AWS CloudFormation vs. Jenkins

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AWS CloudFormation
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
AWS CloudFormation gives developers and systems administrators a way to create and manage a collection of related AWS resources, provisioning and updating them in a predictable fashion. Use AWS CloudFormation’s sample templates or create templates to describe the AWS resources, and any associated dependencies or runtime parameters, required to run an application. Users don’t need to figure out the order for provisioning AWS services or the subtleties of making those dependencies work.…
$0
Jenkins
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Jenkins is an open source automation server. Jenkins provides hundreds of plugins to support building, deploying and automating any project. As an extensible automation server, Jenkins can be used as a simple CI server or turned into a continuous delivery hub for any project.N/A
Pricing
AWS CloudFormationJenkins
Editions & Modules
Free Tier - 1,000 Handler Operations per Month per Account
$0.00
Handler Operation
$0.0009
per handler operation
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AWS CloudFormationJenkins
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThere is no additional charge for using AWS CloudFormation with resource providers in the following namespaces: AWS::*, Alexa::*, and Custom::*. In this case you pay for AWS resources (such as Amazon EC2 instances, Elastic Load Balancing load balancers, etc.) created using AWS CloudFormation as if you created them manually. You only pay for what you use, as you use it; there are no minimum fees and no required upfront commitments. When you use resource providers with AWS CloudFormation outside the namespaces mentioned above, you incur charges per handler operation. Handler operations are create, update, delete, read, or list actions on a resource.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AWS CloudFormationJenkins
Considered Both Products
AWS CloudFormation

No answer on this topic

Jenkins
Chose Jenkins
Honestly, we use Jenkins for pretty much everything exclusively, so it's hard to compare.
Features
AWS CloudFormationJenkins
Configuration Management
Comparison of Configuration Management features of Product A and Product B
AWS CloudFormation
8.2
2 Ratings
2% above category average
Jenkins
-
Ratings
Infrastructure Automation8.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated Provisioning8.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Parallel Execution8.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Node Management7.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Logging7.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Version Control9.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AWS CloudFormationJenkins
Small Businesses
HashiCorp Vagrant
HashiCorp Vagrant
Score 10.0 out of 10
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.2 out of 10
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.2 out of 10
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AWS CloudFormationJenkins
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(7 ratings)
7.0
(74 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(2 ratings)
6.7
(8 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.9
(6 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
6.6
(6 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
AWS CloudFormationJenkins
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
I still give it an 8 because it's one of those tools that just quietly does the heavy lifting for you but it can really test your patience when it breaks esp with deep nested stacks. It's perfect for projects where we need clean consistent environments every time. It's less ideal for quick experimental setups like new EC2 configs or Lambda permission tweaks.
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Open Source
Jenkins is a highly customizable CI/CD tool with excellent community support. One can use Jenkins to build and deploy monolith services to microservices with ease. It can handle multiple "builds" per agent simultaneously, but the process can be resource hungry, and you need some impressive specs server for that. With Jenkins, you can automate almost any task. Also, as it is an open source, we can save a load of money by not spending on enterprise CI/CD tools.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • All resources can segregated based on stacks which provides greater visibility
  • A complete audit trail of what went wrong while deploying a particular resource
  • Automatically rollbacks if any service as part of CloudFormation results in an error
  • The UI tool is useful
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Open Source
  • Automated Builds: Jenkins is configured to monitor the version control system for new pull requests. Once a pull request is created, Jenkins automatically triggers a build process. It checks out the code, compiles it, and performs any necessary build steps specified in the configuration.
  • Unit Testing: Jenkins runs the suite of unit tests defined for the project. These tests verify the functionality of individual components and catch any regressions or errors. If any unit tests fail, Jenkins marks the build as unsuccessful, and the developer is notified to fix the issues.
  • Code Analysis: Jenkins integrates with code analysis tools like SonarQube or Checkstyle. It analyzes the code for quality, adherence to coding standards, and potential bugs or vulnerabilities. The results are reported back to the developer and the product review team for further inspection.
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Cons
Amazon AWS
  • Error Description upon Failure Needs to be Improved.
  • Slow to create, delete or update.
  • Need to delete resources manually. It can ask before starting deletion whether to skip those resources or delete them.
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Open Source
  • The UI could be slightly better, it feels kind of like the 90s, but it works well.
  • An easier way to filter jobs other than views on the dashboard.
  • An easier way to read the console logs when tests do fail.
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Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Open Source
We have a certain buy-in as we have made a lot of integrations and useful tools around jenkins, so it would cost us quite some time to change to another tool. Besides that, it is very versatile, and once you have things set up, it feels unnecessary to change tool. It is also a plus that it is open source.
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Usability
Amazon AWS
It's easy enough to get a shared template & apply it. You don't even have to download-then-upload or copy-and-paste, a publicly-accessible url works.
Diving deeper, it has enough powerful capabilities to make the life of a platform / DevOps engineer bearable.
However, you need equally deep knowledge to troubleshoot issues, when they inevitably pop up. This is the same for all IaC technologies, as they are additional abstraction layers on top of the native API provided by the cloud providers.
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Open Source
Jenkins streamlines development and provides end to end automated integration and deployment. It even supports Docker and Kubernetes using which container instances can be managed effectively. It is easy to add documentation and apply role based access to files and services using Jenkins giving full control to the users. Any deviation can be easily tracked using the audit logs.
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Performance
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Open Source
No, when we integrated this with GitHub, it becomes more easy and smart to manage and control our workforce. Our distributed workforce is now streamlined to a single bucket. All of our codes and production outputs are now automatically synced with all the workers. There are many cases when our in-house team makes changes in the release, our remote workers make another release with other environment variables. So it is better to get all of the work in control.
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Support Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Open Source
As with all open source solutions, the support can be minimal and the information that you can find online can at times be misleading. Support may be one of the only real downsides to the overall software package. The user community can be helpful and is needed as the product is not the most user-friendly thing we have used.
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Implementation Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Open Source
It is worth well the time to setup Jenkins in a docker container. It is also well worth to take the time to move any "Jenkins configuration" into Jenkinsfiles and not take shortcuts.
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Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information. Management guide.For information copy of the original. The new virtual Cloning virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information
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Open Source
Overall, Jenkins is the easiest platform for someone who has no experience to come in and use effectively. We can get a junior engineer into Jenkins, give them access, and point them in the right direction with minimal hand-holding. The competing products I have used (TravisCI/GitLab/Azure) provide other options but can obfuscate the process due to the lack of straightforward simplicity. In other areas (capability, power, customization), Jenkins keeps up with the competition and, in some areas, like customization, exceeds others.
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • + We can standup a VPC in minutes
  • - It took a lot of inital time to set up
  • + With logging/rollback, made testing much easier.
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Open Source
  • Faster Time-to-Market: Jenkins automate the build, testing, and deployment process, enabling faster feedback and continuous improvement.
  • Improved Quality: Jenkins automatically run unit tests and integration tests, ensuring that code changes meet the necessary quality standards.
  • Cost Savings: Jenkins is an open-source tool that is free to use
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ScreenShots

AWS CloudFormation Screenshots

Screenshot of CloudFormation - How it works overviewScreenshot of CloudFormation - High level how it worksScreenshot of CloudFormation - Template exampleScreenshot of CloudFormation - Template inputs overview