Knapsack Pro

Gitlab CI vs CodeFresh CI comparison of Continuous Integration servers
What are the differences between Gitlab CI and CodeFresh CI?

Gitlab CI

https://about.gitlab.com/product/continuous-integration/

CodeFresh CI

https://codefresh.io
Unique feature

AutoDev Ops / Allows keeping code management and CI in the same place

Built for Kubernetes

Type of product

SaaS / On Premise

SaaS / On Premise

Offers a free plan

Yes

Very generous free plans for both the SaaS version as well as the on premise version.

Yes

Offers a minimal free plan (only one concurrent job, 3 users, various other limitations)

Predictable pricing

Yes

Clear and affordable pricing for both SaaS and self-hosted versions.

Yes

Easy price calculator, based on the number of machines, concurrent jobs and special features.

Support / SLA

Yes

All paid plans include next business day support.

Yes

Paid support for enterprise plans

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

Easily configure jobs you want to be run in parallel via the YML config file (gitlab-ci.yml)

Yes

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

Yes

N/A

Unclear from the documentation (probably not)

Containers support / Build environment

Yes

The Docker Container Registry is integrated into GitLab by default

Yes

Built for Kubernetes, so containers are a must.

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

They seem to provide pretty great status overview, depending on the type of plan you're using.

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

Yes

Yes

Self-hosted option

Yes

Yes

Only available for enterprise plans

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

Defined via YML config files

Yes

Pipelines as code (YML files)

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.

Yes

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?

Yes

Yes

Every step in a CodeFresh pipeline is a Docker image. A wide array of steps is available over at https://steps.codefresh.io/

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

Although not built into GitLab CI by default, the Docker support allows solving any Ruby specific need that may arise.

Yes

Specific documentation for a sample Ruby-on-Rails project: https://codefresh.io/docs/docs/learn-by-example/ruby/

Specific language support: JavaScript

Yes

Although not built into GitLab CI by default, the Docker support allows solving any Javascript specific need that may arise.

Yes

There's an 'npm publish' step available, and they also provide a few Javascript examples over at https://codefresh.io/docs/docs/learn-by-example/nodejs/ (one is just a sample, one is a little more complex, using Redis, Python, etc., and one is a React App)

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

Yes

Plenty of third party integrations available throughout GitLab, most notably Kubernetes and GitHub, but also plenty of others: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/integration/README.html

Yes

https://steps.codefresh.io

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

Provides a REST API and a (new) GraphQL API, with plans to maintain the GraphQL API only going forward. Allows doing almost anything that can be done via the interface, at least in terms of CI needs.

Yes

Rich REST API available, well documented at https://g.codefresh.io/api/

Auditing

Yes

Yes

Audit logs available: https://codefresh.io/docs/docs/enterprise/audit-logs/

Additional notes

The Auto DevOps feature might be interesting to people looking for a very hands-off experience with getting a CI/CD process up and running https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/topics/autodevops/

GitLab CI parallelisation - how to run parallel jobs for Ruby & JavaScript projects

How to use Codefresh matrix parallel steps to run parallel tests in Ruby on Rails

Cypress Parallel testing on Codefresh.io

Gitlab CI parallelism integration

CodeFresh CI parallelism integration

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