11 Continuous Deployment Tools and How to Choose One

The popularity of agile methodologies among businesses has escalated and resulted in the mass adoption of continuous software development processes. This has given rise to many tools that make implementing your DevOps pipeline and application development easier. Choosing which tool to use to produce a robust system is difficult because of the market surge in continuous deployment tools. 

Continuous deployment (CD) is the procedure whereby updates to software code are pipelined, automated, tested, and then made available in the production environment. It is a crucial stage in the DevOps life cycle and assists companies in quickly and efficiently deploying changes, upgrades, and updates at the app level. 

In this article, I'll outline 11 continuous deployment tools that you should consider for deployment processes in your DevOps pipeline. We’ll look at the features and highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each tool. I'll talk about how these technologies may be utilized in DevOps, and finally, we’ll look at a comparison of these tools in detail. 

Top 11 Continuous Deployment Tools for Software Development

Tools for DevOps automation make it easier, simpler, and faster for teams to manage these operations at scale. Using CI/CD tools, DevOps teams and engineers can offer continuous software upgrades of any size, platform, and environment. The top eleven CI/CD tools covered in this list all provide essential options. 

• AWS CodeDeploy
• Buddy
• Bamboo
• CircleCI
• DeployBot
• CodeShip
• GitLab CI/CD
• Jenkins
• Octopus Deploy
• TeamCity
• Travis CI

AWS CodeDeploy

A deployment solution called AWS CodeDeploy automates the deployment of applications computing services like Amazon EC2 instances, on-premises instances, serverless Lambda functions, or Amazon Web Services. 

• Features:

• Can be deployed automatically
• Provides centralized control and surveillance
• Provides QA tracking for your deployment
• Is compatible with different architectures and languages
• Has an effective notification system

• Strengths:

• Offers a command-line interface (CLI) or an online administration console, which can be viewed or edited in any environment
• Offers code as configuration features
• Integrates with other AWS services
• Can repeat the application deployment process to other instance groups

• Weakness: 

• AWS CodeDeploy does not integrate with GitHub

• Pricing: 

• This tool does not require deployment costs. However, you are required to pay $0.02 per update for on-premises instances.

• Suitable for: Small or large-scale businesses

• Website: aws.amazon.com/codedeploy

Buddy

Buddy is an automation platform that makes DevOps easy for developers. It's a commercial CI/CD platform that enables rapid development, testing, and deployment of websites and applications. 

• Features: 

• Support for all widely used deployment protocols, IaaS/PaaS services, custom tools, and scripts
• One-click rollbacks that restore the server to its prior condition
• Parallel test execution and simultaneous deployment to several servers
• Multithreaded transfers for FTP/SFTP, AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Azure, and others
• An exclusive list of Docker/Kubernetes activities

• Strengths: 

• Ease of setup and use
• Quality support
• Accessible for on-premises and cloud deployment
• Free commercial tool

• Weakness: 

• A little daunting learning curve for first-time users of CI/CD tools

• Pricing: 

• Buddy offers four price tiers, ranging from $0 to $200. Its plans include a free account ($0/month for five projects), Pro ($75/month for 20 projects), Hyper ($200/month unlimited), and On-premises ($35/month per user).

• Suitable for: Small or large-scale businesses

• Website: https://buddy.works/

Bamboo

Bamboo is a CI/CD tool from Atlassian that integrates and sets up automated builds, tests, and releases in a single DevOps flow. It seamlessly integrates with multiple projects like Bitbucket and JIRA. 

• Features: 

• Flexibility with languages and technologies such as CodeDeploy, Mercurial, Docker, AWS, Git, SVN, and Amazon S3 buckets
• Available both in hosted and on-premises versions
• Git workflows and branching built in, so Bamboo automatically merges branches
• Simple management for enterprise CI scaling

• Strengths:

• Has a user-friendly graphical user interface
• Has built-in disaster recovery features that deliver high availability

• Weaknesses: 

• Is high priced
• Doesn't have a cloud version

• Suitable for: Small or large-scale businesses

• Pricing: 

• In Bamboo, pricing changes according to agents rather than consumers. It provides two packages for small and growing teams, from $10 to $1,100.

• Website: https://www.atlassian.com/software/bamboo

CircleCI

CircleCI is a CI tool for optimizing software development procedures. It combines with other third-party tools to automate the end-to-end deployment process in several languages.  

