Lately, we have been seeing a surge of LinkedIn posts portraying Kubernetes as an unnecessarily complex, expensive and risky choice for early-stage startups.
The narrative is predictable. Kubernetes is too heavy. Too operationally demanding. Too much overhead for small teams that should be focused on shipping product.
We strongly disagree, and not as a theoretical stance, but based on years of hands-on production experience.
We have been using Kubernetes since 2018. From day one, we deliberately chose self-managed Kubernetes using kubeadm instead of managed offerings. The primary driver was portability. We wanted the freedom to run our clusters anywhere using the same operational knowledge, without learning cloud-provider-specific abstractions or getting locked into proprietary implementations.
Another equally important reason was MechCloud.
A large part of MechCloud’s architecture and philosophy is inspired by Kubernetes. Running and operating self-managed clusters forced us to understand Kubernetes internals deeply: how control plane components communicate, how upgrades actually work, how networking and storage behave under failure and what really happens under the hood. That operational knowledge has directly shaped how we design and build our platform.
For non-production environments, including local development and short-lived test clusters, we use MicroK8s. It keeps things lightweight, simple and extremely cost-effective, while still giving us a real Kubernetes environment that behaves like production.
Debugging Kubernetes Is Often Simpler Than You Think
Whenever something goes wrong in a cluster, most of the time a single command is enough:
kubectl get events -A
This single command has helped us diagnose the majority of issues across environments. From failing pods and misconfigured volumes to networking problems and broken controllers, Kubernetes surfaces a lot of actionable signals if you know where to look.
The idea that Kubernetes is impossible to debug is largely a myth. Like any distributed system, it requires understanding. Once you build the right mental model, day-to-day troubleshooting becomes systematic rather than stressful.
A Two-Node Kubernetes Cluster in Five Commands
One of the most common claims is that setting up Kubernetes is complicated. In practice, it does not have to be.
You can spin up a two-node Kubernetes cluster with one control plane and one worker using just five commands with MicroK8s. This setup is ideal for development, testing, demos and internal tooling.
Control Plane Node
On the first node, which will act as the control plane:
- Install MicroK8s
sudo snap install microk8s --classic --channel=1.35/stable
- Disable scheduling on the control plane
microk8s kubectl taint nodes --all node-role.kubernetes.io/master-
- Generate the join command
microk8s add-node
This prints the exact command required to join worker nodes to the cluster.
Worker Node
On the second node:
- Install MicroK8s
sudo snap install microk8s --classic --channel=1.35/stable
- Join the cluster as a worker
microk8s join <IP:PORT>/<TOKEN> --worker
That is it.
You now have a fully functional two-node Kubernetes cluster.
From here, installing an ingress controller or a Gateway API implementation is a one-time step. Adding more worker nodes is equally simple: provision a VM, install MicroK8s and run two commands. There is no ceremony, no heavy setup and no fragile bootstrapping process.
Managed vs Self-Managed Kubernetes: What Actually Matters
The debate around managed versus self-managed Kubernetes often misses the point. It should not be ideological. It should be pragmatic.
Ask yourself one question:
Do you want your engineers focused on shipping and running applications, or on installing, upgrading, patching and operating Kubernetes clusters?
Managed Kubernetes services are operated by cloud providers who employ some of the best Kubernetes engineers in the world. These teams manage clusters for thousands of customers at massive scale. They handle upgrades, security patches, reliability engineering and complex operational challenges that most companies would rather avoid.
Yes, managed Kubernetes costs more.
But you are paying for world-class expertise and peace of mind.
For many startups, this is the correct trade-off. You reduce operational burden, eliminate large classes of failure and free up engineering time to focus on product and customer value.
Self-managed Kubernetes, on the other hand, offers maximum control, portability and deep operational insight. It is ideal when:
- Cloud portability matters
- Deep Kubernetes expertise is a strategic advantage
- You are building infrastructure or platform products
- You want full visibility into system behavior and failure modes
Both approaches are valid. What matters is aligning the choice with your business and engineering priorities.
Kubernetes Is Flexible by Design
Startups do not need Netflix-level complexity.
But avoiding Kubernetes altogether is not the solution.
Kubernetes is flexible by design. It scales down just as well as it scales up. You can run a handful of microservices on a tiny two-node cluster or operate massive multi-region platforms with thousands of nodes.
The level of complexity you adopt is a choice, not a requirement.
You can start small:
- One control plane
- One worker node
- A simple ingress
- A few namespaces
And grow only when the product and traffic demand it.
The Five-Command Argument
So the next time someone says that startups with a few microservices are wasting time and money by adopting Kubernetes, especially managed Kubernetes, show them these five commands and ask them where exactly the waste is.
In less than ten minutes, you can go from zero to a real, production-grade Kubernetes environment that scales from a single node to thousands.
Kubernetes is not the enemy of startups.
Blindly avoiding it is.
If you are curious about lightweight Kubernetes setups, developer-friendly clusters or how we apply Kubernetes concepts inside MechCloud, we would love to hear your thoughts and experiences.
About MechCloud
MechCloud is a cloud-native platform designed to simplify how teams build, operate and scale infrastructure using stateless Infrastructure as Code. It is the only DevOps platform which supports stateless IaC. Many of MechCloud’s architectural concepts are inspired by Kubernetes and years of hands-on experience running real-world clusters across development and production environments.
If you are building cloud platforms, internal developer tooling or modern SaaS infrastructure, Kubernetes literacy is no longer optional. It is a competitive advantage.
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