Knapsack Pro

CodeShip vs Heroku CI comparison of Continuous Integration servers
What are the differences between CodeShip and Heroku CI?

CodeShip

https://codeship.com

Heroku CI

https://www.heroku.com/continuous-integration
Unique feature

Runs on own infrastructure

Heroku Flow

Type of product

SaaS

SaaS

Offers a free plan

Yes

Free for up to 100 builds per month

No (partial)

For CI only, the cost starts at $10 for pipeline, plus a variable amount depending on how long the build runs for (prorated per second). The servers used for CI cost $250 for a full month, which means you get about 3 hours for $1. For hosting, there's a free tier, limited to 1 web/1 worker with 512 MB RAM. One of the more annoying limitations is that free dynos are put into sleep mode after 30 min. of inactivity, which increases loading times considerably.

Predictable pricing

Yes

Clearly defined, calculator, expensive

Yes

Clearly defined, offers a calculator.

Support / SLA

Yes

Offers great dev support

Yes

Paralellism
Every CI servers tends to address this differently (parallel, distributed, build matrix). Some of it is just marketing, and some is just nuance. For this table, parallel means that tasks can be run concurrently on the same machine, distributed means that tasks can be scaled horizontally, on multiple machines
How to split tests in parallel in the optimal way with Knapsack Pro

Yes

Via easy Yaml config file, limited by the specs of the machine you have purchased

Yes

Up to 16 nodes. You can ask Heroku support to enable up to 32 parallel dynos.

Distributed builds
distributed means that tasks can be scaled horizontally, on multiple machines
How to split tests in parallel in the optimal way with Knapsack Pro

No

N/A

Containers support / Build environment

Yes

Native support for Docker

Yes

Builds run in isolation on new dynos (Heroku containers). Wide support via buildpacks: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/buildpacks

Analytics / Status overview
Analytics and overview referrs to the ability to, at a glance, see what's breaking (be it a certain task, or the build for a specific project)

Yes

Yes

Great visual overview built-in.

Management support
How easy is it to manage users / projects / assign roles and permissions and so on

Yes

Full with organization and teams management

Yes

One of the more mature solutions for teams on the market, Heroku Teams is available for free for 1-5 people, and comes at a cost for 6+ team members: https://www.heroku.com/pricing#team-comparison. Allows setting roles and app-level permissions with ease.

Self-hosted option

No

No

Hosted plans / SaaS

Yes

Yes

Build pipelines
A continuous delivery pipeline is a description of the process that the software goes through from a new code commit, through testing and other statical analysis steps all the way to the end-users of the product.

Yes

Yes

Very easy and intuitive process that allows defining a pipeline from code commit, to code review (review apps), user acceptance testing and production deployment, via Heroku Flow. Works best if the project is also hosted on Heroku.

Reports
Reports are about the abilty to see specific reports (like code coverage or custom ones), but not necesarily tied in into a larger dashboard.

N/A

Yes

Ecosystem
Besides the official documentation and software, is there a large community using this product? Are there any community-driven tools / plugins that you can use?

N/A

Yes

Wide array of 3rd party add-ons available via Heroku Elements: https://elements.heroku.com/addons. Custom buildpacks are also available for almost any stack you might be using (over 5500 buildpacks available at the moment)

Specific language support: Ruby
Some CI servers have built-in support for parsing RSpec or Istanbul output for example and we mention those. Some others make it even easier by detecting Gemfiles or package.json and automate parts of the process for the developer.

Yes

Fairly complete documentation on Ruby projects: https://documentation.codeship.com/pro/languages-frameworks/ruby/

Yes

Although not specifically built in to Heroku, it's guaranteed that any Ruby specific need that might arise would be solved via add-ons, buildpacks or other integrations available.

Specific language support: JavaScript

Yes

Fairly complete documentation on Node.js projects: https://documentation.codeship.com/pro/languages-frameworks/nodejs/

Yes

Although not specifically built in to Heroku, it's guaranteed that any Javascript specific need that might arise would be solved via add-ons, buildpacks or other integrations available.

Integrations
1st party support for common tools (like Slack notifications, various VCS platforms, etc)

Yes

Easy to integrate a bunch of 3rd party services, such as Code Climate, Codecov, Rancher, Pager Duty and many more: https://documentation.codeship.com/general/integrations/codeclimate/

Yes

The strongest built-in integrations are with GitHub and Slack (ChatOps) but even allows integrating 3rd party CI servers in the workflow if you so require, among others.

API
Custom integreation is available, via an API or otherwise, it's mentioned separately as it allows further customization than any of the Ecosystem/Integration options

Yes

Custom integrations are possible: https://documentation.codeship.com/general/integrations/custom-integration/

Yes

Offers a feature rich API that allows CRUD operations on the most important features, such as promoting an app to production, or inspecting a specific pipeline.

Auditing

N/A

Yes

Additional notes

CodeShip Pro gives you a lot more flexibility when defining your CI/CD process, plus you get your own AWS instance, so your build doesn't run on a shared server (this can be important for HIPAA or GDPR compliance, etc).

CodeShip Parallelisation - Parallel Test Pipelines how to run Ruby & JavaScript tests faster

How to leverage Heroku CI to run your tests faster?

Introduction to Knapsack Pro Heroku add-on

CodeShip parallelism integration

Heroku CI parallelism integration

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