cert-manager is the standard for certificate automation. The question is what sits above it — enforcing policy, routing approvals, and maintaining the audit trail your security and compliance teams require.
CertForge does not replace cert-manager — it extends it. Install the CertForge external issuer alongside your existing cert-manager setup and every CertificateRequest flows through CertForge's policy engine before a certificate is issued. Your workload manifests don't change. cert-manager continues to manage the Kubernetes Secret lifecycle. CertForge adds the governance layer it was never designed to provide.
|
CertForge
+ cert-manager
|
Venafi TLS Protect
for Kubernetes
|
cert-manager
alone (no governance)
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Kubernetes Integration | |||
| cert-manager external issuer | N/A — is cert-manager | ||
| No workload manifest changes required | — | ||
| Namespace-aware audit trail | |||
| Works with existing cert-manager Certificates | — | ||
| Governance & Policy | |||
| Domain trust policies | |||
| Human approval workflows | |||
| Wildcard restrictions per policy | |||
| Approval escalation with separate contacts | |||
| Policy violations rejected with clear error | on CertificateRequest |
||
| Compliance & Visibility | |||
| Immutable audit trail | |||
| SIEM integration (Splunk, Datadog, Sentinel) | |||
| Certificate Discovery (CT logs + filesystem) | |||
| SOC 2 / ISO 27001 / PCI-DSS compliance controls | |||
| 47-day certificate lifecycle readiness | automation only, no governance |
||
| Pricing & Complexity | |||
| Mid-market pricing |
$179/mo SaaS
or self-hosted from $6.9k/yr
|
$50k–$200k+/yr
enterprise contract required
|
Free
no governance included
|
| Time to first certificate governed | Minutes | Weeks to months | Minutes (no governance) |
| Professional services required | self-service |
typically required |
|
| Works outside Kubernetes too | ACME, REST API, CLI |
Kubernetes only |
|
Outstanding at automating certificate lifecycle inside Kubernetes. No policy engine, no approval workflow, no audit trail. Anyone with access to create a Certificate resource can issue a cert for any domain — there is nothing to stop them.
Keep cert-manager exactly as-is. Add CertForge as the external issuer and every certificate request now runs through policy enforcement, optional human approval, and a full audit trail — without changing a single workload manifest.
Enterprise-grade governance at enterprise prices. Excellent product for large organizations with dedicated PKI teams, six-figure budgets, and multi-month implementation timelines. Overkill for most teams.
Install the CertForge external issuer in under five minutes. Your existing Certificates, Issuers, and workloads stay exactly as they are — you just gain the governance layer.