• Features:

• Runs on any environment, on-premises, public and private cloud
• Functions well with Docker and lets you configure a customized environment
• Automates parallelization, branch-specific and continuous deployments for quick speed
• Supports multiple languages like C++, JavaScript, .NET, PHP, Python, and Ruby
• Splits, shares, and reuses builds across multiple containers to reduce overall build time
• Supports all of the popular repositories, including GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitHub Enterprise

• Strengths:

• Is a compact CI/CD platform
• Provides unrivaled security

• Weaknesses: 

• It doesn't consolidate all workflows into a single platform
• It doesn't have an intuitive dashboard and lacks a comprehensive picture of the statistics for builds across the organization
• When the CI process is complicated, it can occasionally be exceedingly slow

• Suitable for: Small or large-scale businesses

• Pricing: 

• CircleCI offers four paid plans, including a free plan of $0/month, $15/month, $2,000/month for enterprise-level deployments, and custom pricing for self-hosted.

• Website: https://circleci.com/

DeployBot

DeployBot is a solution for cloud-based code distribution to assist businesses in creating and deploying code through a single interface. 

• Features: 

• Allows you to roll back a release
• Provides real-time deployment tracking
• Allows for easy deployment in an open interface protocol or integration
• Can run shell scripts on your server before, after, or during deployment

• Strengths: 

• Allows code deployment without requiring server connection
• Handles permission management for clients and teams
• Is easy to use and integrate

• Weakness: 

• UI is not intuitive and often has too much information on one screen

• Suitable for: Start-ups and scale-up businesses
• Pricing: 

• It offers three payment tiers: the free plan ($0/month), Plus ($25/month), and Premium ($50/month).

• Website: https://deploybot.com/

CodeShip

CodeShip is a cloud-based application development platform for continuous integration and delivery. It resides between your source code repository and the hosting environment and automatically tests and delivers any modification to your platform. 

• Features: 

• Includes access regulations and permits
• Has a builds log
• Offers automated and parallel testing
• Has configuration management for deployment pipelines
• Offers native Docker support

• Strengths: 

• Gives users the ability to choose containers for their production environment
• Integrates with any tool
• Has an easy-to-use web interface

• Weaknesses: 

• It lacks integrations
• Upgrades can cause certain plugins and integrations to stop working

• Suitable for: Any team or project

• Pricing: 

• CodeShip offers pricing tiers: Starter ($49/month), Essential ($99/month), and Power ($399/month).

• Website: https://www.cloudbees.com/codeship/features-pricing

GitLab CI/CD

GitLab is a popular DevOps/CI/CD tool that offers continuous integration, delivery, and deployment all within a single interface that integrates with the Git source control system. It enables you to implement planning, source code management, tracking, and security into your development life cycle. 

• Features: 

• Handles performance evaluation for your server and applications life cycle
• Can be used for producing, displaying, and managing branches of code and project data
• Stores Docker images securely in the GitLab Container Registry
• Allows you to automatically create, test, and publish software releases with the aid of GitLab Auto DevOps
• Offers more features, like support for Docker, parallel builds, and real-time logging

• Strengths: 

• Is an open-source solution that is simple to use and scalable and will help you get results more quickly
• Offers self-hosted capability or GitLab’s SaaS option
• Supports multiple languages.

• Weaknesses: 

• GitLab's UI and UX are quite overwhelming and complex for a first-time user
• For larger projects, it can get pricy
• Integration with third parties can be confusing

• Suitable for: Small or large-scale businesses

• Pricing: 

• GitLab offers three payment options that include free ($0), Premium ($19/month), and Ultimate ($99/month).

• Website: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/introduction/index.html#continuous-deployment

Jenkins

Jenkins is a popular open-source automation server that provides programmers with a reliable way to build, test, and deploy applications. 

• Features: 

• Supports multiple OSs like Mac, Windows, and others
• Distributes workloads across multiple machines
• Offers over 1,000 plugins
• Enables easy installation and configuration with web interface

• Strengths: 

• Has extensible plugin architecture
• Integrates with every language tool
• Is open source and free

• Weaknesses: 

• UI is not intuitive and has a learning curve
• Sudden failure can occur from updating processes
• Configuration and integration process for some plugins is not properly documented

• Suitable for: Small or large-scale businesses

• Pricing: 

• Available to all users for free.

