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CircleCI vs. GoCD vs. Gradle Build Tool (Open Source)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    CircleCI

    Score9.3 out of 10
    N/ACircleCI is a software delivery engine from the company of the same name in San Francisco, that helps teams ship software faster, offering their platform for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD). Ultimately, the solution helps to map every source of change for software teams, so they can accelerate innovation and growth.

    $0

    for up to 6,000 build minutes and up to 5 active users per month

    GoCD

    Score8 out of 10
    N/AGoCD, from ThoughtWorks in Chicago, is an application lifecycle management and development tool.N/A

    Gradle Build Tool (Open Source)

    Score9 out of 10
    N/AGradle is an open source build system. Gradle boasts a rich API and mature ecosystem of plugins and integrations to support automation. Users can model, integrate and systematize the delivery of software from end to end.

    $0

    per month

    Pricing
    CircleCIGoCDGradle Build Tool (Open Source)
    Editions & Modules
    Server
    Contact Sales
    Performance
    starting at $15
    per month
    Scale
    starting at $2000
    per month
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    CircleCIGoCDGradle Build Tool (Open Source)
    Free Trial
    NoNoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details———
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    CircleCIGoCDGradle Build Tool (Open Source)
    Considered Multiple Products
    CircleCI
    No answer on this topic
    ThoughtWorks
    No answer on this topic
    Open Source
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    8 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Would buy again
    7 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    8 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    7 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    8 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    CircleCIGoCDGradle Build Tool (Open Source)
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Apache Maven
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Apache Maven
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    AWS CodePipeline
    Score6.6 out of 10
    Apache Maven
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Apache Maven
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Enterprises
    AWS CodePipeline
    Score6.6 out of 10
    Gradle Build Tool (Open Source)
    Score9 out of 10
    Azure Pipelines
    Score8.5 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    CircleCIGoCDGradle Build Tool (Open Source)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (27 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.0
    (12 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    7.8
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    3.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.9
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (4 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    CircleCIGoCDGradle Build Tool (Open Source)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    CircleCI
    Based on our experience, CircleCI is well-suited for automating mobile app release cycles. For example, to release an iOS app, you would need to build, sign, and upload it to TestFlight, which requires a dedicated Mac in the office. But with CircleCI, you can have macOS executors, so you don't have to manage a physical build machine. Another benefit is that CircleCI's certified AWS Orbs abstract away complex authentication and deployment logic, allowing us to build, push, and deploy Docker containers to Amazon ECS with minimal configuration and high reliability. CircleCI is less suited for smaller projects where the development and deployment are not that extensive, for example, a static site. Once you have built a static site, you probably won't make any further changes, so there's no point in paying for it.
    Incentivized
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    ThoughtWorks
    Previously, our team used Jenkins. However, since it's a shared deployment resource we don't have admin access. We tried GoCD as it's open source and we really like. We set up our deployment pipeline to run whenever codes are merged to master, run the unit test and revert back if it doesn't pass. Once it's deployed to the staging environment, we can simply do 1-click to deploy the appropriate version to production. We use this to deploy to an on-prem server and also AWS. Some deployment pipelines use custom Powershell script for.Net application, some others use Bash script to execute the docker push and cloud formation template to build elastic beanstalk.
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    Gradle Build Tool is more suitable with the Java projects. It has helped us to automate the build part of the devops cycle. Its configuration and Groovy script is really easy to understand and can be implemented with ease. It can be used both for automation and manual buids of the projects. Gradle Build Tool is easy to use and easy to integrate.
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    Pros
    CircleCI
    • Automated builds! This is really why you get CircleCI, to automate the build process. This makes building your application far more reliable and repeatable. It can also run tests and verify your application is working as expected.
    • Simple. Unlike Jenkins, Teamcity, or other platforms, CircleCI doesn't need a lot of setup. It's completely hosted, so there's no infrastructure to set up. The config file does take a bit to understand, but if you follow their example and start with something small and add to it, you can get it up and going quicker than it first looks.
    • Scales easily. Again, since it's all cloud-based, you don't have to manage or scale infrastructure. Simply subscribe to the number of containers you want, and scaling up just means buying more containers.
    Incentivized
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    ThoughtWorks
    • Pipeline-as-Code works really well. All our pipelines are defined in yml files, which are checked into SCM.
    • The ability to link multiple pipelines together is really cool. Later pipelines can declare a dependency to pick up the build artifacts of earlier ones.
    • Agents definition is really great. We can define multiple different kinds of environments to best suit our diverse build systems.
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    • Gradle's methods to manipulate files is very flexible. It minimizes the amount of code one has to write to copy, move, or expand zip or tar files.
