Best Continuous Integration Tools for DevOps

?? Daria Spizheva

Technology and software expert and author

For you, my caffeine-infused friends, I’ve journeyed through the belly of the beast of the world of CI/CD tools. Where I wrestled with the complexities of version control, fended off the challenges of cloud providers, and dodged the pitfalls of continuous deployment until I emerged victorious with this list of the best of the best CI/CD tools, ready for your DevOps workflow.

So pull up a chair and grab a cup of joe, because today we’re taking a deep (and I mean Mariana Trench deep) dive into the marvelous, confusing, and often hilariously perplexing world of CI/CD tools. Trust me, it’s gonna be a riot!? Let’s start at the beginning with some definitions, TurnKey style.

What is CI/CD?

CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery. These are two of the foundational principles in the DevOps world that help streamline and automate the software development process, making it more capable of handling today’s rapid digital demands.

I like to think of them as the Batman and Robin of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) world. With their powers combined, they transform your average software development process into a sleek, smooth-running machine. Imagine a world with fewer errors – that’s what CI/CD tools bring to the table.

Now, CI is the busy bee of the duo, checking all the code that the developers merge into the repository. With each addition, a friendly neighborhood continuous integration server swoops in and checks everything looking for bugs, flaws, or inconsistencies. Got a pesky integration error? CI will sniff it out faster than a bloodhound on a hot trail.

Then, we have CD, the calm, collected second half of the pair. CD tools are like a personal stylist for your software, making sure it’s ready to hit the runway at any given moment.?This means – more frequent updates to your app, less time waiting around, and a big, fat cut in costs as everything is running most efficiently.

So, there you have it! CI/CD is the dynamic duo that ensures your development team can integrate changes at lightning speed, with the security of Fort Knox. They’re the essential secret weapon in any DevOps toolkit, helping you speed up your SDLC, produce top-notch software, and manage those pesky cloud costs effectively.?Ready to see which CI/CD Tools I put on the list?

The 27 Best CI/CD Tools All DevOps Teams Should Know in 2023

Instead of wandering aimlessly in the dense, dark jungle of CI/CD tools, I suggest you use this list as your flashlight, as it will illuminate your path to the best CI/CD tools for DevOps Teams.

But before I hit the on-switch, fancy a glimpse into a real-world example of how CI/CD tools allow one venture-backed startup to churn out more than 70k lines of code each year?

Meet?MiResource, a shiny, venture-backed startup that’s like the matchmaker for mental health care. Their goal? Make it as easy as pie for health institutions to connect patients to the perfect care for their unique needs. They turned to TurnKey Labs when they had to build and scale their engineering team fast and wanted to ensure productivity and effectiveness as well as integrate it smoothly with their onshore team.

So, what’s the end of this epic saga? TurnKey was able to fill all key roles quicker than you can say “continuous integration”. The offshore team is now launching new stuff every week with the help of an automated CI/CD delivery pipeline that runs hundreds of unit and?end-to-end tests, while the team churns out more than 70k lines of code each year! It’s like they’ve got their own software development factory!

I think these tools are the superheroes of the software development world. They help development teams push out code changes more often and with the reliability of the sunrise. Oh, and did I mention they automate parts of?the SDLC?

So without any further ado, here are the first 18 CI/CD tools to catch my attention, in no particular order.

GitLab CI

Website:?About.Gitlab.com

GitLab CI is a powerful CI/CD tool integrated within the GitLab platform. It is available for widely-used platforms like Windows, Linux, and macOS. It offers a web-based interface for managing projects and users, supports multiple programming languages, and can be hosted on your private cloud. GitLab CI can issue parallel builds by splitting a single build into multiple machines to minimize the build time. Jobs in GitLab CI can run sequentially in parallel. It also offers the option to define a custom pipeline.

Key Features:

• Allows for pipeline and job management directly within GitLab.
• Supports parallel execution of jobs and offers built-in Docker support.
• Provides a powerful scripting environment with its GitLab CI/CD YAML file.
• Integrates with all parts of GitLab like issue boards, merge requests, and more.

