and integration. The performance is not only fast, but it is also frictionless and maintenance-free.
In less than five minutes on your laptop, you can spin up a cluster easily using this platform. You have got the freedom of deploying your clusters either on VMs, public clouds, or premise servers depending on your choice. You can create the production-ready clusters without any hassle and can scale them up or down anytime you need to.
What makes them one of our favorites is the fact that they let you focus completely on your applications while they manage every aspect of your clusters. The team is expert enough to let you run your apps hassle-free because they monitor your apps 24/7, look after the auto-trouble shoots, and repair them, too. The platform’s team has got you covered since they also look after all the aspects of Kubernetes integration for you.
There are three packages for managed clusters, including Freedom, Growth, and Enterprise.
The Freedom package starts at $0/vCPU/month and offers up to 2 clusters and eight nodes, supports via community, 95% SLA and system critical alerting.
The Growth, which is also the cheapest Kubernetes hosting package, costs $4/vCPU/month and offers everything in freedom along with unlimited clusters, monitoring and remediation, access to support, 99.9% SLA, and up to 3 regions.
The Enterprise package starts with custom prices and offers everything in Growth along with tailored support with a designed account, customer success team, multiple regions, SSO, RBAC, GitOps profiles, and advanced integrations.
Key Features
- Fully managed CNCF-certified Kubernetes
- On-premises and edge
- Public Cloud
- Import AKS, GKE and EKS clusters
- Cluster RBAC
- KubeConfig generation
- Managed add-ons
- 24/7 Customer support
- In-cluster monitoring
Pros
- Provides all Kubernetes capabilities in a single platform
- Helps deliver production-grade Kubernetes at scale
- Let’s you deploy a cluster instantly
- 24/7 monitoring for au-alert and cluster health
Cons
- The freedom package offers unacceptable uptime
15. Scaleway
Scaleway offers Kubernetes Kapsule to fulfill all your Kubernetes hosting-related requirements. It is one of the best server providers because you can quickly get started with it and also scale up within minutes.
Through this platform, you are allowed to create your cluster and scale it up to around 500 nodes that too with just one click. Just within seconds of that, your containers will be all ready to get deployed. Yes, this is how easy using this platform is while it provides you with instant services that are easy to understand even by beginners.
In order to let your application or platform run smoothly, Scaleway manages all the Kubernetes components, including the control plane, kubelet, etc. The managed K8s allow you to develop and deploy a wide variety of containerized applications and offer availability, portability, and stability to meet all your team’s needs. This means you get almost everything ready to have an excellent and smooth experience using this platform.
The platform also guarantees synchronizing GPU instances, load balancers, block storage, and instances that are supposed to be driven by the Kubernetes controllers. In simpler words, the easy-to-use solutions by Scaleway are completely integrated into an ecosystem and provide outstanding features to make your experience worth it.
If you are wondering what you are billed for creating one cluster, just sit back and relax. Scaleway doesn’t cost you anything for providing a Kubernetes control plane, and you get to use it absolutely free of cost. The load balancers and block storage is billed on this platform without adding any additional cost.
Additionally, you will have to pay for the worker nodes created within your clusters; however, they are not overpriced and billed the same as the underlying compute instances. There are four available resources for your Kubernetes clusters, including Development instances, general-purpose instances, GPU instances, and Block instances that have different starting charges depending on the features they provide.
Key Features
- High availability
- Auto healing
- Fully managed control plane
- 24/7 ticket support
- Builtin Kubernetes dashboard
- Application library
Pros
- The fully managed control plane of this platform is absolutely free to use
- It provides a backup control plane in case your control plane goes through any issue
- It automatically integrates your choice during cluster creation
- The platform is suitable for even smaller-scale applications
Cons
- Unlike other platforms, there is no feature of a pricing estimate calculator.
Also check: 15 Scaleway Alternatives and Competitors for 2025
16. ServerSpace
Does deploying a cluster using a managed container orchestration service in just ten minutes look like a dream to you? Well, it is not a dream anymore since Serverspace has this privilege for you to enjoy! Using this platform, you can easily discover everything good about the Kubernetes world.
The ultra-scalable feature allows you to deploy billions of clusters in one second and doesn’t require you to expand your DevOps team. The platform is quite flexible since it can easily host applications for any kind of task, including enterprise software development to local testing.
The platform lets you dive into the Kubernetes ecosystem by giving you the privilege of connecting to additional applications in order to monitor, develop, and optimize your cloud infrastructure. You can connect with additional applications like CircleCI, GitLab, Travis CI, OpenWhisk, OpenFaas, Kubeless, helm, Terraform, Consul, Istio, Jaeger, Linkerd, Fluentd, OpenTracing, and Prometheus.
You can also improve development power by automating staged application releases, enjoying resource efficiency, using a fully compatible endpoint to work with, and increasing team productivity.
The Kubernetes web hosting by Serverspace contains various K8s features that allow the flexibility of deploying your cluster within minutes. These features include high availability, which means you can protect your infrastructure from failures, ingress control for providing load balancing, and portability that lets you migrate your application from any other platform to Serverspace without any difficulty.
The simple control plane allows you to deploy your applications in just two easy steps. The first step is to select a data center, while the second step is to select the node configuration.
Key Features
- Streamline operations
- Resource efficiency
- Full K8s API support
- Ingress controller
- High availability
- Simple control plane
Pros
- Requires only two easy steps to deploy a Kubernetes cluster
- Allows porting any application that supports Kubernetes to Serverspace without any hassle
- Optimize, monitor, and develop your cloud infrastructure
- Allows deploying billions of clusters per second
- You can host applications for any kind of task
Cons
- Users may get a block on suspicion of spam
Conclusion
Automating, managing, deploying, and scaling containerized applications seem like a huge job if you have to take the whole responsibility on your shoulders. However, open-source software like Kubernetes can do the job quite well while you sit back and put your focus completely on your applications to work better.
Using Kubernetes web hosting can save you a lot of trouble since most of the tasks that you would have to handle manually are automated by K8s. While there may be various Kubernetes hosting providers that claim to offer excellent services, you need to choose the best one. Therefore, we have selected the best cheap Kubernetes hosting services for you to choose from, depending on which one meets your demands the most.