The core principles of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) are bringing about great success in this software-dense world. Organizations are increasingly adopting this framework to introduce continuous monitoring and continuous testing throughout the lifecycle of applications. The best CI/CD tools efficiently use the power of automation to create a streamlined software delivery pipeline that helps in reducing the complexity of continuous delivery pipelines, building automation in workflows or managing code changes or bugs. This article presents the best CI/CD tools you can use to maximize your production and increase innovation.

How can CI/CD Tools Help You?

CI/CD tools provide a number of functionalities when it comes to automating different stages of app development that enable developers to release high-quality, bug-free code on a regular basis. Here is a list of key points that these tools can perform –

  • Automated testing and reviewing of software
  • Documented trials of the software development process
  • Avoid integrations errors
  • Generate alerts on build or delivery failures
  • Provide dashboard functionality to monitor CI/CD pipeline

Now let’s get started with our discussion on the best tools and what sets each of them apart.

Jenkins

An open-source automation server built on Java Virtual Machine, Jenkins was released in 2011 and since has been one of the most widely deployed CI/CD tools. It has the ability to integrate and automate each stage of SDLC, including build, document, package, stage, deploy, test, static analysis and more.

Key features of Jenkins:

  • Compatible with Windows, Linux, Mac OS
  • Easy installation as a self-contained Java program
  • Many possibilities of use cases credited to its plugin architecture
  • Compatible with several plugins for integration with different test automation tools
  • Ability to integrate with major cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud, VMWare, Atlassian, etc.
  • Easy to distribute among multiple machines

CircleCI

A CI/CD automation platform that enables rapid code release and automates the build, test and deployment. It is one of the most used DevOps tools that process more than a million builds due to its flexibility to run in any environment like a Python API server, cross-platform mobile app or Docker cluster.

Key features of CircleCI:

  • Support for containers and runtimes for Windows, Linux and macOS
  • Support of YAML during the setup process
  • Integration with GitHub Enterprise, GitHub and BitBucket to create builds
  • Automated maintenance upon release
  • Optimized allocation of CPU and RAM with minimal intervention

GitLab

CI/CD and continuous deployment are built into this and don’t require any third-party applications or integrations. It can run tests and deploy code with each push or commit. So GitLab is a good option if you need a DevOps platform that can efficiently manage projects and provide a friendly UI.

Key features of GitLab:

  • Easy to install and configure
  • Ability to give individual members finer access controls to repositories
  • Easy management of git repositories
  • Improved collaborations with merge management systems and merge requests.
  • Auto-scaling GitLab CI runners can save a lot on EC2 costs.
  • A strong community that provides quick support

TeamCity

A continuous integration server that provides out-of-the-box usability and good source control, build history and build chain tools. Primarily it runs in a Java environment, on an Apache Tomcat server but it can be installed on Windows and Linux servers as well.

Key features of TeamCity:

  • Extensive documentation provides easy installation and configuration
  • Easy to start creating your first pipeline without writing any code
  • Provides real-time reporting of issues
  • It has the ability to integrate with IDE that allows automated tests to build, check and run without committing to any code or creating any branches.
  • Provides integration with AWS, GCP, Azure and VMware

Buddy

Buddy is one of the easiest CI/CD tools that is cloud-based and free to start for commercial use. It can automate building, testing and deploying applications and websites. It has fully integrated languages, Docker containers and more than a hundred ready-to-use actions to implement the best DevOps practices in a simple manner.

Key features of Buddy:

  • Super-fast deployments
  • Build pipelines in visual UI without any code with tons of ready-to-use actions
  • Has pipeline cache for artefacts, static files, Git repositories and Docker layers
  • Ability to export pipeline configurations to YAML or script the entire process
  • Run pipelines on push, manual, or through Slack commands and webhooks
  • Provides environment templates for creating, customizing and reusing testing environments

TravisCI

Travis is written in Ruby and was formerly only available for GitHub-hosted projects. But now it also supports Bitbucket-hosted projects and has also shifted from an only open-source toolkit to a pricing model that has added many restrictions to its free tier.

Key features of TravisCI:

  • Quick and easy installation
  • Support for multiple languages, including all the major ones.
  • Has the ability to be deployed to multiple cloud services
  • Has pre-installed databases and services that help reduce developers’ efforts
  • It recreates VMs after every software build

CodeShip

CodeShip is another easy-to-use CI/CD platform that was founded in 2011. Being a Saas-based CI/CD solution, it was able to cater to a growing segment of the market seeking Saas-based solutions.

Key features of CodeShip:

  • Makes testing and deploying codes simple due to its easy setup
  • Support for both public and private GitHub and BitBucket repositories
  • Support for multiple languages, tools, databases and cloud providers.
  • Builds are stable once they are up and running
  • Continuous monitoring of build status

GoCD

An open-source CI/CD tool used in software development to automate the entire process of build, test and release from code check-in to deployment. Despite being primarily built for continuous delivery, GoCD has features for continuous integration as well.

Key features of GoCD:

  • Has manual triggers to deploy any verified application version to the intended environment
  • Follows a template system where pipelines can be reused
  • Has numerous plugins and extension points for custom plugins
  • Has the ability to compare the contents across two builds which are extremely helpful to troubleshoot broken pipelines
  • Provides parallel and cross-platform execution