Travis CI

Website:?Travis-ci.org

Travis CI is a popular choice among open source projects. It provides a variety of features, including a version control system, integration with GitHub and Bitbucket, support for multiple languages, and is used in building and testing software projects hosted at GitHub.

Travis CI is an early mover in the CI/CD pipeline tools market. It supports a range of programming languages and has a proprietary YAML syntax for CI/CD pipelines. It provides runtimes on popular platforms like Linux, macOS, and Windows and supports integration with popular cloud platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, Kubernetes, Azure, and more.

Key Features:

• Easy to set up
• Supports parallel execution
• Excellent integration with GitHub
• Free for open-source projects

Jenkins

Website:?https://www.jenkins.io/

Jenkins is an open-source automation server that helps to automate parts of the software development process. It’s a highly flexible and powerful tool that supports the entire software development lifecycle, including building, testing, and deploying applications.

Key Features:

• Open-source and free
• Huge plugin ecosystem
• Supports parallel execution
• Extensive integration capabilities with version control systems
• Supports multiple programming languages
• Can be hosted on both public cloud and private cloud

TeamCity

Website:?Jetbrains.com

TeamCity is an excellent CI/CD tool developed by JetBrains. It is perfect for all your projects, especially those that need robust version control systems.

Key Features:

• Supports a wide range of development tools and version control systems.
• Provides cloud integration and cloud cost management.
• Enables running parallel tasks to save time and boost productivity.
• Offers pre-tested commit module: changes are only committed if the CI server verifies they are correct.

Azure Pipelines

Website:?Azure Pipelines

Azure Pipelines is a cloud service part of Microsoft’s Azure DevOps offering that helps you continuously build, test, and deploy to any platform and cloud.

Key Features:

• Works with any language and platform.
• Offers integration with popular open source and third-party tools and services.
• Supports deploying applications to multiple environments, including virtual machines and cloud providers.
• Provides rich set of features for continuous integration, testing, delivery, and monitoring.

GoCD

Website:?https://www.gocd.org/

It is an open-source Continuous Integration server that allows you to implement ‘pipeline as code’ in YAML and JSON formats. GoCD’s Value Stream Map (VSM) gives a complete real-time visualization of the end-to-end implementation of the workflow. It can work with Windows, macOS, Docker, and more. It also supports parallel execution, a must-have feature for DevOps testing .

Key Features:

• Supports parallel and sequential execution of tasks.
• Provides visibility into workflows with its Value Stream Map.
• Allows modeling complex workflows with its pipeline dependencies.
• Supports on-premise, cloud, and hybrid environments.

Codeship

Website:?https://codeship.com/

Codeship is a fast and secure hosted Continuous Integration service that scales with your needs. It’s a great tool for accelerating delivery speed.

Key Features:

• Offers ParallelCI for parallel testing to speed up your build time.
• Provides simple, turnkey deployment to any cloud or server.
• Supports Docker platform for building and deploying applications.
• Includes a wide range of integrations with tools like Slack, GitHub, Bitbucket, etc.

Semaphore

Website:?https://semaphoreci.com/

Semaphore is a high-performance CI/CD tool that allows software developers to easily implement continuous integration and deploy their code. It’s known for accelerating delivery speed.

Key Features:

• Supports various languages and frameworks with pre-installed software.
• Offers parallel execution of tests and deployment.
• Integrates seamlessly with GitHub and Bitbucket.
• Allows automatic branch testing and provides insights into code quality.

GitHub Actions

Website:?Github.com

GitHub Actions, a part of the GitHub platform, makes it easy to automate all your software workflows. It’s a perfect tool for continuous integration, providing seamless process.

Key Features:

• Allows building, testing, and deploying your code right from GitHub.
• Supports parallel jobs with unlimited runtime.
• Enables writing tasks (actions) in any language.
• Provides live logs of your workflows, and much more.

Buddy

Website:?https://buddy.works/

Buddy is a smart CI/CD tool for web developers designed to lower the entry threshold to DevOps. It uses delivery pipelines to build, test, and deploy software.

