Continuous integration/Continuous delivery (CI/CD) is positively impacting software development teams. It is becoming a common agile practice that is widely been adopted by organizations around the world.
Hence, for the same, it is advisable to have good CI/CD tools to leverage the team’s current workflow and build a reliable CI/CD pipeline. Further, it automates the development process and lowers the delivery time to the end-users.
There are an overflowing number of CI/CD tools available in the market right now. Thus, we have listed the top 14 tools to know about in 2024. But, before we move forward, understand these two distinct phases: Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery:
What is CI/CD?
Continuous Integration
CI refers to the practices that drive the software development team to automatically and frequently integrate code changes into a shared source code repository. It helps in speeding up the process of building, packaging, and testing the applications. Although automated testing is not strictly part of CI, it is usually implied.
With this methodology, the team members can check whether the application is broken whenever new commits are integrated into the new branch. It allows them to catch and fix quality issues early and get quick feedback.
This ensures that the software products are released to the end-users as quickly as possible (Every week, every day, or multiple times a day – As per the organization) and can create more features that provide value to them.
Continuous Delivery
The CD begins when the continuous integration ends.
It is an approach that allows teams to package software and deploy it into the production environment. It includes staging, testing, and deployment of CI code.
It assures that the application is updated continuously with the latest code changes and that new features are delivered to the end users quickly. Hence, it helps to reduce the time to market and of higher quality.
Moreover, continuous delivery minimizes downtime due to the removal of manual steps and human errors.
Benefits of CI/CD
Reduce time to market
CI/CD pipeline helps in building and delivering software to end-users at a rapid pace. It allows the development team to launch new features faster, implement deployment strategy, and collect feedback to incorporate promptly in the upcoming update.
Measure progress
CI/CD pipeline offers regular updates on the products and a set of metrics that include building, testing, coverage, and more. The release cycles are short and targeted and maintenance is done during non-business hours saving the entire team valuable time.
Quick feedback cycle
CI/CD pipeline gives real-time feedback on code quality, test results, and deployment status. It provides timely feedback to work more efficiently, identify issues earlier, gather actionable insights, and make iterative improvements.
Collaboration and communication
CI/CD pipeline encourages collaboration between developers, testers, and operation teams to reduce bottlenecks and facilitate communication. Through this, the team can communicate effectively about test results and take the desired action.
Improve quality and reliability
CI/CD pipeline enforces a rigorous testing process and conducts automated tests at every pipeline stage. The code changes are thoroughly tested and validated to reduce the bugs or regressions in software.
Best CI/CD tools
It is a software development platform for managing different aspects of the software development lifecycle. With its cloud-based CI and deployment service, this tool allows developers to trigger builds, run, tests, and deploy code with each commit or push.
GitLab CI/CD also assures that all code deployed to production adheres to all code standards and best practices.
Key features
- Direct connection with Kubernetes for efficient application deployment and scaling
- Automatic security scans for compliance and vulnerability checks
- Seamlessly integrate with third-party platforms including Slack, Asana, ClickUp, Notion, and Trello
- Real-time managing collaborative projects and tracking progress
- View, create, and manage codes and project data through branching tools
GitHub Actions is a comparatively new tool for performing CI/CD. It automates, customizes, and executes software development workflows right in the repository.
GitHub Actions can also be paired with packages to simplify package management. It creates custom SDLC workflows in the GitHub repository directly and supports event-based triggers for automated build, test, and deployment.
Key features
- Fully integrates with GitHub
- Built-in secret store
- Include multiple CI templates or can create one
- Live log feature offers insights into real-time workflow run
- Support matrix build i.e. runs the same job with multiple configurations
Jenkins is the first CI/CD tool that provides thousands of plugins to support building and deploying projects. It is an open source as well as a self-hosted automated server in which the central build and continuous integration take place. This tool can also be turned into a continuous delivery platform for any project.
It is usually an all-rounder choice for the modern development environment.
Key features
- Simple and easy UI
- Seamlessly integrate with major cloud platforms such as Azure, Google Cloud, Amazon web services, Slack, and Digital Ocean
- Jenkin’s feature ‘Master-Slave Architecture’ helps in efficient resource usage
- Real-time testing and reporting
- 1500+ plugins and run by a high-paced community
Circle CI is a CI/CD tool that is certified with FebRamp and SOC Type II compliant. It helps in achieving CI/CD in open-source and large-scale projects. It streamlines the DevOps process and automates builds across multiple environments.
