For over a decade, Bitnami has been a cornerstone of the open-source landscape, known for delivering ready-to-use, production-grade container images and Helm charts for a variety of popular applications. Today, countless software teams rely on these tools within their Kubernetes environments to ease deployments and updates for applications such as PostgreSQL, Redis, NGINX, and many more.  

Beginning just a few days ago (on August 28th, 2025), this will likely no longer be the case. Broadcom’s recent announcement to restructure Bitnami’s application catalog from freemium to premium will leave most teams scrambling to find a new solution or pay the Broadcom toll. 

With a tight deadline looming, here’s how your team can find a Bitnami alternative to chart a new path forward. 

What’s Changing For Bitnami Users? 

Put bluntly, beginning on September 29th, Bitnami is forcing a vast number of application catalog users to now pay for its new Bitnami Secure Images offering, replacing what was once mostly available at no charge. According to some early Reddit discussions, this fee is enough to raise a few red flags. 

Here’s a quick breakdown of what’s happening: 

Removal of the Bitnami Org – The current public Bitnami catalog will be deleted on September 29th, 2025. Older images will be moved to a Bitnami legacy registry, archived, and receive no further updates. These are intended for temporary use while planning migration. 

New Limited Free Tier – A new community-tier subset of container images has been created, containing 44 “development-only” images. Only the “latest” tag (no version pinning) will be available for use. 

New Paid Offering – To continue using the complete Bitnami catalog, teams will need to subscribe to a new paid offering (Bitnami Secure Images) hosted directly on the Bitnami registry. 

Source Code Still Available – Bitnami Helm charts and container images’ open-source code will continue to be maintained and accessible via GitHub.  

Although an extension to September from the original deletion date of August 28th was recently provided, brownouts for select images have already begun, forcing teams to make their decision quickly. 

What’s the Impact? 

Considering that many of the container images in the Bitnami catalog have pull counts in the millions, this change is likely to have a significant impact on countless teams and CI/CD pipelines. A quick Google or LinkedIn search reveals that the community response has not been positive. 

Teams are frustrated with Broadcom’s decision to redact a long-standing model centered around community open-source support. 

For those not willing to pay the tax, remaining on the free tier, using unsupported images, or doing nothing has several potential implications:

• Losing version pinning and relying on the “latest” versions only risks breaking changes, deployment chaos, and violates almost all modern DevOps best practices. 
• Failing to meet deadlines can lead to missing image references, resulting in broken CI/CD pipelines, scanner disruptions, and compliance violations.
• Using unsupported, unmaintained images is a pathway to compliance challenges and ongoing CVE maintenance. 

Of course, there is an instant fix, but it comes at a steep cost. Not only are you likely to pay upwards of six figures, but you are now locked into the Broadcom ecosystem, a choice that many operations teams have already declined following the VMware Tanzu acquisition a few years ago. 

Fortunately, in the time since Bitnami’s arrival on the scene, alternative container image options have emerged. If your team is using images from the Bitnami catalog, here’s what you need to consider before making a switch. 

1. Audit your Dependencies – Identify which Bitnami images your team relies on, take inventory, and ensure your new solution can account for your container needs as well as version-specific dependencies.
2. Build vs Buy? – For many teams, building and maintaining custom container images comes with unnecessary burden and overhead. Will your team be able to produce minimal, secure images? Can you keep up with CVE remediation? If you don’t have the skills and tooling already in place, it’s likely better to buy. 
3. Security and Compliance – One of the benefits of Bitnami’s new offering is its enhanced focus on container security and compliance. Even if you don’t want to go down the Bitnami path,  it’s worth considering a solution that provides options for minimal, hardened images to reduce your attack surface and meet compliance requirements. 
4. Additional Container Needs – While the Bitnami catalog is primarily focused on application images, it’s worth considering if your organization requires base images for programming languages or development use cases.  
5. Consider your budget – While the Broadcom tax is high, many of the alternatives aren’t exactly cheap. Many alternatives charge by the image, meaning if you have a large number of images, your costs are likely to match. 
6. Consider your partner in container security – Finally, it’s worth considering who you actually want by your side in the ongoing battle for container security. Is it a large organization concerned with whale customers, or is it a smaller, dedicated team focused on solving your business problems? 

ActiveState Secure Containers 

For teams looking for a Bitnami alternative, ActiveState Secure Containers provide a straightforward answer to all of the above. Unlike other offerings, ActiveState delivers fully managed, secure images, rebuilt daily to your exact specifications. ActiveState Images can be custom-built to act as a drop-in replacement for Bitnami images and offer the following additional benefits: 

• Minimal, Low-to-No CVE Images – Start with a secure base image for popular languages, frameworks, and applications.
• Fully Customizable – Configure your image with any of our more than 40M secure open-source components.
• End-to-End Remediation – Custom images are rebuilt regularly, maintained, and patched (at both the OS and application component layers) with industry-leading SLAs.
• Seamless Integration – Custom container images are delivered via a private registry for direct integration with your CI/CD pipelines.
• Transparent Pricing – Pay only for the open-source components you need and reuse them infinitely across unlimited container images.

For decades, ActiveState has helped organizations manage their open-source software no matter where it’s deployed. By partnering with ActiveState, you inherit years of build-engineering expertise and tooling that eliminates overhead and allows your team to plug and play.

Simplify Your Migration with ActiveState Today

If your organization relies on Bitnami containers and associated Helm charts, the team at ActiveState is here to help. Start by browsing our free hardened images on Docker Hub. If you can’t find the image you need, contact us and we’ll create it using our catalog of over 40 million open source components! 

Contact our team and tell us your container requirements. Our customer success and build engineering teams are happy to assist with any of your Bitnami or container image needs and will build your first image free to prove it!