> The problem is that containers are excellent, and IMO there's a gap in the market between "I want to run one container" and "I want a fully managed k8s cluste

> The problem is that containers are excellent, and IMO there's a gap in the market between "I want to run one container" and "I want a fully managed k8s cluster" A single container: Docker A few containers on the same node: Docker Compose Containers across multiple nodes with load balancing and networking: Docker Swarm (with Portainer to manage it) Alternatively, Podman is also pretty nice. If you need something that runs not just containers in clusters: Hashicorp Nomad If you want to go for Kubernetes but without it being too hard: K0s or K3s or MicroK8s or RKE (with Portainer or Rancher to manage it)