A while ago I wrote, why Terraform tool is not enough for SaaS here. Today, I am extending the same series for Helm -- covering the purpose they serve and why they are NOT enough to build your cloud offering or control plane.
Helm charts are widely used for Kubernetes application deployment, offering a templated approach to package and manage applications. However, when it comes to building a full-fledged SaaS control plane, relying solely on Helm is not enough.
Helm is useful for:
- ✅ Templating and Packaging – Simplifies Kubernetes deployments with reusable templates.
- ✅ Parameterization – Allows users to configure deployments using values.yaml.
- ✅ Release Management – Helps manage application lifecycle across different Kubernetes clusters.
But running a SaaS control plane is much more than just deploying services. Here’s why Helm falls short when building a control plane:
Helm is a Piece of the Puzzle, Not the Whole Solution
No Tenant-aware Deployments
Helm is designed to deploy workloads, but a SaaS control plane needs to handle tenant-aware deployments.
🛑 Missing Features:
- No built-in multi-tenancy support
- No customer lifecycle management beyond provisioning
- No service discovery or cross-cluster orchestration
To build a SaaS control plane, you need more than Helm to manage users, track deployments per customer, and enforce policies dynamically.
No Customer Management & Self-Service Capabilities
Helm assumes a single-cluster deployment model, but a SaaS control plane must:
- ✅ Manage customer onboarding & provisioning
- ✅ Enable customers to self-manage their deployments
- ✅ Provide a dashboard for visibility and control
Helm has no concept of customers, meaning:
- ❌ You cannot track deployments per customer
- ❌ Customers cannot self-serve their SaaS environment
- ❌ No centralized dashboard to view all customer deployments
Omnistrate solves this by providing a full control plane, allowing you to manage customer environments seamlessly.
No Software Versioning & Lifecycle Control
SaaS applications evolve constantly—you need a way to:
- ✅ Track versions per customer
- ✅ Manage upgrades across deployments
- ✅ Deprecate old versions
Helm does not provide native versioning control beyond helm upgrade. In a multi-tenant SaaS environment, this leads to:
- ❌ Uncontrolled upgrades breaking customer environments
- ❌ No rollback strategy per tenant
- ❌ No automated deprecation of outdated versions
Omnistrate enables controlled software lifecycles, ensuring customers receive the right versions with minimal risk.
No Governance, No Usage Tracking
A SaaS control plane must enforce governance, such as:
- Who can provision what?
- What are the resource limits per customer?
- How do we track usage and prevent abuse?
- How to prevent against unauthorized deployments?
Helm does not provide any governance model. It simply applies Kubernetes manifests, meaning you have no visibility into which customer deployed what, nor can you enforce limits per tenant. Also - it does nothing to enforce licensing or security—it only deploys manifests.
🛑 Missing Features:
- No audit logs for deployments per customer
- No automated quota enforcement
- No centralized governance or access control
- No metering or billing usage
- No built-in license validation
Omnistrate solves this by providing built-in governance and visibility across customer deployments.
No Infrastructure Management
A SaaS control plane needs tenant-aware, ACID-compliant, multi-cloud aware infrastructure management
Helm only deploys resources within a single Kubernetes cluster, but it does not:
- 🛑 Manage tenant-aware infrastructure
- 🛑 Support cross-cloud deployments efficiently
- 🛑 Ensure infrastructure operations are ACID-compliant
This leads to challenges in scaling, cost efficiency, and data consistency, especially for SaaS companies handling multi-cloud customers with strict reliability requirements.
Omnistrate provides a multi-tenant, multi-cloud-aware, ACID-compliant control plane, ensuring each customer gets the right infrastructure setup automatically, without unnecessary overhead.
No Fleet-Wide Observability & Cost Insights
A SaaS control plane must provide deep observability into:
- ✅ How customer workloads are performing
- ✅ What resources they are consuming
- ✅ Which customers are driving the highest infrastructure costs
Helm does not offer monitoring or cost insights—once an application is deployed, you have no centralized way to:
- 🛑 Monitor performance per customer
- 🛑 Track infrastructure costs by customer deployment
- 🛑 Automate scaling based on real-time usage metrics
Omnistrate offers built-in fleet-wide observability, allowing you to track, optimize, and reduce infrastructure costs per customer while ensuring seamless scaling and performance.
Summary
Helm is useful tool for Kubernetes deployments, but it does not provide the critical SaaS control plane features needed for customer management, governance, versioning, and security.
How Omnistrate bridges the gap:
- ✅ 1-Click Deployment Experience – Simplifies onboarding and automated provisioning
- ✅ Customer Management – Centralized customer visibility & tracking
- ✅ Version Control & Upgrades – Controlled rollouts and deprecations
- ✅ Governance and Usage tracking - Centralized governance, security controls license validation & customer billing
- ✅ Multi-Tenant, Multi-Cloud Infra Management – Automates infrastructure handling across providers, across tenants providing ACID-compliant guarantees
- ✅ Fleet-Wide Observability & Cost Insights – Enables real-time tracking of performance and expenses
If you're building a multi-tenant SaaS, relying on Helm alone will not be enough. Omnistrate helps you bridge the gap by importing your existing Helm charts and build the rest of your control plane layers to build and operate a scalable, secure, and automated SaaS control plane effortlessly. To learn more, see our docs on building services with Helm charts.
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