An Exclusive List of The Top Continuous Deployment Tools with Features, Comparison & Pricing. Select The Best Software Deployment Tool for Your Business in 2019.
Continuous Deployment is the automated software development procedure which makes every code change to pass through the entire pipeline before releasing to production.
This article will give you a list of the top Continuous Delivery Tools along with their features and comparison in detail.
Codefresh has done a survey to know the challenges of continuous deployment. The below graph will show you the results of this survey.
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What You Will Learn:
Continuous Software Development
Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Continuous Deployment are together called as Continuous Software Development. It is related to Agile and DevOps methodologies.
Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment are often considered as the same processes. However, there is a difference between these two terms.
Continuous delivery refers to the process of continuous submission of new code to the testing team by developers. Continuous deployment refers to the process of continuous software releases.
The code that has been automation tested and passed will be released into the production environment.
The below image will help you to understand the difference between Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment.
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List Of The Top Continuous Deployment Tools
Let us explore the best Automated Software Deployment Tools available in the market.
- AWS CodeDeploy
- Octopus Deploy
- Jenkins
- TeamCity
- DeployBot
- GitLab
- Bamboo
- CircleCI
- Codeship
- Google Cloud Deployment Manager
Comparison Of The Best Software Deployment Tools
| Platform | Use Case | Free Trial | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
AWS CodeDeploy | Windows, Mac OS | Startup projects | No cost for the code deployed through Amazon EC2 or AWS Lambda. | Pay $0.02 per on-premises instance. |
Octopus Deploy | Cross-platform | All projects | 10 deployment targets are free on Your Infrastructure. Free trial: 30 days (Cloud-based). | Cloud Deployment:$45/month You Infrastructure: $2300/year for 25 deployment targets. |
Jenkins | Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix. | Big Projects | Free | Free and Open Source. |
TeamCity | Cross-Platform | For Enterprises | Free: Professional Server License for 3 Builds. | Price starts at $299. |
DeployBot | Windows, Mac OS. | For Big iIndustries. | Free plan available. | Basic: $15/month Plus: $25/month Premium: $50/month |
Let’s Start!!
#1) AWS CodeDeploy
Best for small to large businesses.
Price: AWS doesn’t charge any cost for code deployments through CodeDeploy on Amazon EC2 or AWS Lambda. For on-premises instances, you will have to pay $0.02 per on-premises instance.
AWS CodeDeploy will help you with the application deployments to Amazon EC2 instances, on-premises instances, serverless Lambda functions, or Amazon ECS services. It provides the features of Automated Instance Deployments, Minimized Downtime, Centralized Control, Ease of Adoption.
Features:
- You will get centralized control for deployment functions like Launch, Control, and Monitor with the help of AWS Management Console, CLI, SDKs, and APIs.
- The recent history of your deployments will also get tracked by CodeDeploy. This feature will help you to investigate the timeline and change the history of past deployments.
- AWS CodeDeploy can perform application deployments to various compute services like Amazon EC2, AWS Fargate, AWS Lambda, and on-premises instances.
Verdict: AWS CodeDeploy is platform agnostic and can work with any application. It will allow you to repeat application deployment to various groups of instances. It will completely eliminate the need for manual operations and avoid downtime for application during deployment.
Website: AWS CodeDeploy
#2) Octopus Deploy
Best for small to large businesses.
Price: Octopus Deploy has two solutions i.e. Cloud Deployment as a service ($45 per month) and Server Octopus on Your Infrastructure ($2300 per year for 25 deployment targets).
Octopus on your infrastructure will be free for 10 deployment targets. A free trial is available for 30 days for a cloud-based solution.
This deployment automation server will help the teams of any size to orchestrate releases and deploy applications. It will allow you to deploy on-premises or in the cloud.
It can handle high-level deployment steps for .NET, JAVA, and other platforms. It will easily manage advanced deployment patterns. Tentacle is the agent provided by the Octopus to deploy to virtual machines.
Features:
- You can schedule deployments.
- You can limit who can deploy to production.
- With this tool, the deployments will be repeatable and reliable.
- It can run custom scripts and manage sensitive variables.
Verdict: You will be able to block promotion for broken releases. It supports Multi-tenant deployments, Complex networks, and Advanced patterns. It will help you with certificate management.
