Subreddit Marketing Guide

How to Market on r/devops

A community for DevOps engineers and professionals discussing CI/CD, infrastructure automation, cloud platforms, monitoring, and the culture of DevOps practices.

310Ksubscribers
1Kactive now
Strict Self-Promo Policy
Subscribers
310K
Total community members
Active Now
1K
Users currently online
Post Lifespan
12-24 hours
How long posts stay relevant
Peak Times
weekday morning-est
Best time to post

r/devops Rules & Self-Promotion Policy

Understanding the rules is critical for successful marketing. Here's what you need to know about r/devops.

Strict Self-Promotion Policy

This subreddit has strict rules against self-promotion. Product mentions should be rare and only when genuinely helpful.

Community Rules

  • 1No recruiting posts
  • 2Be respectful and professional
  • 3Avoid vendor spam
  • 4Search before asking common questions
  • 5Keep discussions on-topic

How to Write for r/devops

Technical and experienced. Show don't tell. The community can spot marketing from miles away and rejects it. Share genuine technical insights, war stories, and lessons learned. Vendor bias is quickly called out.

Best Practices for r/devops

Maximize your impact by understanding when, what, and how to post.

Best Times to Post

  • Weekday Morning Est
  • Tuesday Thursday Afternoon Est
  • Sunday Evening Est

Posts stay relevant for about 12-24 hours

Content That Works

  • Technical deep-dives on implementation
  • War stories and incident post-mortems
  • Tool comparisons with hands-on experience
  • Career and culture discussions

Who's Here

DevOps engineers, SREs, platform engineers, and infrastructure professionals. Technical audience that values practical experience over theory. Skeptical of vendors and marketing.

Common Mistakes on r/devops

Avoid these pitfalls that get marketers banned or ignored.

Promoting a DevOps tool without technical depth

This is a technical community. "Use our tool for DevOps" is useless without architecture details, tradeoffs, and honest limitations.

Instead

Share technical implementation details, comparison with alternatives, and actual challenges you solved. Let expertise speak.

Asking basic questions covered in FAQs

"How do I start with DevOps?" and "Jenkins vs GitHub Actions?" are asked constantly.

Instead

Do research first. Ask specific questions: "We're running X pipeline with Y constraints. Considering Z approach. Thoughts on this architecture?"

Treating DevOps as just tools

DevOps is a culture and set of practices, not a tool stack. Pure tool discussions miss the bigger picture.

Instead

Discuss the practices and culture alongside tools. How do tools enable better collaboration? What organizational changes complement them?

Vendor astroturfing

Fake grassroots posts promoting tools are common and quickly identified. The community is hostile to hidden marketing.

Instead

Be transparent about your affiliation. "I work at [company]. We built [tool] because of [genuine problem]. Here's what we learned."

Oversimplifying enterprise complexity

Many members work in complex enterprise environments. Simple solutions that ignore compliance, legacy systems, and scale constraints frustrate them.

Instead

Acknowledge complexity. "This works for startups. Enterprise environments might need [modifications] due to [constraints]."

Post Formats That Work on r/devops

These content formats consistently perform well in this community.

Technical Deep-Dive

Example Format

""How we implemented [practice] at [scale]. Architecture: [details]. Challenges: [list]. What we'd do differently.""

Why It Works

Real experience with specifics. Acknowledges challenges. Retrospective adds value.

Incident Post-Mortem

Example Format

""We had [outage/incident]. Root cause: [details]. Detection: [time]. Resolution: [steps]. Prevention measures.""

Why It Works

War stories are valuable learning. Honest post-mortems help others prevent similar issues.

Tool Comparison

Example Format

""Migrated from [Tool A] to [Tool B]. Use case: [context]. What improved: [list]. What got worse: [list]. Overall assessment.""

Why It Works

Real migration experience with tradeoffs. Balanced view. Helps others making similar decisions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about marketing on r/devops

Direct promotion is heavily downvoted and often removed. However, genuine technical discussions about your tool can work. Share architecture details, honest comparisons, and real limitations. Be transparent about your affiliation. Marketing language is instantly rejected.
CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, containerization and Kubernetes, cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), monitoring and observability, automation, incident response, and the culture of DevOps practices.
Very. Most members are practicing DevOps engineers, SREs, or platform engineers. Surface-level content gets ignored. Deep technical dives, war stories, and real implementation challenges get the most engagement.
Share genuine technical experiences. Answer questions with specific, helpful advice. Post incident post-mortems and lessons learned. Over time, your comment history demonstrates expertise. Avoid anything that looks like marketing.
Yes, for understanding real pain points. Read what practitioners struggle with, what tools they're comparing, and what features they wish existed. But don't post surveys or market research—observe and participate genuinely.
Vendor spam, marketing content disguised as discussion, basic questions easily googled, DevOps-as-just-tools mindset, and anything that doesn't demonstrate real hands-on experience.

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