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Jenkins does everything, but that might be too much
October 17, 2019

Jenkins does everything, but that might be too much

Richard Rout | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Jenkins

We used Jenkins as our build server to execute build jobs and automated tests. The whole of engineering used it to build jobs and checking build status. Ensuring their branches would successfully run tests before merging to the master branch. It was a cheaper alternative to non-open-source competitors since it was free.
  • Pluggable.
  • Extensible.
  • Large development community.
  • It's not cloud-based.
  • It can be hard to figure out.
  • High learning curve.
  • Have to maintain infrastructure yourself.
  • High maintenance cost.
  • Lots of code and effort to maintain.
  • Only a few people understood how it worked. Legacy knowledge.
Originally Jenkins was selected because it was the best around, but it has since been outclassed by more specific services or cloud-based services and tools that will do all of the heavy lifting for you. Jenkins still has a use case - but it's hard to argue the additional maintenance overhead is worth it.
There is a large development community - but it is shifting as people move towards other tools. A lot of companies still use Jenkins and will build propriety tools, which doesn't help any of the open-source community.
Jenkins has a lot of help and support online, but other, more modern, alternatives will have better support for newer tech.

Do you think Jenkins delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Jenkins's feature set?

No

Did Jenkins live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Jenkins go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Jenkins again?

No

If you have a very complex set-up and want full control of your build and test servers, then Jenkins will work for you. It's free and allows you to deploy it on your own machines and set up everything exactly how you want it. You need to invest a lot of time and work. It's not good if you just want a simple build and any other cloud service will do it for you, cheap or free.