Spotify backstage alternative: compare Port to Backstage
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Cortex alternative: Compare Port to Cortex
Cortex is a commercial internal developer portal platform thats initial focus was driving better standards compliance. Compared to backstage it has a lower total cost of ownership and is easier to set up. Port offers a strong Cortex alternative with customizable scorecards, engineering metrics, automations and self-service actions.
Why look for Cortex alternatives?
Cortex has a semi-rigid data model. As a result, some software catalog entities are fixed and can’t be changed.
It lacks support for the entire variety of potential self-service actions, such as asynchronous actions. For the backend there is an HTTP webhook, which means you need to setup requiring endpoints. Self-service actions can’t be triggered using an API, there is no support for manual approvals and no support for ephemeral environments with a TTL.
Weak tie-in to RBAC: you can’t set a rule that grants on-call engineers automatic temporary permissions.
No Kubernetes object visibility: meaning that using the portal to abstract K8s for developers isn’t supported well.
Limited scorecard customization, inability to configure the portal with IaC and to customize the UI are additional reasons to look for a Cortex replacement.
Port
Cortex
Software Catalog
Flexible data model
API based data ingestion
Rich properties
Out of the box data ingestion
Real time software catalog
Developer self-service
Supports any form of scaffolding
Custom self-service actions (including day 2), multiple invocation types
Fully customizable user interface
Rich user inputs
Dynamic permissions& usage restriction policies
Multiple approvers support
Asyncrhonous actions
Manual approval support
Trigger actions using API
Kubernetes support
K8s object visibility
Multi cluster support
Any CRD support (ArgoCD, Istio, etc)
Flexible K8s views
Scorecards and iniatiatives
Custom scorecards
Customizable views for manager personas
Live integration with third party tools
Native integration with CI/CD data
Automations
Trigger DevOps workflows
Trigger alerts and notifications
Customizable visualizations
Customizable dashboards
Folders
Homepage per developer
Integrations & data ingestion
Open source extensibility framework
Global search and query
RBAC at scale (granular permissions)
Security (data ingestion in "push" model)
General
API first
Configuring the portal as code
Public roadmap
Techdocs
Developer portal usage analytics
Why teams choose Port
Bring your own data model
Port’s software catalog uses an API to populate with all the data you need to accurately model your data, in minutes, with zero coding.
Full developer self-service
From scaffolding to day-2 operations, provisioning ephemeral environments and more, Port does it all.
Workflow automation
Easily automate devops routines based on Port’s software catalog and event subscription mechanism.
Easy to set up
No coding, no complex deployments, ready in minutes.
Cortex is a provider of internal developer portals. It was founded by engineers that found the need to update spreadsheets with microservice data to track service ownership and more. Its initial offering was a service catalog to offer a single pane of glass to developers. Later on, Cortex added scaffolder features as well as scorecards and software engineering intelligence capabilities.
Let us walk you through the platform and catalog the assets of your choice.
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