Circle CI provides two host offerings:
- Circle CI server – It lets CircleCI jobs on your own cloud instances hosted on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or your physical machines.
- Circle CI cloud: It includes cloud execution environments that involve Docker, Linux virtual machines, macOS, Windows, Arm, and GPU and can be spun up on-demand for every job in your workflow.
Key features
- Circle CI insights track the status of projects and keep tabs on build processes
- Its feature ‘Parallel testing’ helps in running tests in parallel across different executors
- Allow a single process per project
- Reusable snippets of code ‘CircleCI Orbs’ help in automating repetitive processes
- Provide ways to troubleshoot problems and inspect things such as directory path, log files, and running processes
An integrated CI/CD tool that is integrated into Bitbucket. It automates code from test to production and lets developers track how pipelines are moving forward at each step.
Bitbucket pipelines ensure that code has no merge conflicts, accidental code deletions, or broken tests. Cloud containers are generated for every activity on Bitbucket that can be used to run commands with all the benefits of brand-new system configurations.
Key features
- Easy setup and configuration
- Seamlessly integrate with Atlassian’s Bitbucket repositories
- Define and manage different environments such as staging and production
- Easily track the status of the codebase
- Bitbucket domain is available for all static websites (which are hosted on the company cloud)
A CI/CD tool that helps in building and deploying different types of projects on GitHub and Bitbucket. It runs in a Java environment and supports .Net and open-stack projects.
TeamCity offers flexibility for all types of development workflow and practices. It archives or backs up all modifications errors and builds for future use.
Key features
- Identify unresponsive builds
- Offer comprehensive documentation
- Run parallel builds simultaneously on different environments
- Provide a live dashboard with build progress, statistics, and history
- Analysis code and offers quick feedback on potential issues; without affecting the main build
Semaphore is a CI/CD platform with a pull-request-based development workflow. Through this platform, developers can automate build, test, and deploy software projects with the continuous feedback loop.
Semaphore is available on a wide range of platforms such as Linux, MacOS, and Android. This tool can help in everything i.e. simple sequential builds to multi-stage parallel pipelines.
Key features
- Semaphore’s feature ‘Booster’ lowers the test suite run time through automatic parallelization of builds for Ruby projects
- Its CLI is used for inspecting logs and debugging failures
- Test reports provide a clear view of the team’s test suite
- Support Docker-based applications
- Seamlessly integrate with SCM tools including Github, Bitbucket, and Subversion
Azure DevOps by Microsoft combines continuous integration and continuous delivery pipeline to Azure. It includes self-hosted and cloud-hosted CI/CD models for Windows, Linux, and MacOS.
It builds, tests, and deploys applications to the transferred location. The transferred locations include multiple target environments such as containers, virtual machines, or any cloud platform.
Key features
- Azure DevOps’ Agile boards help in agile planning and team visualization
- Its feature ‘Test management’ allows the team to plan, create, and execute application tests.
- Seamlessly integrate with any GIT repository and different programming languages
- Follow industry standards of YAML syntax
- Accept any repository for package management
Bamboo is a CI/CD server by Atlassian that helps software development teams automate the process of building, testing, and deploying code changes. It covers building and functional testing versions, tagging releases, and deploying and activating new versions on productions.
This streamlines software development and includes a feedback loop to make stable releases of software applications.
Key features
- Create complex build pipelines with multiple stages and tasks
- Support up to 100 remote build agents
- Provide detailed reports and notifications
- Run batches of tests in parallel
- Support Docker and container applications
An open-source CI/CD tool that is a Python-based twisted framework. It automates complex testing and deployment processes. With its decentralized and configurable architect, it allows development teams to define and build pipelines using scripts based on Python.
Buildbot are usually for those who need deep customizability and have particular requirements in their CI/CD workflows.
Key features
- Run builds on various slave platforms
- Easy setup and installation process
- Support Docker images
- Real-time monitoring and logging
- Support several version control systems including GIT, CVS, and Subversion, and virtualization platforms such as Vmware and Virtual box
Travis CI primarily focuses on GitHub users. It provides different host offerings for open-source communities and enterprises that propose to use this platform on their private cloud.
Travis CI is a simple and powerful tool that lets development teams sign up, link favorite repositories, and build and test applications. It checks the reliability and quality of code changes before integrating them into the production codebase.
