GoCD vs. The Welkin Suite

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

The Welkin Suite is a great IDE compared to the alternatives out there. If you need to code in Salesforce and you want a mostly seamless environment, then The Welkin Suite is the best option available, in my opinion. I have also been using it for Apex Tests and find that the tools are really good for measuring code coverage and highlighting those areas that are uncovered.

Incentivized

• 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

• Local History - Without having to setup GitHub this has been a time saver!
• AutoComplete
• Saves the entire project at once

Incentivized

• UI can be improved
• Location for settings can be re-arranged
• API for setting up pipeline

Incentivized

• It would be nice if IDE feature releases were timed to coincide with Salesforce releases (i.e. make Lightning Web Components available on the day they become available in Salesforce instances).
• The IDE can be a bit buggy especially when you have several windows of the IDE open to different Salesforce instances at the same time on one machine.
• Sometimes, when you click to retrieve your data too soon, before the program has a chance to ask you to connect to the instance, it can cause the IDE to freeze.

Incentivized

In general, when you need support there is someone there to give you an answer. I think there could be an improvement in this area, but it's hard to provide a substantial amount of support for a product that is charging roughly $15 a month. Do I feel I get more than $15 worth of support value when I need to request it? Yes.

Incentivized

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

It's much faster than Eclipse

Incentivized

• 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

• The ability to recover and compare to local history
• Reliable vs. open source alternatives!

Incentivized