Website: Octopus Deploy
#3) Jenkins
Best for small to large businesses.
Price: Free and open source.
Jenkins is a free and open-source tool that will automate the process of building, testing, and deploying the software. It supports Windows, Mac, and other UNIX like OS. It will work as a simple CI server as well as a continuous delivery hub.
Features:
- It provides various plugins that will support to build, deploy, and automate any project.
- It can perform work distribution across multiple machines.
- It provides a web interface that will make the setup and configuration easy.
Verdict: Jenkins is an extensible solution that can be extended through plugins to infinite possibilities. This java-based program is ready to run out of the box.
Website: Jenkins
#4) TeamCity
Best for small to large businesses.
Price: Professional server license is free for 3 build agents. Build agent license will cost you $299. Enterprise server license price is based on the number of agents, i.e. 3 agents for $1999, 5 agents for $2499, etc.
The free plan will allow you to define up to 100 build configurations. You will be able to run 3 builds concurrently.
TeamCity provides a wide range of developer-oriented features. The platform is extendable through 100s of ready-to-use plugins. It has all the features that are required for Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment. It provides full GitLab support. It has Token-based authentication.
Features:
- You can create templates using the common settings and the tool will allow you to inherit build configuration in any number.
- The tool will allow you to create a project hierarchy.
- You can build chains and dependencies to run the build procedures in parallel or sequence.
- It has a facility to set up your CI and CD pipeline through the configuration scripts.
- Scripts will be server and project independent.
Verdict: TeamCity has features for Code Quality Tracking, User Management, Build Infrastructure, and integrations with tools for Version control and Issue tracker. It will provide comprehensive VCS integration.
Website: TeamCity
#5) DeployBot
Best for small to large businesses.
Price: DeployBot has four pricing plans i.e. Free, Basic ($15 per month), Plus ($25 per month), and Premium ($50 per month).
The pricing plans differ based on the number of Servers, Repositories, and Features. With the free plan, you will get 10 servers, one repository, 10 deployments, and unlimited users.
DeployBot can be used to build and deploy the code anywhere through one consistent process. It supports manual as well as automatic deployments. It will give you real-time progress of the deployment.
Features:
- It can perform simultaneous deployment of the code to many servers from different branches.
- It will allow you to execute any code on the DeployBot server during deployment.
- Any shell scripts can be run on your server, before, after, or during the deployment.
- It will allow you to roll back a release.
Verdict: Using the third-party integrations like New Relic and bugsnag, you will be able to analyze the impact of each deployment on the performance and application stability.
Website: DeployBot
#6) GitLab
Best for small to large businesses.
Price: GitLab’s free trial is available for 30 days. GitLab has four pricing plans for SaaS solution i.e. Free, Bronze ($4 per user per month), Silver ($19 per user per month), and Gold ($99 per user per month).
For Self-managed Solutions, there are four plans i.e. Core (Free), Starter ($4 per user per month), Premium ($19 per user per month), and Ultimate ($99 per user per month).
Through the GitLab CI/CD pipeline you will be able to build, test, deploy, and monitor the code in a single integrated workflow. During Continuous Integration, it quickly detects the errors. It will minimize the integration problems and there will not be any compounding problems.
Features:
- Continuous Delivery will ensure that every change is releasable.
- This platform will help you from planning to deployment of the project or code.
- This platform is open-source, easy to learn, scalable and will give you faster results.
- This single platform has functions for your entire DevOps lifecycle.
Verdict: Builds can be executed on the Windows, UNIX, Mac, and the other Go supported platforms. It supports various programming languages such as Java, PHP, Ruby, C, etc. It has many more features like Real-time logging, Parallel builds, Docker support, etc.
Website: GitLab
#7) Bamboo
Best for small to large businesses.
Price: Bamboo offers pricing plans that are based on remote agents. There are two plans i.e. Small teams ($10, up to 10 jobs and unlimited local agents) and Growing teams ($1100, unlimited jobs and unlimited local agents).
There will not be any remote agents for the small team plan. A 30-day free trial is available for the product.
Bamboo will work as CI and Build server. It has features to create multi-stage build plans and set up triggers for starting builds on comments. It will allow you to assign the agents for your critical builds and deployments. It has the capability to perform parallel automated tests.