Key features
- Follow a proprietary YAML syntax
- Support multiple languages including Android, C##, C++, Python and Javascript
- Live build views for monitoring GitHub projects
- Seamlessly integrate with common cloud repositories including GitHub, GitLab, Kubernetes, and Azure
- Support ‘Matrix build’ i.e. runs the same builds against multiple configurations and environment
Codefresh is a modern CI/CD tool that is built on the foundation of GitOps and Argo. It is Kubernetes-based and comes with two host offerings: Cloud and On-premise variants.
It provides a unique, container-based pipeline for a faster and more efficient build process. Codefresh offers a secure way to trigger builds, run tests, and deploy code to targeted locations.
Key features
- Codefresh’s centralized dashboard offers insight into deployment at scale as well as security and support for the development team
- Support Docker images
- Seamlessly integrate with well-known tools such as Bitbucket, GitHub, GitLab, and Slack
- Improved visibility into the build process
- Support build parallelism
Buddy is a CI/CD platform that builds, tests, and deploys websites and applications quickly. It includes two host offerings: On-premise and public cloud variants. It is best suited for developers, QA experts, and designers.
Buddy can not only integrate with Docker and Kubernetes, but also with blockchain technology. It gives the team direct deployment access to public repositories including GitHub.
Key features
- Simple and intuitive UI
- Support Docker images
- Real-time progress and logs
- Provide build actions for .Net, Angular, Ruby, Python, and Cypress
- Available for free with 120 pipelines per month
Harness is the first CI/CD platform to leverage AI. It is a SaaS platform that builds, tests, deploys, and verifies on demand.
Harness is a self-sufficient CI tool and is container-native so all extensions are standardized and builds are isolated. Moreover, it sets up only one pipeline for the entire log.
Key features
- Provide Developer-first experience
- Auto-generate all deployment scripts; built-in or custom-based
- Seamlessly integrate with observability platforms including Datadog and App dynamics
- Quicken metrics, dashboards, and reporting
- Follow version control, codified approach to define and manage deployment pipelines
Argo CD is an open-source and cloud-native tool for Kubernetes. It is a dedicated continuous deployment tool that focuses on enabling declaration setups and facilitates a Gitops approach to infrastructure management.
Argo CD is supported by Argo workflows for managing continuous integration that can be tightly integrated with the Argo CD engine.
Key features
- Support for multiple config management/templating tools such as Helm and plain-YAML
- Health status reporting for monitored apps
- Webhook integration with tools like Github, Gitlab, and Bitbucket
- Complex application development strategies such as blue/green deployment
- Ability to manage and deploy to multiple clusters
Tekton is a cloud-native solution for building CI/CD systems. It is an open-source tool that enables DevOps engineers to build, test, and deploy cloud and on-premise software.
It is a good choice for enterprises that are using Kubernetes in production.
Key features
- Seamlessly integrate with tools like Google Cloud, Jenkins, Jenkins X, and others
- Create and deploy immutable images and perform easier rollbacks
- Leverage advanced deployment patterns such as rolling, blue/green, or GIT workflow
- Modular and extensible dashboard that provides visibility and management features
- Run on hybrid or multicloud
How Typo integrate with CI/CD tools?
Typo seamlessly integrates with your CI/CD tools and offers comprehensive insights into your deployment process through key metrics such as change failure rate, time to build, and deployment frequency.
It also delivers a detailed overview of the workflows within the CI/CD environment. Hence, enhances visibility and facilitates a thorough understanding of the entire development and deployment pipeline.
How to choose the right CI/CD tools?
Prioritize your requirements
The CI/CD tool should best align with the needs and goals of the team and organization. In terms of features, understand what is important according to the specific requirements, project, and goals.
Development workflow
The CI/CD tool should integrate smoothly into the developer workflow without requiring many customized scripts or plugins. The tool shouldn’t create friction or impose constraints on the testing framework and environment.
Security features
The CI/CD tool should include access control, code analysis, vulnerability scanning, and encryption. It should adhere to industry best practices and prevent malicious software from stealing source code.
Integrates with other tools
They should integrate with the existing setup and other important tools that are used daily. Also, the CI/CD tool should be integrated with the underlying language used for codebase and compiler chains.
Feedback and analysis
The tool should provide comprehensive feedback on multiple levels. It includes error messages, bug fixes, and infrastructure design. Besides this, the tool should notify of build features, test failures, or any other issues that need to be addressed.
Conclusion
The CI/CD tools mentioned above are the most popular ones in the market. Make sure you do your extensive research as well before choosing any particular tool.
All the best!
