Solution

Managed Kubernetes on hardware you don't share.

A fully single-tenant RKE2 cluster with its own dedicated control plane, running on dedicated nodes. Not a slice of a shared control plane — your cluster, your nodes, managed as much or as little as you want.

The problem

The problem with shared managed Kubernetes

Managed Kubernetes from the major clouds runs your workloads on shared infrastructure with a control plane you cannot see, metered networking, and egress charges between zones. You pay a premium for managed control planes and again for the load balancers, storage, and traffic underneath.

How Smelt solves it

Single-tenant by default

Your RKE2 cluster has its own dedicated control plane on dedicated nodes. No shared API server, no neighbors on your hardware.

Managed where it helps

Managed upgrades, Prometheus and Grafana monitoring, and ArgoCD GitOps are available as add-ons. Or take the keys and run it yourself.

Storage and traffic included

NVMe and a transfer allowance ship with the nodes, with no egress fees and no per-zone networking charges.

Predictable node-based pricing

You pay for the nodes in the cluster, not for every pod, load balancer, and gigabyte that moves between them.

FAQ

Questions, answered.

Which Kubernetes distribution do you run?

RKE2 — a CNCF-conformant, security-hardened distribution. Each customer gets a single-tenant cluster with a dedicated control plane.

Can I still get root on the nodes?

If you choose the Metal option you have full root and IPMI. The Orchestrated option hands you cluster-admin on a managed RKE2 cluster instead.

Do you charge for traffic between nodes?

No. Internal networking runs at 25 Gbps between nodes on the switch fabric, and there are no egress fees on the included transfer allowance.

Ready to get off the cloud meter?

Charter applications are open for the first deployment. Apply in two minutes, or join the waitlist — no payment required.