Item: Bitrise
Rating: 9
Author: Christoph Halang

Overall Satisfaction with Bitrise

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Bitrise.io as a standard CI / CD system for mobile application development in a corporate venture builder. Multiple teams of 4-6 developers each use the platform to automate the release process of both test and production versions to internal testers and customers on AppStore and PlayStore. Our setup interfaces with Google Firebase for beta deployments and makes use of FastLane actions to be agnostic of the CI / CD service itself.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Combination of GUI / text editor for build steps.
Ability to run your pipelines on local machines.
Open approach to develop build steps.

Cons

Documentation on the underlying systems like VMs could be more extensive to help with debugging.

Most Important Features

Organize user in different teams.
Integration with Google Firebase.
Integration with FastLane.
iOS / Android builds on the same platform.

Return on Investment

By standardizing the pipelines for mobile builds across different teams we allow the developers to focus on developing great apps and reduce the knowledge needed to maintain the CI / CD pipelines.
The simple and friendly interface allows for quick onboarding and easy learning even for non-developer roles.
Robust integration e.g. with Firebase for automated beta deployments allows quick feedback from internal testers.

Alternatives Considered

CircleCI and Jenkins

Bitrise.io is highly optimized for building, testing, and deploying mobile apps. Everything is streamlined and relevant so you can get your first build in minutes. Unfortunately, this can also mean that some flexibility is lost that other CI / CD solutions offer. You can probably extend the functionality using custom steps but you are always reminded that it is mobile-first. On the other hand, it offers greater flexibility in integrating with Git hosters like GitLab where CircleCI falls short. Jenkins can offer all of the functionalities if you are willing to set them up (and maintain them) - and you are able to provide a macOS host machine for iOS builds.

Key Insights

Do you think Bitrise delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Bitrise's feature set?

Yes

Did Bitrise live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Bitrise go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Bitrise again?

Yes

Other Software Used

GitHub, GitLab, TrueNAS, Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Slack, Microsoft Teams

Likelihood to Recommend

While Bitrise.io offers a ton of functionality for automating build and release processes for mobile apps it does not offer the general flexibility like CircleCI. So if you are looking for a single system to handle every CI / CD task you throw at it, look somewhere else. If you need something to power your mobile-first projects Bitrise.io is for you.

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The mobile first CI / CD solution