What is the Free Jenkins Alternative for Continuous Integration

Today, We will know the free Jenkins alternative for continuous integration. Read: What is Jenkins, feature, and function of Jenkins

Jenkins is an open-source Continuous Integration platform and is a crucial tool in DevOps Lifecycle. However, its interface is outdated and not user-friendly compared to current UI trends. Moreover, the Jenkin configuration could be tricky, and it has many other drawbacks.

Here, is a curated list of the top tools which can replace Jenkins. This list is a compromise of commercial as well as open-source continuous integration tools with popular features and the latest download link.

Also Read: How to Download and Install Jenkins on Windows

What is Jenkins?

Jenkins is an open-source Continuous Integration platform and a crucial tool in DevOps Lifecycle. It helps to automate software development tasks like building, testing, deployment, continuous integration, and delivery.

What are the drawbacks of Jenkins?

Following are some of the drawbacks of Jenkins:

• Outdated interface
• Not user-friendly compared to current UI trends
• Its configuration is tricky
• Redundant and less updated plugins
• Not all of its plugins are compatible with Declarative pipeline
• Lots of out of date documentation

Is Jenkins free?

Yes, Jenkins is a free and open-source Continuous Integration platform.

Which are the Best Jenkins alternatives?

Following are some of the best alternatives to Jenkins:

• Buddy
• FinalBuilder
• GoCD
• IBM Urbancode
• CircleCI
• TeamCity
• GitLab CI

1) Buddy

Buddy is a CI/CD tool that removes the chores of configuring and managing Jenkins with a smart UI/UX that makes it very easy to build, test, and deploy quality software faster – no need for a full-time DevOps engineer to configure and maintain the process!

• 15-minute configuration via GUI with instant export to YAML
• Isolated build containers ensure compatibility across the whole team
• Full Docker and Kubernetes support
• Available in cloud and on-premises
• Lightning-fast deployments based on changesets
• Caches dependencies and Docker layers for faster builds
• Integrates with AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, DigitalOcean, and more
• Supports all popular languages & frameworks
• PCI and SOC2 compliant
• Appealing documentation & responsive engineer support

2) Final builder:

FinalBuilder is Vsoft’s build tool. With FinalBuilder there is no need to edit XML, or write scripts. You can define and debug build scripts when it schedules them with windows scheduler, or integrate with Jenkins, Continua CI, etc.

Features:

• It presents build process in a logically structured, graphical interface
• It includes try and catch actions for localized error handling
• It provides tight integration with the Windows scheduling service, which allows builds to be scheduled
• FinalBuilder supports more than a dozen version control systems
• It provides support for scripting
• The output from all actions in the build process is directed to the build log.

Download Link: https://www.finalbuilder.com/downloads/finalbuilder

3) CruiseControl:

CruiseControl is both a CI tool and an extensible framework. It is used for building a custom continuous build process. This alternative to Jenkins has many plugins for a variety of source controls, build technologies which include email and instant messaging.

Features:

• Integration with a many different Source Control systems like vss, csv, svn, git, hg, perforce, clearcase, filesystem, etc.
• It allows building multiple projects on single server
• Integration with other external tools like NAnt, NDepend, NUnit, MSBuild, MBUnit and Visual Studio
• Provide support for Remote Management

Download link: http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net/download.html

4) Integrity:

Integrity is a continuous integration server that works only with GitHub. In this CI tool whenever users commit the codes, it builds and runs the code. It is one of the best Jenkins alternatives that generate the reports and provides notifications to the user.

Features:

• This CI tool currently only works with git, but it can easily mirror with other SCM
• This CI tool supports numbers of notification mechanisms like AMQP, Email, HTTP, Amazon SES, Flowdock, Shell, and TCP.
• HTTP Notifier feature sends an HTTP POST request to the specific URL

Download link: http://integrity.github.io/

5) GoCD:

GoCD is an Open source Continuous Integration server. It is one of the best alternatives to Jenkins used to model and visualize complex workflows with ease. This CI tool allows continuous delivery and provides an intuitive interface for building CD pipelines.

Features:

• This Jenkins open source alternative supports parallel and sequential execution. Dependencies can be easily configured.
• Deploy any version, anytime
• Visualize end to end workflow in realtime with Value Stream Map.
• Deploy to production securely.
• Handle user authentication and authorization
• This Jenkins free alternative keeps orderly configuration
• Tons of plugins to enhance functionality.
• Active community for help and support.

Download link: https://www.gocd.org/download/

6) Urbancode:

IBM UrbanCode Deploy is a CI application. It is one of the best Jenkins competitors which combines robust visibility, traceability, and auditing feature into a single package.

Features:

• Increase frequency of software delivery by automated, repeatable deployment processes
• Reduce deployment failure
• Streamline the deployment of multi-channel apps to all environments whether on-premises or in the cloud
• Enterprise level security and scalability
• Hybrid cloud environment modeling
• Drag-and-drop automation

Download link: https://www.ibm.com/ms-en/marketplace/application-release-automation

7) Autorabit:

AutoRABIT is an end-to-end Continuous Delivery Suite to speed up the development process. It streamlines the complete release process. It is one of the best Jenkins competitors that helps the organization of any size to implement Continuous Integration.

