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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

    Kubernetes

    Score9.1 out of 10
    N/AKubernetes is an open-source container cluster manager.N/A
    Pricing
    CircleCIKubernetes
    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
    CircleCIKubernetes
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    CircleCIKubernetes
    Considered Both Products
    CircleCI
    No answer on this topic
    Kubernetes
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    8 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    9 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    8 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    9 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    8 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    9 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    75%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    Features
    CircleCIKubernetes
    Container Management
    Comparison of Container Management features of CircleCI and Kubernetes
    Feature
    CircleCI
    -
    Ratings
    Kubernetes
    9.2
    4 Ratings
    12% above category average
    Security and Isolation00 Ratings9.34 Ratings
    Container Orchestration00 Ratings9.84 Ratings
    Cluster Management00 Ratings9.84 Ratings
    Storage Management00 Ratings8.64 Ratings
    Resource Allocation and Optimization00 Ratings8.84 Ratings
    Discovery Tools00 Ratings9.34 Ratings
    Update Rollouts and Rollbacks00 Ratings9.34 Ratings
    Self-Healing and Recovery00 Ratings9.33 Ratings
    Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging00 Ratings9.14 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    CircleCIKubernetes
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Mirantis Kubernetes Engine
    Score8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    AWS CodePipeline
    Score6.6 out of 10
    Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    AWS CodePipeline
    Score6.6 out of 10
    SUSE Rancher
    Score9.4 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    CircleCIKubernetes
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (27 ratings)
    8.7
    (19 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    Performance
    7.8
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.9
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    CircleCIKubernetes
    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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    Kubernetes
    K8s should be avoided - If your application works well without being converted into microservices-based architecture & fits correctly in a VM, needs less scaling, have a fixed traffic pattern then it is better to keep away from Kubernetes. Otherwise, the operational challenges & technical expertise will add a lot to the OPEX. Also, if you're the one who thinks that containers consume fewer resources as compared to VMs then this is not true. As soon as you convert your application to a microservice-based architecture, a lot of components will add up, shooting your resource consumption even higher than VMs so, please beware. Kubernetes is a good choice - When the application needs quick scaling, is already in microservice-based architecture, has no fixed traffic pattern, most of the employees already have desired skills.
    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
    Read full review
    Kubernetes
    • Complex cluster management can be done with simple commands with strong authentication and authorization schemes
    • Exhaustive documentation and open community smoothens the learning process
    • As a user a few concepts like pod, deployment and service are sufficient to go a long way
    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
    Read full review
    Kubernetes
    • Local development, Kubernetes does tend to be a bit complicated and unnecessary in environments where all development is done locally.
    • The need for add-ons, Helm is almost required when running Kubernetes. This brings a whole new tool to manage and learn before a developer can really start to use Kubernetes effectively.
    • Finicy configmap schemes. Kubernetes configmaps often have environment breaking hangups. The fail safes surrounding configmaps are sadly lacking.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    CircleCI
    No answers on this topic
    Kubernetes
    The Kubernetes is going to be highly likely renewed as the technologies that will be placed on top of it are long term as of planning. There shouldn't be any last minute changes in the adoption and I do not anticipate sudden change of the core underlying technology. It is just that the slow process of technology adoption that makes it hard to switch to something else.
    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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    Kubernetes
    It is an eminently usable platform. However, its popularity is overshadowed by its complexity. To properly leverage the capabilities and possibilities of Kubernetes as a platform, you need to have excellent understanding of your use case, even better understanding of whether you even need Kubernetes, and if yes - be ready to invest in good engineering support for the platform itself
    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
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    Kubernetes
    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
    Read full review
    Kubernetes
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Kubernetes
    Most of the required features for any orchestration tool or framework, which is provided by Kubernetes. After understanding all modules and features of the K8S, it is the best fit for us as compared with others out there.
    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
    Kubernetes
    • Because of microservices, Kubernetes makes it easy to find the cost of each application easily.
    • Like every new technology, initially, it took more resources to educate ourselves but over a period of time, I believe it's going to be worth it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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