• Website: https://www.jenkins.io/

Octopus Deploy

Octopus Deploy is a cloud-based and on-premises DevOps automation server that enables developers to manage, audit, and automate deployments and operational runbooks from a single platform. 

• Features: 

• Allows you to monitor releases and deployments
• Supports custom scripts and controls critical data
• Helps you to build and manage your CI/CD pipeline
• Allows teams to manage runbooks from a single location while planning, monitoring, inspecting, and scheduling them

• Strengths: 

• Has built-in features that offer flexibility for automating the software deployment pipeline
• Offers multi-tenancy support
• Aids with certificate management
• Has support for the same deployment steps across all environments

• Weaknesses: 

• Lacks relevant reports or metrics for tracking active deployments or historical data
• Can sometimes have complicated integration
• Requires a bit of a learning curve

• Suitable for: Small or large-scale businesses

• Pricing: 

• Octopus Deploy is free for up to 10 deployment targets but offers two payment options, which include Cloud ($50/month) and Server ($600/annually).

• Website: https://octopus.com/

TeamCity

DevOps teams use TeamCity, a continuous integration tool, to deploy apps, packages, and containers and run automated tests. 

• Features: 

• Integrates with well-known version control programs
• Improves the quality of the code
• Offers cloud connections with Kubernetes clusters, Microsoft Azure, or Amazon EC2
• Allows you to set up builds using DSL
• Has detailed VCS integration
• Remotely executes and tests commits
• Keeps track of builds for rollbacks

• Strengths: 

• Runs on all OSs
• Integrates with .NET technologies
• Supports multiple clouds, multiple platforms, and multiple languages

• Weaknesses: 

• Has a steep learning curve
• Requires manual upgrading

• Suitable for: Small or large-scale businesses

• Pricing: 

• TeamCity is available across three pricing tiers. Small teams can use a free Professional Server License, the Build Agent License costs $299, and Enterprise Server Licenses start at $1,999.

• Website: https://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/

Travis CI

Travis CI is a cloud-hosted open-source continuous integration and deployment system. It's used to create and test projects on Bitbucket and GitHub. 

• Features: 

• Is available to both open-source and private projects
• Includes authentication, testing management, change management
• Issues permissions based on roles
• Handles data synchronization, continuous deployment, and bespoke development

• Strengths: 

• Is easy to use and set up
• Is open source
• Takes less time to configure and can be hosted without a hosting server

• Weaknesses: 

• Can occasionally be slow
• Lacks scalability
• Has no flexibility in customization
• Has limited integration with third-party tools
• Lacks plugins

• Suitable for: Small- to medium-scale projects

• Pricing: 

• Travis CI offers two pricing tiers, Core and Enterprise, starting at $69/month. It also offers a 30-day free trial plan.

• Website: https://www.travis-ci.com/

Which Tools Can Be Used for Continuous Deployment in DevOps?

The final phase in a DevOps pipeline is deployment, and to accomplish CD (continuous deployment), the whole pipeline must have been correctly automated (build, testing, and staging). Deciding a preferred CD tool for the system depends on the scale and sensitivity of the project, as well as what features you look to achieve in your DevOps pipeline. 

Here is a comparison of these top 11 continuous deployment tools discussed in this article. 

What to Consider When Choosing a CD Tool

Despite the inclination, you may have to utilize specific tools because of their popularity. Before choosing a continuous deployment technology, consider the following essential points. Your continuous deployment tool should meet these needs. 

• It should be user-friendly with little or no substantial technical obstacles or a high learning curve due to the device.
• The DevOps teams should have a seamless experience with the configuration.
• Pricing needs to be fair for both small and large teams.
• It should be compatible with your existing integrations and technologies.
• The tool should accommodate multiple languages and work on different OSs.
• It should offer flexibility based on the environment.
• The tool should give you a robust software development pipeline.
• And it should have support for multiple integrations and plugins.

Conclusion

This post has thoroughly compared and reviewed the best continuous deployment tools currently available on the market. As was said above, automating software development processes is the key to enhancing team communication and ensuring that code and features are delivered and deployed efficiently with little to no human intervention. In conclusion, you can create a reliable application with little downtime with the right continuous deployment tool.