STACKIT 7: Getting Started - Trials, Onboarding, and First Steps
STACKIT is an enterprise cloud platform, and its onboarding experience reflects that. Unlike fully self serve cloud providers, where you can have an instance running within minutes of entering a credit card, STACKIT account provisioning goes through a sales and onboarding process.
For the target audience, businesses in regulated industries, enterprises with DORA or BSI C5 requirements, and organisations that need documented sovereignty credentials, this is not a drawback. A structured onboarding process gives you a real relationship with STACKIT’s team, documented service agreements, and clear escalation paths. That is often exactly what regulated organisations need.
Account Access: No Open Self-Serve Sign-Up
STACKIT does not offer an open free tier or a fully self serve sign up flow. Access to the platform is handled through STACKIT’s sales process. You contact STACKIT, explain your use case, and an account is provisioned after an initial discussion.
Startup credits are available, but not through a public application process. The D11Z Ventures programme, the Schwarz Group’s venture capital arm, provides cloud credits to early stage startups that meet the eligibility criteria. This is not really comparable to AWS Activate or Scaleway’s startup credits. If you are an early-stage startup mainly looking for free credits to get started, Scaleway may be a better first step.
For established businesses evaluating STACKIT for production workloads, the onboarding process is the right place to begin.
Initiating the Conversation
STACKIT’s website provides contact options for enterprise enquiries. When reaching out, it helps to be specific about your use case: the types of workloads you plan to run, your data residency and sovereignty requirements, any specific certifications you need (BSI C5, ISO 27001, DORA compliance), and your current AWS service mix.
STACKIT’s sales team can provide a demo environment for evaluation purposes. This lets you run test workloads and verify performance before committing. Ask for this directly if it is not offered.
First Workloads: What to Start With
Once your account is provisioned, the approach to initial workloads is similar regardless of the cloud provider: start with something real but not business critical, validate the environment, and build from there.
Good initial workloads for a STACKIT evaluation include a staging or development environment for an existing application, a data analytics or batch-processing workload, a managed database instance for a non-production dataset, or an object storage migration for backup and archival data.
These workloads give you real performance and cost data, along with real operational experience, without putting production traffic at risk.
Infrastructure as Code
STACKIT provides a Terraform provider. If your AWS infrastructure is already managed with Terraform, moving to STACKIT resources involves replacing AWS provider blocks with their STACKIT equivalents. STACKIT’s Terraform documentation covers all supported resources.
The OpenStack CLI is also available for teams that prefer command line management. STACKIT’s infrastructure APIs are RESTful and well-documented.
Support
STACKIT provides enterprise support as part of its service offering. Response times and support scope are defined in the service level agreement negotiated during onboarding. For regulated industries with SLA requirements, this is an important part of the initial onboarding discussion.
STACKIT’s documentation portal covers all services in detail. The platform is based on OpenStack, so a substantial body of general OpenStack documentation is also relevant for infrastructure-level questions.
How iWorks Can Help
iWorks manages STACKIT migrations for clients in Ireland and across Europe. Our involvement typically covers the full project sequence: workload assessment, STACKIT account initiation, architecture design, data migration, application deployment, parallel running, and cutover.
We can also help with the initial evaluation by mapping your current AWS service mix to STACKIT equivalents, building a cost comparison, and assessing the compliance benefits for your specific regulatory situation.
If you are considering STACKIT and want expert guidance, contact us here. We are familiar with the platform and with the process of migrating production workloads from AWS to a European sovereign cloud.
Summary: Why STACKIT
- 100% German owned (Schwarz Group / Schwarz Digits), with no CLOUD Act exposure.
- SEAL 3 certified and awarded part of the EU Commission’s €180 million sovereign cloud contract in April 2026.
- Data centres in Germany and Austria exclusively, so data never leaves the DACH region.
- ISO 27001 and BSI C5 certified, meeting German public sector and financial services procurement requirements.
- DORA compliant, specifically relevant for EU financial services firms.
- Full-stack cloud platform built on OpenStack, including compute, object storage, managed databases (PostgreSQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, Redis, OpenSearch, SQL Server), Kubernetes (SKE), RabbitMQ messaging, DNS, and monitoring.
- Approximately 35 to 50% cheaper than AWS for equivalent standard workloads.
- Built on internal Schwarz Group infrastructure, not an experimental platform but one proven in production.
This series has covered the case for STACKIT, the service comparison, the compliance posture, the cost comparison, the migration process, and the specific fit for regulated industries.
Ready to Have a Conversation?
If you have read this series and recognised your organisation in it, the next step is simple. Get in touch. We will have a chat, ask a few questions, and give you an honest view of what is involved. No charge. No obligation.
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