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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

    HashiCorp Packer

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/AHashiCorp Packer automates the creation of machine images, coming out of the box with support to build images for Amazon EC2, CloudStack, DigitalOcean, Docker, Google Compute Engine, Microsoft Azure, QEMU, VirtualBox, and VMware.N/A
    Pricing
    CircleCIHashiCorp Packer
    Editions & Modules
    Server
    Contact Sales
    Performance
    starting at $15
    per month
    Scale
    starting at $2000
    per month
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    CircleCIHashiCorp Packer
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    CircleCIHashiCorp Packer
    Considered Both Products
    CircleCI
    No answer on this topic
    IBM
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    8 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    8 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    8 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Best Alternatives
    CircleCIHashiCorp Packer
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Apache Maven
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    AWS CodePipeline
    Score6.6 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
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    CircleCIHashiCorp Packer
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (27 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    7.8
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.9
    (6 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    CircleCIHashiCorp Packer
    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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    IBM
    We use packer to generate new machine images for multiple platforms on every change to our Configuration Management tools like Chef/Puppet/Ansible It's act single tool for Image building for Multi-provider like AWS/Azure/GCP Helps to achieve Dev/Prod Parity Packer itself doesn't have a state like Terraform. You can't do packer output AMI ID. If you have a scenario where you want to maintain the state for images it would be tough to manage via Packer.
    Incentivized
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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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    IBM
    • Multi-provider portability
    • Greater testability
    • Super fast infrastructure deployment
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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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    IBM
    • Manageability
    • Manageability
    • Manageability
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    CircleCI
    No answers on this topic
    IBM
    We are happy with the use of Packer in our organization. Apart from manageability, I don't find any other drawback with Packer.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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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    IBM
    It's best for building Image with many features and benefits.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    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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    IBM
    I only once required support and it was very smooth.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    CircleCI
    No answers on this topic
    IBM
    I haven't found any issue in Implementation that itself describes how well this tool is built.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    IBM
    There are lot of tools in market which does the job for Image creation but all of them are not complete Machine/Image as a code. All other alternatives can create Image partially. Main reason for selecting Packer are Packer is lightweight, portable, and command-line driven Packer helps keep development, staging, and production as similar as possible. Packer automates the creation of any type of machine image Multi-provider portability is the feature to die for
    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
    Read full review
    IBM
    • Super fast infrastructure deployment
    • Quick turnaround of infrastructure in multiple cloud using single tool.
    • Increase productivity by reducing time in infrastructure building.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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