Key Features:

• Provides more than 100 predefined actions to help automate your development workflow.
• Supports YAML for configuration as code.
• Integrates with all popular version control systems.
• Allows for code building and deployment to any cloud.

Drone CI

Website:?https://drone.io/

Drone CI is a powerful, container-native continuous delivery platform that’s great for cloud environments. It’s a perfect choice for teams using Docker and Kubernetes.

Key Features:

• Provides a container-native architecture, offering more isolation and reducing conflicts between builds.
• Supports various languages, databases, and services.
• Allows for integration and system tests.
• Integrates seamlessly with popular version control systems like GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket.

AppVeyor CI

Website:?https://www.appveyor.com/

AppVeyor CI is a cloud-based continuous integration system that integrates natively with your source control and allows CI/CD for your applications.

Key Features:

• Supports a wide range of languages and platforms, including .NET, Java, Ruby, Node.js, Python, and more.
• Provides on-demand build environment provisioning.
• Allows parallel testing and custom build matrices.
• Offers deployment to multiple environments.

Spinnaker

Website:?https://www.spinnaker.io/

Developed by Netflix, Spinnaker is a multi-cloud continuous delivery platform for releasing software changes with high velocity and confidence.

Key Features:

• Supports deployment to multiple cloud providers.
• Provides robust cluster management and deployment strategies.
• Supports extensive pipeline customization.
• Offers integrations with various tools for monitoring, notification, and version control.

Codefresh

Website:?https://codefresh.io/

Codefresh is a Kubernetes-native CI/CD platform that enables developers to build, test, and deploy applications in a fast and secure manner.

Key Features:

• Provides a live debugger to solve issues directly in the pipeline.
• Supports Git triggers and various programming languages.
• Offers built-in steps for building Docker images and Helm packages.
• Provides integration with major cloud providers, Docker registries, and Helm repositories.

Concourse CI

Website:?https://concourse-ci.org/

Concourse CI is a pipeline-based CI system that provides testing, building, and packaging software. It’s a great tool for development teams working on open-source projects.

Key Features:

• Supports pipeline as code concept, making it easy to create, version, and manage pipelines.
• Offers container-based tasks for isolation.
• Provides visual representation of pipelines and tasks.
• Enables parallel and sequential execution of jobs.

Bitbucket Pipeline

Website:?Bitbucket.org

Bitbucket Pipeline, one of the well-integrated CI/CD tools within Bitbucket, accelerates the lifecycle by automating a continuous delivery pipeline of code from test to production. This continuous integration service enables you to track the progress of pipelines at each step local development process and provides visibility of the software version running in every environment. With this CD tool, you can deploy software swiftly, embodying the best CI/CD tools practices.

Key Features:

• Automates processes from development to deployment, fostering a streamlined software development process.
• Offers a unified experience with Bitbucket repositories, providing version control systems under the same platform.
• Full integration of job results to Jira, enabling efficient code management systems.

Harness

Website:?https://harness.io/

Harness stands as the premier software delivery continuous integration automation platform for utilizing AI, simplifying your DevOps tools such as CI/CD, cloud cost management, feature flags, and more. As a self-service, container-native continuous integration solution, Harness provides standardized extensions and isolated builds. You can automate canary verifications, prioritize tests, and gain insights into the cloud costs of your microservices, applications, and clusters.

Key Features:

• AI/ML-driven workflows, paving the way for intelligent software projects.
• Developer-first experience, optimizing the development process.
• Unified pipeline for all tasks, enhancing parallel task execution.
• Supports cloud cost management, providing a comprehensive view of resource usage.
• Incorporates automated DevSecOps into CI/CD pipelines, strengthening software release management.

How are you enjoying the list so far? I wanted to make it easy for you to keep them all straight, so I have broken out cloud and infrastructure management tools, release automation and deployment tools, and?built automation tools?onto their own lists, which you will find in our full article - https://turnkey-labs.com/tech-trends/best-ci-cd-tools/?utm_source=linkedin.com[&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=brain