hawkBit Has Sunsetted their OTA System’s UI: What’s Next for Embedded Teams

For years, hawkBit offered embedded teams a dependable (and free) way to manage over-the-air (OTA) updates. Maintained by the Eclipse Foundation, the project provided a backend service for orchestrating rollouts to edge devices using the Vaadin-based web UI that many teams used to manage deployments.

In 2023, the Eclipse Foundation announced that hawkBit’s Vaadin-based UI would be officially deprecated. With no active development or support, teams relying on the tool are now left asking: what now?

If your team is relying on hawkBit’s UI, or considering it for your OTA workflow, it’s time to reassess. The window for proactive migration is open, but narrowing. In this article, we’ll break down what hawkBit was used for, where it stands today, the reality of using the solution, and what options embedded teams have for a reliable OTA strategy moving forward. 

What is hawkBit and Why Are Teams Moving On?

hawkBit is an open-source project maintained by The Eclipse Foundation that provides a backend service for managing software and firmware updates to constrained edge devices. hawkBit supports both wired and over-the-air (OTA) update workflows, making it a popular choice for early-stage or DIY update infrastructure.

Because hawkBit focuses on the backend infrastructure, many teams relied on its management UI web app to manage OTA updates for their fleet. This web interface allowed admins to manage deployments visually, including selecting devices, scheduling rollouts, and tracking update progress. For many teams, this served as the primary tool for interacting with their OTA system.

A screenshot of the system config view of the hawkBit system on the Vaadin UI.

In 2024, hawkBit officially deprecated the UI, leaving terms without a supported or maintained way to control updates and pushing many to search for a new solution. 

The End of hawkBit’s UI: What It Means for Your OTA Stack

While hawkBit was an attractive option for engineering teams that needed a free, open-source tool to manage firmware updates, the deprecation of its Vaadin-based management UI means there is no longer any active support or maintenance. For hawkBit users, the impact is significant: 

• No patches for security vulnerabilities. Any newly discovered bugs or exploits will go unaddressed, leaving devices and infrastructure exposed to growing threats. 
• No guarantee of stability or compatibility: Without ongoing development, there’s no assurance the UI will continue functioning as dependencies evolve. OTA workflows could break without warning. 
• Teams may be forced to maintain it themselves: If something breaks, there’s no upstream maintainer to rely on. Teams may need to allocate internal engineering resources to keep the system afloat— a costly a distracting burden. 

• No roadmap for new features: There will be no new features, optimizations, or user experience updates. 

For embedded teams managing production fleets, remaining on the hawkBit management UI is risky, unsustainable, and a surefire way to increase technical debt over time.

The Reality of Scaling with Open Source OTA Tools

The approach of self-hosting open source OTA tools like hawkBit and Mender Open Source can rapidly scale in terms of complexity and costs. These solutions are often well-suited for early-stage prototyping or fleets at the scale of 100s of devices, but as complexity grows, teams run into roadblocks. They lack the deeper feature sets needed to support large fleets or complex rollout strategies, and costs to maintain become prohibitive. And with the lost UI, teams are increasingly forced to rely on manual scripts and internal tooling to keep updates flowing, which is a fragile approach for production environments.

While Mender is built on an open-source core, which included the basic OTA update framework and some essential functionality, much of its advanced features are gated behind commercial plans. 

Beyond hawkBit: Maturing Your OTA Infrastructure with Memfault

If your team is now faced with finding a viable replacement for hawkBit, Memfault is a natural next step. Memfault offers a complete OTA update solution designed specifically for constrained edge devices, with a UI designed to match the way embedded teams actually work.

Memfault’s OTA tooling includes built-in support for managing rollouts, tracking update health, and triggering automatic recovery when things go wrong. Unlike open-source tools that require manual upkeep, Memfault is fully supported and production-ready out of the box. 

A screenshot of the OTA release dashboard in Memfault.

Memfault’s OTA solutions provides: 

• ✔ Cohort-Based Rollouts
• ✔ Real-Time Release Monitoring
• ✔ Customizable Alerts
• ✔ Flexible Integration
• ✔ Multi-Component Updates
• ✔ Four-Eyes Approval Workflows
• ✔ Complete OTA Audit Logs

These features, combined with Memfault’s user-friendly interface and robust support, make it a comprehensive solution for managing OTA updates in embedded systems. Want to do a quick comparison?

Here’s how hawkBit compares with Memfault’s OTA solution:

hawkBit vs Mender vs Memfault: A Quick Comparison

Switch from hawkBit to Memfault in Under One Hour

Here’s the good news: if you’re currently using hawkBit, migrating to Memfault is straightforward, especially if you’re using hawkBit’s DDI (Direct Device Integration) protocol. Migrating users would leverage the Memfault Web Application as a replacement for the hawkBit Management UI.

In most cases, the only steps required to migrate are updating your device’s endpoint URL and provisioning an API key. That’s it. No need to rebuild your OTA client or rearchitect your system.

For a full overview of how hawkBit concepts map to Memfault, check out our docs on Memfault OTA vs. self-hosted hawkBit. 

OTA Is Just the Beginning

The embedded industry is shifting towards more scalable, reliable, and developer-friendly tooling. Memfault helps teams make that leap without friction. Switching to a scalable OTA and observability platform is about more than just staying current. It’s about:

• De-risking product launches
• Accelerating development cycles
• Delivering a better product to your customers

And doing it all without maintaining brittle infrastructure.

With Memfault, you get more than a maintained OTA pipeline. You also gain built-in device observability, automated crash reporting, real-time metric collection, and a modern UI that continues evolving with embedded teams’ needs.

Curious about next-gen OTA? Try Memfault’s sandbox and explore the OTA workflow today.

Ready to switch? Book a demo with one of our firmware engineers.