Features:

• The tool is specially designed to deploy on Salesforce Platform
• Lean and faster deployments based on changes supporting all the 120+ supported metadata types.
• Fetch changes from Version Control System and deploy them into Sandbox automatically
• Auto-commit changes into Version Control System directly from Sandbox

Download link: https://www.autorabit.com/autorabit-for-salesforce/

8) CircleCI:

Circle CI is a flexible CI tool that runs in any environment like cross-platform mobile app, Python API server, or Docker cluster. This tool reduces bugs and improves the quality of the application.

Features:

• Allows to select Build Environment
• Supports many languages like Linux, including C++, Javascript, NET, PHP, Python, and Ruby
• Support for Docker lets you configure customized environment
• Automatically cancel any queued or running builds when a newer build is triggered
• It split and balance tests across multiple containers to reduce overall build time
• Forbid non-admins from modifying critical project settings
• Improve Android and iOS store rating by shipping bug-free apps.
• Optimal Caching and Parallelism for fast performance.
• Integration with VCS tools

9) Buildkite:

The buildkite agent is a reliable and cross-platform build runner. This CI tool makes it easy to run automated builds on your infrastructure. It is mainly used for running build jobs, reporting back the status code and output log of the job.

Features:

• This CI tool runs on a wide variety of OS and architectures
• It can run code from any version control system
• This Jenkins replacement allows to run as many build agents as you want on any machine
• It can integrate with the tools like Slack, HipChat, Flowdock, Campfire and more
• Buildkite never sees source code or secret keys
• It offers stable infrastructure

Download link: https://buildkite.com/

10) TeamCity

TeamCity is a Continuous Integration server that supports many powerful features.

Features:

• Extensibility and Customization
• This Jenkins alternative provides better code quality for any project
• It maintains CI server healthy and stable even when no builds are running
• Configure builds in DSL
• Project level cloud profiles
• Comprehensive VCS integration
• On-the-fly build progress reporting
• Remote run and pre-tested commit

Download link: https://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/download/#section=windows

11) Wercker

Wercker is a CI tool that automates builds and deploys the container. It is one of the best Jenkins similar tools that creates automated pipelines which can be executed through the command-line interface.

Features:

• Fully integrated with Github & Bitbucket
• Use Wercker CLI for faster local iterations
• Execute builds concurrently to keep your team moving
• Run parallel tests to reduce wait time of your team
• Integrate with 100s of external tools
• Receive system notification in product and by email

Download link: https://www.oracle.com/corporate/acquisitions/wercker/

12) Bitrise

Bitrise is a Continuous Integration and Delivery Platform as a Service. It is one of the best Jenkins alternative tools which offers Mobile Continuous Integration and Delivery for your entire team. It is one of the best tools like Jenkins which allows integrations with many popular services like Slack, HipChat, HockeyApp, Crashlytics, etc.

Features:

• This Jenkins alternative allows to create and test workflows in your terminal
• You get your apps without the need of manual controls
• Every build runs individually in its own virtual machine, and all data is discarded at the end of the build
• Support for third party beta testing and deployment services
• Support for GitHub Pull Request

Download link: https://github.com/bitrise-io/bitrise#install-and-setup

13) Bamboo

Bamboo is a continuous integration build server that performs – automatic build, test, and releases in a single place. This tool is better than Jenkins which works seamlessly with JIRA software and Bitbucket. Bamboo supports many languages and technologies such as CodeDeply, Ducker, Git, SVN, Mercurial, AWS, and Amazon S3 buckets.

Features:

• Run parallel batch tests
• Setting up Bamboo is pretty simple
• Per-environment permissions feature allows developers and QA to deploy to their environments
• It can trigger builds based on changes detected in the repository, push notifications from Bitbucket
• Available as hosted or on-premise versions
• Facilitates real-time collaboration and integrated with HipChat.
• Built-in Git branching and workflows. It automatically merges the branches.

Download link: https://www.atlassian.com/software/bamboo

14) Strider

Strider is an open-source Jenkins alternative tool. Its written in Node.JS / JavaScript. It is one of the tools like Jenkins which uses MongoDB as a backing store. Hence, MongoDB and Node.js are essential for installing this CI. The tool offers support for different plugins that modify the database schema & register HTTP routes.

Features:

• Strider integrates with many projects like GitHub, BitBucket, Gitlab, etc.
• Allows to add hooks to execute arbitrary build actions
• Build and test your software projects continuously
• This Jenkins open source alternative integrates seamlessly with Github
• Publish and subscribe to socket events
• Create and modify Striders user interfaces
• Powerful plugins to customize default functionalities
• Supports Docker

Download link: https://github.com/Strider-CD/strider

15) Gitlab CI

GitLab CI is a part of GitLab. It is a web application with an API that stores its state in a database. It manages projects and provides a friendly user interface, besides offering the advantage of all the features of GitLab.

Features:

• GitLab Container Registry is a secure registry for Docker images
• GitLab offers a convenient way to change metadata of an issue or merge request without adding slash commands in the comment field
• It provides APIs for most features, so it allows developers to create deeper integrations with the product
• Helps developers to put their idea into production by finding areas of improvement in their development process
• It helps you to keep your information secure with Confidential Issues
• Internal projects in GitLab allow promoting inner sourcing of internal repositories.

Download link: https://about.gitlab.com/installation/

Posts to Review:

Jenkins For Beginners: Step By Step Tutorial How to Download and Install Jenkins on Windows CI and CD pipeline in process of software delivery What is Jenkins, feature, and function of Jenkins