Product
|
Cloud costs
|
released
July 5, 2021
|
3
min read
|

The 3 Best Azure DevOps Alternatives

Updated

In late 2018, Microsoft announced they were launching a product called Azure DevOps, which includes a variety of tools for CI/CD, reporting, artifacts, Git repos, testing, and more. ADO has a wide variety of plugins and extensions that work with the platform.

Azure DevOps is pretty flexible and provides customizable pipelines. The one (pretty large) downside to Azure DevOps Pipelines is that it requires a high amount of scripting in the setup and configuration process. It does, however, have pipeline templates and triggers that improve the setup process.

Azure DevOps can be good for people who like having the safety of the Microsoft name backing their projects, but we think that there are plenty of other vendors out there that can help you scale more efficiently and effectively than Azure DevOps. If you’re here, you’re looking for these vendors - so let’s dive in.

Azure DevOps Alternatives

GitLab

GitLab is a complete DevOps platform that provides source code management, CI/CD, security, value stream management, GitOps, and more. Its roots were as a source code management tool and Git repository, in the same vein as GitHub and Bitbucket. Their Continuous Delivery tool helps accelerate and efficiently improve the software release process. They have an end-to-end DevOps solution, which positions them as a flexible pipeline management system. 

GitLab supports all of the major cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, and GCP. They also support container orchestration tools, such as Kubernetes and ECS. In terms of infrastructure, GitLab recently released a Terraform integration.

GitLab has a beautiful UI, but where it lacks is its ease of use. There is definitely a learning curve to utilize the platform. They do not have any deployment verification capabilities, but can integrate with tools such as Prometheus – however, that is the only tool they integrate with to increase observability.

Similarly, they do not have native secrets management capabilities, but do integrate with HashiCorp Vault. They do, however, have good governance and compliance features available on their enterprise-level plans.

GitLab Features

  • SaaS & On-Premise
  • Cloud-Native & Traditional App Support
  • Terraform Infrastructure Provisioners
  • Full GitOps Functionality
  • Manual Canary Deployments
  • Pristine Linux Installation

See a more in-depth GitLab vs. Harness comparison. 

Codefresh

As far as CI/CD platforms go, Codefresh hits the mark in a few areas – namely when it comes to modern features. They seem to hit all the buzzwords, like pipeline as code, GitOps 2.0, automatic preview environments, Kubernetes – oh my! 

This cloud-native, container-based platform boasts strong governance features, such as RBAC, audit trails, SAML SSO, built-in secrets management through encryption (or, if you’re a fan of third parties, HashiCorp Vault), and more. 

Additionally, Codefresh boasts integrations to all major cloud and Git providers, Jira, Helm, Argo, and GitHub Actions. When it comes to observability, Codefresh handles that with Honeycomb

The biggest worries about Codefresh are resource consumption and downtime (even if partial). Looking through their status page, there is a fair amount of outages. As for resource consumption, customer reviews state that it’s easy to go over plan allowances since Codefresh consumes a fair amount of resources. They’d then need to pay on top of their regular costs, which – if you’re on a tight budget – isn’t the greatest thing ever. 

Codefresh Features

  • Robust Governance 
  • Free Plan for Small Teams
  • Saas & On-Premise
  • Codefresh Runner for On-Prem Installations
  • Full GitOps Functionality 
  • Pre-Built Pipeline Templates

See a more in-depth Codefresh vs. Harness comparison.

Harness

Harness, the premier commercial and enterprise-grade Continuous Delivery solution, is incredibly powerful and built for teams with abundant or limited resources alike by ensuring a self-service, simple, and smart approach to software delivery.

Whether your Kubernetes clusters are in GCP, Azure, AWS – or even homegrown/self-hosted, Harness provides you with capabilities to deploy your Helm charts to as many clusters as you want.

Harness auto-generates all deployment scripts based on built-in or custom deployment templates. It also has machine learning-based deployment verification, soon to be its own module named Continuous Verification, that monitors your app for abnormalities after a deployment. For more information on Continuous Verification – and some sneak peek screenshots – visit our article on The Importance of Continuous Verification.

Harness boasts deep integrations with observability platforms such as Datadog, New Relic, and AppDynamics. Infrastructure provisioners are offered through robust integrations of CloudFormation and Terraform. Additionally, Harness integrates flawlessly with Jira and SNOW for issue tracking. It also has a huge focus on compliance and governance, boasting fine-grained RBAC, integrated secrets management, permissions, and audit trails. The level of support customers receive is unparalleled amongst software vendors. 

If you’re looking for a full CI/CD solution, Harness has your back! With Harness comes Continuous Deployment, Continuous Verification, Cloud Cost Management, and Feature Flags (now available!) – and our new module, Continuous Integration Enterprise. Harness, the premier commercial and enterprise-grade Continuous Delivery solution, is incredibly powerful and built for large enterprises or small shops alike by ensuring a self-service, simple, smart approach to software delivery – all for you to have the best possible experience.

Harness Features

  • Freemium Option Available, Full PaaS Capabilities
  • SaaS & On-Premise
  • Continuous Verification, Canary Deployments
  • Full GitOps Functionality With Command Line Interface
  • RBAC, SSO, Secrets Management, & Audit Trails
  • Accelerate Metrics, Dashboards, & Reporting
  • Quickstart Allows for Pipelines in 15 Minutes

See a more in-depth Azure DevOps vs. Harness comparison. 

Evaluate Harness With the Top DevOps Tools

If you’re struggling to deliver your software or to build your software delivery solution, it may be time to consider a SaaS solution like Harness. You’re looking for alternatives to Azure DevOps, so be sure that you invest in a tool that is going to scale as you do. Harness software delivery platform packs a punch with modules for Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Feature Flags, and Cloud Cost Management. Build, test, verify, and deploy on demand with Harness – start your free trial or schedule your demo today.

Sign up now

Sign up for our free plan, start building and deploying with Harness, take your software delivery to the next level.

Get a demo

Sign up for a free 14 day trial and take your software development to the next level

Documentation

Learn intelligent software delivery at your own pace. Step-by-step tutorials, videos, and reference docs to help you deliver customer happiness.

Case studies

Learn intelligent software delivery at your own pace. Step-by-step tutorials, videos, and reference docs to help you deliver customer happiness.

We want to hear from you

Enjoyed reading this blog post or have questions or feedback?
Share your thoughts by creating a new topic in the Harness community forum.

Sign up for our monthly newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest Harness content in your inbox every month.

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
Platform