SaltStack Reviews & Ratings

4.6/5

“High Scalability but Enterprise License Costs Add Up”

I moved from open-source version to Enterprise for UI and support. Scaling across data centers works great, but I noticed license cost ramped up with node count.

Pros : Scales efficiently to thousands of nodes.

Cons : SaltStack Enterprise licensing is expensive at big scale.

Switched from : Terragrunt

Reason to switch : Needed enterprise support and UI, but Tower offered better pricing tiers.

4.5/5

“Great for Event-Driven Automation but Complex Events”

I switched from traditional cron jobs to Salt's event-driven reactor system. It’s responsive and powerful—but configuring events took me way too long.

Pros : Salt excels at triggering actions based on infras events (e.g. node changes).

Cons : Setting up reactors and events isn’t intuitive.

Switched from : Firefly AI

Reason to switch : Wanted a mature event-driven engine for infra tasks.

4.5/5

“Fast, Agent-Based Execution but Agents Add Overhead”

I moved from Ansible (agentless) to SaltStack for speed. But managing Salt agents (minions) on each host added deployment and updating overhead.

Pros : Persistent minions make recurring tasks snappy.

Cons : Agents need maintenance and can introduce security complexities.

Switched from : Ansible

Reason to switch : I needed low latency for frequent runs; SaltStack offers that with agents.

4.5/5

“Great for Real-Time Ops but Ansible Easier for Beginners”

I switched from SaltStack to Ansible for smaller, simpler projects because Ansible’s learning curve is gentler. But for real-time, event-driven needs, I go back to Salt.

Pros : SaltStack executes tasks fast and handles scale well.

Cons : Ansible’s ease of use still beats Salt for simple setups.

Switched from : Ansible

Reason to switch : Ansible is faster to pick up for small teams or one-off tasks.

4.5/5

“Python-Friendly and Powerful—but Too Powerful for Small Tasks”

I moved from Puppet to SaltStack because I could write custom Python modules easily. It’s powerful but for routine updates, it felt too heavyweight.

Pros : SaltStack is extensible with Python, great for custom logic.

Cons : Sometimes feels overkill for small, simple tasks.

Switched from : Puppet Enterprise

Reason to switch : Wanted better Python integration and event-driven flexibility.

4.3/5

“Super Fast Remote Commands—but Hard to Learn”

I switched to SaltStack from scripting SSH loops—it’s amazingly fast at pushing configs and running commands in real time. However, figuring out its master-minion model and YAML + Jinja syntax took some time.

Pros : SaltStack runs commands instantly across hundreds of servers using its ZeroMQ engine.

Cons : It's complex to get started for someone new to DevOps tools.

Switched from : EnV0

Reason to switch : I moved to SaltStack for speed and scalability. EnV0 felt slow when I needed to run commands across large clusters.

4.3/5

“Great for Big Infra—but Steep Learning Curve”

I switched from Ansible because SaltStack handles thousands of nodes beautifully. The instant communication via ZeroMQ is a huge plus—but getting used to Salt's structure and tools took effort.

Pros : Built for big environments with fast execution and real-time orchestration.

Cons : SaltStack’s learning curve is steep compared to tools like Ansible.

Reason to switch : Needed faster, event-driven control for large infra, and Salt offered that.

4.3/5

“Strong Community but Initial RFCs Felt Rough”

I moved from Chef to SaltStack because its GitHub community is robust. Still, some plugins I tried needed manual fixes due to version mismatches.

Pros : SaltStack has an active open-source community and regular updates.

Cons : Some community modules felt inconsistently maintained.

Switched from : Chef

Reason to switch : Wanted a more active community and native Python support.

4.3/5

“Flexible Push + Pull Modes but Documentation is Dense”

I switched from Puppet to SaltStack for its dual push/pull workflows. However, Salt docs are thick and harder to digest than Puppet's guides.

Pros : Offers both push and pull models; highly flexible.

Cons : Documentation can be too technical and dense to parse quickly.

Switched from : Puppet Enterprise

Reason to switch : Needed more flexible operational modes, but documentation tradeoff is real.

4.2/5

“Real-Time State Enforcement Is a Game-Changer”

I switched from CFEngine to SaltStack for better responsiveness. Now I can enforce config changes right when needed. But managing Salt via CLI instead of UI required patience.

Pros : Salt stacks enforce configurations instantly across hosts.

Cons : The UI is minimal—mostly command line.

Switched from : CFEngine

Reason to switch : Needed faster enforcement and more flexibility than CFEngine offered.