Best CI/CD Tools Every DevOps Engineer Must Use in 2024

Discover the transformative benefits of CI/CD tools in software development.

Continuous Integration and continuous development CI/CD tools for DevOps help enhance the efficiency, quality, and the speed of software releases. These tools automate the integration of code changes from multiple contributors into a shared repository  and automate deployment. This approach reduces issues increases code quality through automated testing and helps adopt CI/CD best practices. Elevate your projects efficiency and security, hire DevOps engineers today!

What is CI/CD?

CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment or Continuous Delivery. It helps automate the steps for developing software from scratch to deployment. 

CI/CD speeds up the software development process and ensures high quality in project management. With CI/CD, it is easier to quickly introduce new features, fix bugs, and respond to customer needs or market changes with agility. This continuous cycle of automated testing and deployment reduces the risk of errors, reduces manual work, and allows for more efficient use of resources. CI/CD helps businesses to deliver better, faster, and more reliable software for a competitive edge.  

Best CI/CD Tools for DevOps Engineers in 2024?

Our Experts highlight these specific tools by mapping these tools according to CI/CD requirements. Mapping CI/CD needs a specific tool that considers each tool's unique features and strengths. This will help ensure that project requirements will be met effectively.

#1. Integrated DevOps Lifecycle management

GitLab CI/CD:

GitLab stands out as an exemplary tool for integrated DevOps Lifecycle management. It is important to begin with a unified approach to streamline development. GitLab CI/CD is a tool in GitLab that helps software teams automatically build, test, and deploy their code every time they make changes. In simple words, its automated process ensures that every piece of code is ready to be a part of the final product without manual intervention.

Features of GitLab for CI/CD

Integrated Solutions: While other CI/CD tools might require integration and external services for complete functionality, Gitlab offers an all-in-one platform. It helps with project management, source code management, CI/CD, and monitoring and reduces complexity and the need for multiple tools. 

AutoDevOps: It helps automate software delivery process by automatically detecting, building testing, deploying and monitoring applications. Minimizing configuration and manual intervention, it helps teams to adopt best practices in software development and deployment. It is beneficial for small and medium businesses to streamline software development.

Security and compliance: This quality CI/CD tool integrates strong security and compliance into the development process. It includes static and dynamic security testing, dependency scanning, and license management, which can be automatically applied to every code change. It helps identify security risks and fix the issues vulnerabilities and early, reducing post-deployment incidents.

#2. Performance and customizability for complex projects

Circle CI:

To keep performance and compatibility in check Circle CI helps development teams in automating code integration from multiple contributors into single software project. It focuses on ensuring that every code submission is automatically built, tested, and prepared for deployment, facilitating rapid cycles and high quality software output. CircleCI excels by providing a platform that is both speedy and secure, streamlining the DevOps process through automation and integration capabilities. 

Features of CircleCI:

Insights Dashboard: A comprehensive interface where users can monitor their CI/CD pipeline status and performance. This dashboard offers vital metrics such as workflow status, job duration, and resource consumption, enabling teams to track progress, identify their bottlenecks, and optimize their build process.

Clean Environment: It supports testing in clean environments in fresh and predictable settings.

Workflow: Allows for job execution, while orbs provides a system for reusing configurations like job, execution environments, and commands, streamlining setup and scaling.

Rapid Testing, code building: CircleCI automates the process of code testing and building, which is central to Continuous Integration. Every time a developer pushes code to the repository, CircleCI automatically triggers a pipeline that builds the project and runs tests. This ensures that any integration errors or bugs are detected early, before they become more complex and costly to fix. By automating these steps, CircleCI helps teams maintain high code quality and accelerates the development cycle, allowing for quicker releases.

#3. Extensibility and community support

Jenkins

Extensibility plays a vital role in DevOps providing the flexibility to implement the CI/CD workflows and pipeline for specific requirements. Jenkins uses Java programming language and is a helpful tool for implementing CI/CD workflows and pipelines. It helps manage and streamline the process of deploying software. Jenkins tells the computer exactly what to do and how to do it. As the steps are properly defined there is less chance of error for CI/CD mobile apps. 

Key Features of Jenkins:

Faster release: Its automated and new updates can be sent out more quickly. 

Less stress for teams: Developers using Jenkins don't have to work odd hours to update software. 

Lot of Plugins: Jenkins has a vast library of available plugins or add ones, its similar to app store, you can use any plugin for any particular task. These plugins help software to integrate with software or automate work.

Open-source: It's free to use, and its open-source code is open for anyone to look at or improve. 

#4. Microsoft ecosystem integration 

Azure DevOps: 

Azure DevOps is a collaborative tool offered by Microsoft that simplifies the software development process. It integrates Git for version control, automates build, and manages releases. It helps to ensure smooth deployment in production, development, and testing. 

Key Features of Azure DevOps:

Git repositories: These serve as backbone for version control, allowing multiple developers to work on the same project at the same time without conflict. They enable the tracking of every code change, making it easier to identify when and by whom a change was made.

