Gitpod: a secure, managed alternative to Cloud9

Nov 25, 2024

With AWS Cloud9’s closed to new customers, many organizations are evaluating alternatives for their cloud development environments.

“After careful consideration, we have made the decision to close new customer access to AWS Cloud9, effective July 25, 2024. AWS Cloud9 existing customers can continue to use the service as normal. AWS continues to invest in security, availability, and performance improvements for AWS Cloud9, but we do not plan to introduce new features.” - AWS Blog: ‘How to migrate from AWS Cloud9’

Gitpod uniquely combines self-hosted security with managed service convenience, running entirely within customers’ AWS accounts, and requiring zero operational overhead. Gitpod’s platform distinguishes itself through superior developer experience, comprehensive security controls, and enterprise-grade features that have earned the trust of major financial institutions.

Gitpod Flex Dashboard

Gitpod highlights

Fully managed and self-hosted service, with only a CloudFormation required to deploy (takes less than 3 minutes)
Zero operational overhead - no Kubernetes or systems administration expertise required
Infrastructure isolation in customer AWS account with no source code exposure
Available in multiple AWS regions with flexible deployment options
Enterprise features including SSO, VPN support, and IDE integrations
Enhanced developer experience through environments-as-code and prebuilt environments
SOC 2 compliant with extensive security and compliance features

Gitpod Enterprise

Gitpod Enterprise offers a secure, fully-managed cloud development solution ideal for teams of 25+ developers. While self-hosted in your AWS account, it requires zero operational management as Gitpod handles all maintenance. The platform includes enterprise-grade features like SSO and comprehensive source control integration, including on-premise solutions such as GitHub Enterprise.

Having passed rigorous security reviews from some of the world’s largest financial institutions, it provides enhanced development capabilities including rapid environment startup and multiple IDE integrations, surpassing Cloud9’s feature set.

Core similarities to Cloud9

Gitpod and Cloud9 are built to address similar fundamental needs. Both platforms provide secure, cloud-hosted development environments that are accessible through a web browser or desktop editor. They enable developers to write, run, and debug code without relying on local machine resources or configuration. This approach ensures consistent development experience while maintaining security and compliance.

Key shared capabilities

Environment provisioning and scaling with secure authentication and access
Browser (and desktop) development environments with full terminal support
Integrated terminal access with full shell capabilities and AWS access
Persistent file systems between environments for ongoing development
Collaborative features for pair-coding or remote troubleshooting

Enterprise-grade security and compliance

Gitpod matches Cloud9’s core security features like VPC support, IAM integration, and SSO capabilities. Gitpod goes further by deploying entirely within your AWS account, enabling infrastructure isolation and control with zero operational overhead. Organizations can apply their existing security controls, monitoring, and compliance frameworks directly to Gitpod.

Gitpod Enterprise Architecture

Comparable security features

-	Cloud9	Gitpod
VPC support for network isolation	Yes	Yes
IAM integration for access control	Yes	Yes
Integration with AWS access keys and secrets	Yes	Yes
SSO support	Yes	Yes
Data residency controls through region selection	Yes	Yes
Secure source code access	Yes	Yes
Browser-based secure access	Yes	Yes
Encrypted storage	Yes	Yes
Audit logging	Yes	Yes
Fully scriptable environments	No	Yes
Environment size restriction policies	No	Yes
Fast environment starts with prebuilds	No	Yes
Base image management with Docker	No	Yes

Administration and management

Gitpod provides admin controls for organizations to efficiently manage their development environments at scale. Through a centralized interface, administrators can implement governance, control costs, and security compliance across their development organization.

Key features

Environment management: Define environment classes that control the compute and memory size of development environments used by developers.
Security policy controls: Implement organization-wide policies for security features like environment sharing, timeouts and user permissions.
Usage monitoring: Track real-time development environment usage across the entire organization for cost management.
User management: Manage user roles and access within Gitpod through RBAC, control user access with SSO.

Zero operations: fully managed and self-hosted

As mentioned, Gitpod’s operational model brings the security benefits of self-hosted infrastructure with the convenience of a fully managed service. This unique approach ensures organizations maintain complete control over their infrastructure while eliminating operational overhead.

The deployment process is simple. Customers run a CloudFormation template in their AWS account, and Gitpod handles everything else. This template creates a secure, isolated environment within your AWS infrastructure, ensuring all development activities, source code, and sensitive data remain within your control. The installation emits only minimal telemetry data to Gitpod’s control plane, enabling proactive maintenance without exposing sensitive information.

Despite running in your AWS account, Gitpod’s team manages all operational aspects such as:

Automatic updates and security patches
Infrastructure scaling and optimization
System maintenance and monitoring
Performance tuning and troubleshooting
Backup and recovery processes

This approach eliminates the need for dedicated infrastructure teams or specialized expertise. You don’t need Kubernetes administrators or systems engineers—Gitpod functions as a true managed service comparable to an AWS managed service while maintaining the security benefits of self-hosted infrastructure.

A superior and snappy developer experience

Gitpod treats development environments as code. Rather than manually configuring environments or filling out lengthy forms to choose infrastructure options, developers define their entire environment—including dependencies, tools, and extensions—in a simple configuration file that lives with their source code.

When launching a new environment, Gitpod automatically handles all setup and initialization, eliminating the traditional setup overhead. Through its prebuild feature, Gitpod proactively creates environment snapshots whenever code changes, ensuring fast startup times by having dependencies pre-installed and ready to go.

Highlights

Multiple editor options: VS Code Browser, Desktop VS Code, and JetBrains IDEs
Pre-built environments that can drastically reduce startup times
Docker-based configuration for consistent environments
Dev Container specification support
Multi-repository environment support

Frequently asked questions

Is Gitpod a managed service service?

Yes. Gitpod Enterprise is both self-hosted and entirely managed through the product interface, administrators need to run an initial CloudFormation template, but all future updates are pulled by the installation and applied automatically. Gitpod comes with comparable benefits to AWS managed services.

What regions are supported?

Gitpod supports: us-east-1, us-east-2, us-west-2, eu-west-1, eu-west-2, eu-west-3, eu-central-1, sa-east-1, me-south-1, me-central-1, other regions are available on request.

How is data privacy and security handled?

All development environments run in your AWS account. Gitpod only receives limited telemetry data for operational purposes, which can be audited. The solution supports VPN, SSO, and various compliance requirements.

What compliance certifications are supported?

SOC 2 and equivalents.