I bought a Spike CF10 in March. I was doing the same thing, considering the SS Brewtech as well as the Spike. Now that I know what I got with the Spike, I can assess the comparison table
HERE.
That table is from the SS Brewtech site, at least it links to it. It's inaccurate w/r/t some of the things the Spike conical has, which makes the SS Brewtech look better by comparison. It's simply wrong about some of the SPIKE things, for instance:
Spike DOES have available temp control both heating and chilling.
Spike DOES have an available carb stone (more on that below) and it doesn't need a valve
Spike DOES have an insulating jacket, it can be bought separately or as part of the temp control kit
Spike DOES have a PRV and a pressure gauge as part of the pressure manifold kit.
Other things I'd consider not important, such as digital vs analog thermometer; I don't use the analog one, I read the temp directly from the temp control unit.
Still other things WERE important, i.e., half batches. You can do half--5-gallon--batches with the Spike CF10; I couldn't find anywhere on the SSBrewtech site that said you could do half-batches with theirs, and in fact, it says theirs is for 10-gallon batches. But in a FAQ someplace SS Brewtech says you can do 5 gallon batches in their 14-gallon unitank, BUT the the thermowell is at about the 5.5-gallon mark. So temp control would be iffy, or you'd have to be sure you have 6+ gallons in there each time. Not designed to do this, whereas the Spike CF10 is.
That was probably the most important difference between them for me: the Spike CF10 was designed to allow for half-batches, whereas it's clear the SS Brewtech was not.
If you know what you want, the Spike approach is more modular, and you can potentially get your add-on from other sources, depending on what you want/need.
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One of the things that made it difficult is I'd never bought anything like this, so what "features" are important and which are sales fluff, well, you can't know until after you've used it.
You also have to think about how you're going to use it; I have camlocks on my Blichmann Riptide and on my kettle; I needed to get fittings that would let me connect to my Spike using camlocks. That'd be an issue for the SS Brewtech too, but it's just something to consider. It's the old "What am I going to wish I'd done later on?" question.
Another thing is that the pricing is different; on the face of it, the Spike is much cheaper, but you'll have to add specific items to it to bring it up to where you want it. The SS Brewtech includes more of those things as standard. My Spike base unit is listed for $625; the SS Brewtech is $1099. But the SSB includes a chilling coil, a neoprene jacket, a bottom shelf, pressure gauge manifold, whereas I had to add that to mine.
Here was my initial order:
2x 1.5" Gasket for $1.00 each
1x 1.5" TC Clamp for $6.00 each
1x 1.5" TC x Barb for $12.00 each
1x Leg Extension Set for $32.00 each
1x Caster Kit for $30.00 each
1x 2" TC Sight Glass for $50.00 each
1x CIP Ball for $55.00 each
1x Racking Arm for $25.00 each
1x Gas Manifold - Gas Manifold Bundle for $75.00 each
1x TC-100 Bundle - CF10 / Yes Heater for $375.00 each
1x CF10 Spike Conical Unitank for $625.00 each
Subtotal : $1,287.00 USD
This included leg extensions and casters which are cheaper at Spike. But I also ended up buying the shelf in a subsequent order; I'd thought I'd just make my own, but then reason (probably) prevailed. It also doesn't include the Carb Stone, so with the shelf and carb stone, that was an extra $105. With some extra fittings, clamps, gaskets, and so on, I had another $100 in it.
There are some advantages to the more modular Spike approach, but the difficulty is knowing what you want and need. I bought the carb stone for $65 but I have not used it. This is reflective of having been a newb with these things. I have a lager going right now, and with about 8 points of gravity left to go, I sealed up the fermenter; the internal pressure right now is 12 psi, so that beer is mostly carbed. I'll pressure-transfer it to a keg and put it on gas to carb it the rest of the way. I'm trying to implement LODO techniques as much as possible, so that's why I'm not using beverage CO2 to carb it.
As a result, I haven't seen any particular reason to use the carb stone to carbonate my beer. But I bought it thinking that perhaps at some point I might want to do that after crashing, perhaps to speed up clearing the fermenter for another batch.
The carb stone can also be used to oxygenate the wort, but I haven't used it for that either; I have a long aeration wand and I just stick that down into the conical after racking and do it that way.
Did I need to spend that $65? Don't know yet. SSBrewtech includes a carb stone, but if you don't need or want one....
So with the extras (clamps, stuff like that), I'm around $1500 with this setup, but it's got everything I want, leg extensions, temp control kit, shelf, etc. That's the all-in price, excluding some sort of chiller.
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I've seen posts that say after you add all the extras, the prices of these are very similar, so it comes down to what is important to you in design. From what I've seen, I think that's largely true. The tradeoff in design is that the Spike offering can be easily opened up and cleaned; the smaller opening on the top of the SS Brewtech might make that more difficult, but it also can handle a higher pressure.
I don't use a blowoff cane, so I'm not swayed by the fact the SS Brewtech has one. I use the CO2 coming off the fermentation to purge the keg into which that beer is going, and there's a Gas-Out post on the pressure manifold for just that purpose. It's an example of knowing what, exactly, you're going to want to do with it. If you've never used one before, that's hard to know, exactly.
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In the end, I'm sure I could brew great beer with either unitank. Good luck with your choice!
