“We’re not a Terraform shop”—a phrase heard in countless engineering standups when the topic of Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) comes up. While Terraform has long been the poster child of IaC, not every team wants—or needs—to climb its learning curve. For fast-moving teams, compliance-heavy startups, or lean DevOps orgs, the question isn’t whether to use IaC—it’s how to do so without sacrificing velocity or sanity.
This post is for teams that want the benefits of codified infrastructure—repeatability, auditability, and automation—without getting boxed into Terraform’s mental model. Whether you’ve relied on scripts, manual provisioning, or in-house tools, we’ll explore how to adopt IaC on your terms and how Revolte helps make that journey seamless.
Bonus Insight: With Revolte’s unified cloud interface, even non-specialists can launch infrastructure confidently—no deep infra expertise or Terraform fluency required. This democratizes cloud operations across the org, saving time and reducing reliance on specialist bottlenecks.
The Terraform Trap: Why It’s Not for Everyone
Terraform is powerful, no doubt. But it’s also opinionated, verbose, and state-heavy. For teams not already steeped in its ecosystem, it can feel like trading one form of complexity for another. HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language) demands a new syntax, state management requires discipline, and integrating it with your CI/CD systems adds overhead.
More importantly, Terraform assumes a centralized IaC culture—a single source of truth managed by a small team of infra gatekeepers. But what about decentralized teams, or organizations that favor autonomy over control? What if your infra isn’t AWS-first, or your product stack spans clouds and container platforms?
For these cases, Terraform can feel more like friction than flow.
The Case for Terraform-Free IaC
Let’s be clear: skipping Terraform doesn’t mean skipping Infrastructure-as-Code. IaC is a principle, not a tool. At its core, it’s about defining infrastructure in a consistent, reusable way that machines can execute and humans can reason about.
There are valid reasons to sidestep Terraform:
- You need faster iteration cycles. Some teams ship daily and can’t afford long plan/apply cycles.
- Your infra isn’t complex enough to warrant it. A dozen microservices behind a load balancer might not need HCL orchestration.
- You’re polyglot by necessity. Different teams own different clouds, containers, or runtimes.
- You want to empower developers. Giving product teams the ability to spin up services without diving into Terraform modules can be a superpower.
IaC should be adaptable to team topology—not the other way around.
Alternative IaC Patterns That Work
If you’re not using Terraform, what are your options? Here are some effective IaC patterns used by modern teams:
1. GitOps with Custom Templates
Many teams adopt a GitOps model, using YAML or JSON templates stored in version control, applied via CI/CD pipelines. Tools like Helm for Kubernetes or CloudFormation for AWS fit this mold. It’s simple, auditable, and integrates naturally into developer workflows.
Trade-off: You still manage a growing collection of templates and environment-specific overrides.
2. Declarative APIs and SDKs
Cloud platforms increasingly expose high-level declarative APIs. With tools like Pulumi, you can write infra in familiar languages (TypeScript, Go, Python). This lowers the learning curve and aligns with existing engineering practices.
Trade-off: SDK-based IaC introduces runtime dependencies and can blur lines between app and infra code.
3. Platform Abstractions and Internal Developer Portals
Some orgs go further by building internal platforms where developers request or deploy resources through GUIs or CLI tools. Behind the scenes, the infra is codified—but the dev doesn’t need to see it.
Trade-off: These systems require maintenance and alignment with security/compliance teams.
Revolte Advantage: Revolte combines the power of a CLI for production-ready workflows with a web-driven interface for less technical users. Whether you’re a power user deploying via terminal or a product manager spinning up preview environments, everyone works from a single platform—no silos, no friction.
What’s Actually Hard About IaC
Non-Terraform teams often run into friction not because they’re skipping tools—but because core principles get skipped. Here’s what typically trips up teams trying to adopt IaC through ad-hoc methods:
- Environment drift. Manual provisioning leads to snowflakes and inconsistencies.
- Lack of observability. No single source of truth about what infra exists and why.
- Onboarding bottlenecks. New engineers spend days understanding brittle scripts.
- Policy gaps. Security teams can’t easily enforce controls across cloud resources.
What these teams need isn’t just a Terraform alternative. They need a new foundation—one that enforces best practices without requiring a DevOps PhD.
How Revolte Bridges the IaC Gap
Revolte isn’t just another abstraction layer—it’s a rethinking of how infra should work for modern teams. For non-Terraform orgs, Revolte offers a path to IaC that feels native, flexible, and safe.
Here’s how:
1. Code as the Interface, Not the Burden
Revolte lets teams define environments, services, and deployments through intuitive configuration files—without rigid syntax or state files to wrangle. It supports declarative definitions that feel like natural extensions of your app code.
Want to spin up a staging database and deploy a containerized app? You can define it in YAML or JSON, commit it to your repo, and Revolte handles the orchestration.
2. Autonomy Meets Guardrails
Unlike traditional IaC tools that centralize control, Revolte enables decentralized teams to work within safe boundaries. Platform teams can set org-level policies—like approved regions, resource quotas, or naming conventions—while dev teams ship independently.
This enables “paved roads” without red tape.
3. Zero-To-Deploy in One Click
Revolte’s real power is in abstracting the deployment lifecycle. Whether your service needs Kubernetes, a serverless runtime, or a VPC-based setup, it’s one command or click away. No need to manage provisioning steps or glue together CI/CD with IaC logic.
Everything from infra spin-up to post-deploy checks is managed in one flow.
4. Complete Visibility, From Infra to Logs
Infra-as-code only works when teams trust what’s running. Revolte provides real-time visibility across environments, showing not just what was deployed, but why and when. Logs, metrics, and configs are linked directly to the code that triggered them.
5. Agentic Automation + Embedded Security by Default
Revolte also integrates AI-driven pull request automation—detecting risks, reviewing infrastructure changes, and accelerating safe merges with minimal manual effort. Add to that built-in SAST scanning, and you have a system that secures your deployments without slowing your team down. Vulnerability insights are surfaced contextually, so you’re never flying blind.
Where to Start If You’re IaC-Curious but Not Terraform-Ready
If your team wants to adopt IaC without overcommitting to a specific tool, here’s how to start:
- Audit your current provisioning patterns. What’s manual? What’s templated?
- Pick a pilot service. Choose a non-critical service to test declarative infrastructure patterns.
- Focus on versioning and visibility first. Even a well-documented Bash script in Git is a step toward codification.
- Introduce lightweight guardrails. Start with naming conventions or tagging policies.
- Explore tools that abstract IaC complexity. If you’re scaling fast, managing security, or operating in regulated environments, platforms like Revolte can offer a better foundation.
Infrastructure-as-Code, Without the Baggage
IaC shouldn’t be a DevOps gatekeeping ritual. For non-Terraform teams, there’s a smarter path—one that respects your workflows, shortens feedback loops, and scales without chaos. Codifying your infrastructure doesn’t require drinking the Terraform Kool-Aid; it just requires tools that fit your way of working.
Revolte is built for this reality. For teams seeking velocity, visibility, and peace of mind—without the mental overhead—Revolte brings the power of IaC into the flow of development, not in its way.
Ready to ditch the tooling tax and embrace infrastructure that ships with you?
Explore Revolte today or book a demo to see how we can simplify your path to modern infrastructure.