Features:
- Bamboo can be integrated with various tools such as Jira, Bitbucket, Fisheye, etc.
- It can be used with any language and popular technologies such as AWS CodeDeploy and Docker.
- A deployment project will carry the software to be deployed and will release those that are built and tested. Environments will hold the projects that are released.
- Dedicated agents will make sure that hotfixes and critical builds will run immediately.
- The tool will give you full visibility of the code changes before release. It will also give you visibility over JIRA software issues from the previous deploy.
Verdict: Integration of Bamboo with Bitbucket and Jira will help you with the complete development process right from planning to delivery. For Parallel testing, Bamboo supports up to 100 remote build agents. The tool allows setting per-environment permissions.
Website: Bamboo
#8) CircleCI
Best for small to large businesses.
Price: CircleCI offers a 2-week trial for Mac OS. It has four plans for build on Mac OS i.e. Seed ($39 per month), StartUp ($129 per month), Growth ($249 per month), and Performance (Get a quote).
The self-hosted solution price starts at $35 per user per month for the annual contract. For the build on Linux, the first container will be free and an additional container is for $50 per month.
CircleCI provides in the cloud and on-premises deployment. The tool will let the developers work in a branch independently.
You can customize the execution environment to match it with the production environment. Without waiting on Ops to make changes, the developers will be able to share their work with the team.
Features:
- CircleCI can be integrated with GitHub, GitHub Enterprise, and Bitbucket.
- It will create the build on every commit.
- Every commit will be automatically tested and run in a clean container.
- It will send the notifications on the build failure.
Verdict: CircleCI provides powerful caching, unmatched security, and language-agnostic support. It can also be integrated with GitHub, Bitbucket, Fastlane, Azure, and Slack. It has a visual dashboard that will provide you insights on your builds.
Website: CircleCI
#9) Codeship
Best for small to large businesses.
Price: CodeShip offers a free plan for unlimited team members. This plan will allow you to use it for 100builds per month. For the unlimited builds, the price starts at $49 per month.
This flexible and adaptable platform will allow you to create any build environment. It provides a web-interface which will make setting up everything easier. CodeShip Basic comes with a wide variety of CI dependencies.
Features:
- Codeship can be integrated with any tool.
- It is suitable for any team size and project.
- You will be able to set up teams and permissions for your organization through the Notification Centre.
Verdict: The build will be fast and reliable because of its caching, parallelism, optimized, and reliable infrastructure. CodeShip will provide expert developer support.
Website: Codeship
#10) Google Cloud Deployment Manager
Best for small to large businesses.
Price: Google offers a free trial for the Code Deployment Manager. Google Cloud Platform customers can use the Deployment Manager without any additional price. You can start using it for free.
Google Cloud Deployment Manager will help you to create and manage cloud resources with simple templates. This platform will allow you to treat your configuration as code and do repeatable deployments.
The deployment process can be repeatable as you can create the configuration files for defining the resources.
Features:
- You can use YAML to specify all the required resources in a declarative format.
- It also supports Python and Jinja2 for parameterization of configuration.
- Common deployment paradigms such as load balanced, auto-scaled instance groups, etc. can be reused.
- It supports a declarative approach.
- It follows a template-driven approach that will allow you to parameterize these templates.
Verdict: Google Cloud Deployment Manager will allow you to programmatically control what gets deployed through Python and Jinja2 templates. It provides features of parallel deployment, Schema files, Input & output parameters, Preview mode, and Console UI.
Website: Google Cloud Deployment Manager
Conclusion
This was the detailed review and comparison of the Top Continuous Deployment tools. AWS CodeDeploy and Octopus Deploy will provide cloud-based and on-premises deployment.
Jenkins is an open-source platform that can be used for Building, Testing and deploying the software. TeamCity has a wide range of developer-oriented features.
Pricing for the platform will be based on various factors like Deployment features, the number of Builds to be run, Agents, Servers, etc. The price of these tools can be as low as to $0.02 per on-premises instance.
Hope this article will help you select the right Continuous Deployment Tool!!
Review Process:
- Time taken to research this article: 18 Hours.
- Total tools researched: 16
- Top tools shortlisted: 10