Knapsack Pro

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

CodeShip

https://codeship.com

Semaphore CI

https://semaphoreci.com
Unique feature

Runs on own infrastructure

Autoscaling made easy / Great CLI

Type of product

SaaS

SaaS

Offers a free plan

Yes

Free for up to 100 builds per month

Yes

1,300 service minutes every month. Plans to release a free tier for open source projects.

Predictable pricing

Yes

Clearly defined, calculator, expensive

Yes

Semaphore doesn't have traditional pricing tiers, instead it lists the types of machines you can use and their pricing per second of service. They plan to release an annual plan at some point.

Support / SLA

Yes

Offers great dev support

N/A

Not clear if they offer any real SLA on support.

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

Allows defining a custom build matrix such that your build can be parallelized accross several different environments.

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

Allows running builds inside docker containers

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

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

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

Allows defining complex build workflows with ease

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

N/A

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

N/A

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

Provides rich documentation on integrating Semaphore CI in Ruby projects. Also provides sudo access if you need to install system dependencies or C extensions.

Specific language support: JavaScript

Yes

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

Yes

Provides rich documentation on integrating Semaphore CI in Javascript projects

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

Integration with GitHub and Slack. They allow building iOS projects via their macOS Mojave VM image.

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/

No

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).

List of features is based on Semaphore 2.0

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

Running Rails tests in parallel on Semaphore CI 2.0 with dynamic test files split

CodeShip parallelism integration

Semaphore CI parallelism integration

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