We theoretically investigate the entangled states of an atomic ensemble that can be obtained via cavity feedback, varying the atom-light coupling from weak to strong, and including a systematic treatment of decoherence. In the strong-coupling regime for small atomic ensembles, the system is driven by cavity losses into a long-lived, highly entangled many-body state that we characterize analytically. In the weak-coupling regime for large ensembles, we find analytically the maximum spin-squeezing that can be achieved by optimizing both the coupling and the atom number. This squeezing is fundamentally limited by spontaneous emission to a constant value, which is independent of the atom number.