I spent two years trying to do what Backstage does for free
The main problem with Backstage (BS) is that while it does provide some canned functionality, any extension of that functionality requires the utilization of their plugins system and wholesale buy-in to their ecosystem.  Welcome to Wordpress for enterprise developers folks!<p>The plugin system isn&#x27;t bad - but its a false narrative to believe you plunk this down and get some sort of valuable developer portal at an enterprise level (small biz sure - fortune 500...yeah no).<p>Spotify does open-source a number of their plugins, but after having looked extensively at which ones they make available and which ones we would have to write (and deal with their plugin system for) we opted out.   The cost&#x2F;benefit ratio is definitely there for a technical writer, but IMO its not there for serious development.   (Pls - Anyone who disagrees with that - begin by telling me why you don&#x27;t use Joomla as a base for all your custom applications )<p>Team integration at a company level is another challenge with Backstage.   GitHub (the basis and sort of harvested DB for BS) is largely disconnected from company structures and AD and all the things for most companies. Yes GitHub enterprise is a thing... no in general its still not connected to company structures.  There are teams in Backstage, but they are generally managed in isolation from the rest of the company which presents its own challenges and integration problems with other systems.  Don&#x27;t even get me started on the fact that asking everyone to put their service defintions in specific files in specific places in GitHub is no better&#x2F;worse than making them enter it into a ui or spreadsheet or confluence article or anything except now its scattered in 10,000 repos - good luck getting everyone to change that.<p>Ultimately this isn&#x27;t software that you simply install and use.  Its a base that will likely require extension, and doing so means going down a one way path of adoption.  Nothing it does is compatible with anything else.  Is that good for Spotify - sure.  Lots of folks helping build software they want to use is great.  Is it good for the community?  I&#x27;m not so sure.  This article felt like a paid add (not suggesting it was - just saying it read like one) more than an honest plus&#x2F;minus of the software and is anyone really surprised a technical writer couldn&#x27;t build a proper enterprise developer portal by themselves?  In other news - water is wet, the sky is blue and my kid wants to watch youtube.