    • Gradle uses Groovy, which is a Java like language. This allows for most computer engineers to come up to speed fairly quickly, for writing or maintaining gradle code.
    • Gradle also supports DSL (Domain Specific Language), which is based on Groovy. The DSL language allows engineers to automate build jobs that otherwise could be very cumbersome to maintain or modify.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    CircleCI
    • While configuration is easy, the config files can get very very long.
    • Price compared to some alternatives that are cheaper / free. Especially so if you are running multiple containers in parallel.
    • Have experienced numerous outages (3-5) in the last few months where CircleCI has been down.
    • Web documentation and tutorials haven't been as good as some of the competitors.
    Incentivized
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    ThoughtWorks
    • UI can be improved
    • Location for settings can be re-arranged
    • API for setting up pipeline
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    • I'd like to see a way to specify how to run only certain tests in parallel, I tried this feature and for tests that involve interaction with SQL Databases sometimes I can't because of deadlocks.
    • Not sure if there is something else, gradle has been working really good for us and they are adding improvements all the time which is awesome. I used to think the performance is a deal but the latest versions are addressing this issue very well
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    CircleCI
    The reliability & speed, it just works. The ability to spin up macOS runners and Docker containers on demand without managing hardware is a huge win. The Orbs system makes integrating with AWS and Slack incredibly easy, saving us weeks of custom scripting and providing real-time updates in our Slack channel. This makes it easy for us to track and ensures that everyone involved knows the status. Of course, it has drawbacks related to configuration complexity and, in some cases, cost transparency, but overall, it is an industry-standard, robust tool that solves our core infrastructure problems well.
    Incentivized
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    ThoughtWorks
    No answers on this topic
    Open Source
    Gradle's language construct is good
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    CircleCI
    It's pretty snappy, even with using workflows with multiple steps and different docker images. I've seen builds take a long time if it's really involved, but from what I can tell, it's still at least on par if not faster than other build tools.
    Incentivized
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    ThoughtWorks
    No answers on this topic
    Open Source
    I have tried to use Gradle for projects several times in the past, but there is just so much work in maintaining the build file that it quickly becomes untenable. I have been using Maven for many years, and even though the build file can be complex, it works without maintenance between releases.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    CircleCI
    Unless you have a reasonably large account, you're going to be mainly stuck reading their documentation. Which has improved somewhat over the years but is still extremely limited compared to a platform like Digital Ocean who invested in the documentation and a community to ensure it's kept up to date. If you can't find your answer there, you can be stuck.
    Incentivized
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    ThoughtWorks
    No answers on this topic
    Open Source
    Gradle has been an excellent tool for Android development. It has helped us create multiple versions of the app for different environments. It also takes care of all the packaging needs in the background without having to write all the code related to that. It is a no brainer to use Gradle with Android applications.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    CircleCI
    Jenkins is usually self-hosted, Travis CI's infrastructure is largely unreliable (lots of tests time out for no discernable reason), and Semaphore encourages you to configure your CI/CD from a web UI. We like CircleCI because its hosted, our tests run largely as expected on their infrastructure, and we can configure it from a config file that we track in GitHub.
    Incentivized
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    ThoughtWorks
    GoCD is easier to setup, but harder to customize at runtime. There's no way to trigger a pipeline with custom parameters.
    Jenkins is more flexible at runtime. You can define multiple user-provided parameters so when user needs to trigger a build, there's a form for him/her to input the parameters.
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    [Gradle is] a more modern version of open source build tools like Ant and Maven.
    Whereas the build config was XML files which were tedious and error
    prone, the modern DSL usage of Groovy to write these build files is a
    great advancement. Also these config files can be inherited from top
    level to each associated project.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    CircleCI
    • We pay over $5K/ month and we have high expectations for service. Sometimes I feel that we don't get the value, but only sometimes.
    • We have had to build our own application to keep state and broker releases and deployments. We call our app deployer. I feel that CircleCI could do more to understand our needs and possibly build additional features that would enable us to invest less in build and deployment infrastructure and justify paying more for Circle.
    Incentivized
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    ThoughtWorks
    • ROI has been good since it's open source
    • Settings.xml need to be backed up periodically. It contains all the settings for your pipelines! We accidentally deleted before and we have to restore and re-create several missing pipelines
    • More straight forward use of API and allows filtering e.g., pull all pipelines triggered after this date
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    • In a distributed development environment, once we established a strong CI/CD model, Gradle proved to be a great choice to automate the various processes. Gradle also provides much flexibility, which is essential in today's development environment. The important benefit is that the CI/CD engineers can support development's needs quickly and reliably. This in turn supports faster testing and deployment, which generates higher ROI.
    Incentivized
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