Backstage is dominating the developer portal market
Analysis of the IDP landscape.
Welcome to the latest issue of Engineering Enablement, a weekly newsletter sharing research and perspectives on developer productivity.
As part of my work at DX, I talk to many companies that are navigating or building out internal developer portals (IDPs). Although AI investments are garnering the most attention right now, developer portals remain an important topic.
I’ve covered IDPs frequently on my podcast, including deep-dives with American Airlines, T-Mobile, and DoorDash. Over the past couple years, I’ve observed Backstage—created by Spotify—come up in almost every discussion around this topic. More recently, I’ve also become acquainted with different SaaS vendors in the space. This article summarizes my analysis of the market.
Market share and adoption
DX recently surveyed 180 companies to understand how they were approaching internal developer portals (IDPs), and the results were pretty striking.
Backstage is dominating the IDP market, holding an impressive 89% market share compared to SaaS competitors and achieving a remarkable 67% overall market penetration. These percentages are even higher for enterprise companies.
SaaS solutions were adopted by only 9% of companies, despite large entrants like Harness and Atlassian. This translates to Backstage having 89% market share versus existing SaaS solutions. Homegrown solutions were the second largest segment, represented mostly by solutions predating Backstage.
This data speaks to the remarkable momentum behind Backstage, as well as the power and success of an open-source solution in a product space that I believe is well-suited for it—as I discuss later in this article.
Of the organizations using Backstage, 72% reported that their IDPs were being “actively developed or implemented”, while 28% reported that their IDPs were in “maintenance mode.” These latter organizations generally considered their IDPs to be feature complete, or put on-hold due to focus on higher priority platform investments.
So, should you just use Backstage?
Generally, I think the answer is yes. Our findings speak loudly to the success of companies adopting Backstage (for the latest Backstage updates, subscribe to their community newsletter). And when I speak to companies that have implemented Backstage, their experiences are generally positive. Interestingly, companies that have developed homegrown IDPs from scratch, like CarGurus, are also positive about their journeys.
While there are well-warranted complaints about the upkeep cost of Backstage—especially recently, with breaking changes that were released—I have heard an equal volume of complaints from companies that have engaged the current crop of SaaS companies. In my view, the challenges with Backstage are mostly categorical challenges with IDPs versus being Backstage-specific.
It is also my observation that the anti-Backstage sentiment is being exaggerated by some SaaS vendors who are sitting on large piles of VC-money. Based on interviews with customers and insiders, I have learned that several of the well-known SaaS solutions require lengthy 6 to 12 months implementations, and significant engineering resources to build out. In contrast, one of our senior engineers at DX was able to stand up Backstage—and build a custom plugin—in a matter of days.
Regardless of whether companies choose Backstage or another route, one universal challenge with IDPs is driving developer adoption. This frequent challenge further leads me to believe that Backstage is the best choice for companies because the Achilles’ heel of current SaaS solutions is that you lose control and flexibility needed to build the features to make your portal successful.
Achieving developer portal success
Brex’s IDP journey provides valuable lessons. As recounted by former Staff Engineer, James Russo, Brex’s platform team invested heavily in Backstage, only to later realize that their team wasn’t focused on solving the right problems. This insight was driven by a developer survey that they ran with DX.
The lesson here is to avoid the trap of blindly hopping aboard the IDP train and ending up with a solution in search of a problem. Instead, start by gathering data and feedback from developers and leaders to fully pinpoint the problems you want to solve. Then, determine the right roadmap and features to build in your IDP.
Another lesson from Brex—which I’ve frequently heard from other companies—is that service catalogs and scorecards are of limited value to developers. Catalogs and scorecards are primarily useful for driving top-down visibility, standards, and better incident response, rather than for improving the developer experience.
This isn’t to say that portals can’t be highly valuable for developers. DoorDash’s approach to their developer portal, similar to Spotify’s own internal implementation, focuses heavily on making the IDP a can’t-miss destination for developers by housing valuable internal tools that had previously been scattered across different repos and web apps.
From numerous companies I’ve spoken to, creating a unified hub for bespoke internal tools—and improving these tools to make them first-class experiences—has repeatedly proven to be an effective approach to unlocking durable IDP value and adoption. That, along with an InnerSource deployment model, can offer a path to compounding value over time.
Who’s hiring right now
This week’s featured job openings. See more open roles here.
UKG is hiring a Director and Sr Director of Technical Program Management | Multiple locations
Adyen is hiring a Team Lead in Platform Engineering | Amsterdam, Netherlands
Snowflake is hiring a Director of Engineering - Test Framework | Bellevue and Menlo Park
Lyft is hiring an Engineering Manager - DevEx | Toronto, Canada
That’s it for this week, thanks for reading.
-Abi