github.com/dahs81/otto@v0.2.1-0.20160126165905-6400716cf085/website/source/intro/vs/terraform.html.md (about) 1 --- 2 layout: "intro" 3 page_title: "Otto vs. Terraform" 4 sidebar_current: "vs-other-terraform" 5 description: |- 6 Comparison between Otto and Terraform. 7 --- 8 9 # Otto vs. Terraform 10 11 [Terraform](https://www.terraform.io) is a tool for launching infrastructure. 12 It is also written by the same people who created Otto. Terraform is often 13 used as a deployment tool. 14 15 Terraform is a good solution for deployment. It can manage complex 16 infrastructures and safely orchestrates complicated operations. Terraform 17 isn't a development tool and makes no attempt to provide development-oriented 18 features. 19 20 Otto uses Terraform internally to manage infrastructure and power the deploys. 21 However, Otto automatically generates the Terraform configuration based 22 on the [Appfile](/docs/concepts/appfile.html) input, which is much simpler 23 than learning Terraform itself. 24 25 Terraform is a lower level tool that requires the user to have a deep 26 understanding of the cloud platform they want to deploy to, the resources 27 they'll need, and the configuration of those resources. 28 29 Otto requires little to no configuration and automatically can deploy 30 to multiple cloud platforms with complex automatically-generated 31 Terraform configurations using industry best practices. 32 33 Otto has a complete development experience and guides the developer 34 through the build process as well. Terraform expects deployable artifacts 35 (whether it is an AMI or a container) to be pre-built by some other 36 mechanism.