Build automation: It reduces number of steps that compile it into a runnable application followed by automated tests to ensure that it does not introduce errors. 

Release management: It streamlines the development process to various environments.

ARM template: Facilitates infrastructure management via code for consistency and efficiency.

#5. GitHub Integration and Community Contributions:

GithubActions

Github Actions is a tool provided by GitHub, that automates the process of checking, testing, and deploying software directly in the GitHub repository. It enables you to setup tasks, such as building the software or running tests. Every time someone proposes changes GitHub actions can ensure that those changes don't harm anything, and can even push the updates live if everything checks all the right boxes. 

Key Features of GitHubActions:

Custom environment variable: Developers can define custom environment variables in their GitHub Actions workflow file, to set-up unique settings or configurations needed for their code to run. 

Executing scripts and commands: It directly executes scripts and shell commands within a workflow. It includes dependencies, running tests, or any other command necessary for the project. 

Working with Scripts stored in your repository: This feature helps in running custom build steps, tests, or deployment scripts that are a part of a projects repository. 

Making test executable: Github Actions saves files as Artifacts, which can be used for sharing with other tasks in workflow. Artifacts can be binary files, test results, to logs, and they can be used by subsequent jobs or downloaded later for analysis, supporting data flow across CI/CD pipeline.

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#6. Simplicity and Open-source Projects:

Travis CI

Travis CI is an online service that automatically checks and tests your software projects whenever you make changes to them or add something new. You can use it with various platforms where your code is stored, like GitHub or Gitlab. It can check your project and help you deploy software, its more easy to update application or website. It helps in regular testing without you doing everything manually.

Key Features of Travis CI:

GitHub Integration: Travis CI seamlessly integrates with GitHub, automatically running tests on your software each time you commit changes or open a new pull request. 

Build matrix: You can test your software on different operating systems and on various versions of languages at the same time maintain compatibility, identify issues specific to certain configuration. Travis CI automates your code 

Deployment automation: Travis CI automates the deployment process, and streamlines the process of getting your application to production, speeding release cycle and reducing manual steps.

Parallel builds: Travis CI can run several builds in parallel, reducing the time it takes to run your entire test suit. It helps with extensive testing for large projects. It gives faster feedback on the changes made and accelerates the development process.

Know which DevSec Ops tools integrate security practices in DevOps. Go to the blog for more insights!

#7. AWS Ecosystem Integrtion

AWS code pipeline

AWS code pipeline is a service offered by amazon web services. It helps automate the steps required to release your software quickly and reliably. It allows developers to design, manage, and automate the entire process of software delivery, from the initial code change through the deployment of the application. It ensures teams that the software is always in state ready for release, automating tests and deployments so that new features and updates can be delivered. It streamlines development reducing errors.

Key Features of AWS code pipeline

Workflow modeling: Create and manage a process workflow through a visual interface in stages like build, test, and deploy, each consisting of a specific task. 

AWS Integration: Integrate with AWS services such as Code Commit, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, Elastic Beanstalk, ECS, Fargate, and CloudFormation for various stages of these release process, from source code retrieval to deployment and resource management.

Serverless application support: Utilize AWS Cloud Formation for serverless applications, enabling continuous delivery of applications using AWS Lambda, API gateway, and DynamoDB.

Lambda Function Triggers: Automate custom tasks at any pipeline stage with AWS Lambda functions, like testing web application development success. 

Extensive Service Connectivity: Configure pipelines that combine AWS services, third-party tools, and custom systems to cover the entire process.

DevOps automation tools facilitate DevOps lifecycle, in contrast to CI/CD tools, which focus on automating the software delivery process. Here's a list of some best DevOps Automation tools - plz check out!

Third-party developer tool integration: use tools like GitHub or Jenkins into your pipeline with pre-build plugins

Our CICD Success Story: 

• Our team successfully developed and deployed a comprehensive solution tailored for a client to manage ATM terminal-related records and histories.
• The application features Microsoft Map integration, enabling precise location tracking of terminals across all US time zones.

"We achieved a seamless transition to production without any issues, with thorough testing and issue resolution in the staging environment. We enhanced the application's stability and performance, with CI/CD pipeline, earning high praise and positive feedback from the client using Microsoft Azure."

- Aashish Sonawane (DevOps Expert)

Conclusion:

Choosing the right tool for the CI/CD process is important in software development. Some best CI/CD tools offer highly customizable options, while others stand out for seamless integration with GitLab's version control system.

For the CI/CD tools selection process, you must know your project requirements. If cloud-based CI/CD services are required, you can choose a tool like CircleCI. Lastly, GitHub Actions has emerged as a formidable contender, leveraging the vast GitHub ecosystem to automate workflows directly within repositories. Each of these tools offers unique features and benefits, making the choice highly dependent on specific project requirements, existing infrastructure, and the desired level of integration.