Knapsack Pro

Netlify Build vs Github Actions comparison of Continuous Integration servers
What are the differences between Netlify Build and Github Actions?

Netlify Build

https://www.netlify.com/products/build/

Github Actions

https://github.com/features/actions
Unique feature

Deploy your sites to global Netlify infrastructure

Every commit gets its own deployed version. Automatically attach a new Deploy Preview at a unique permanent URL whenever you submit a Pull/Merge Request. Set Netlify Build to deploy every branch in the repository for unlimited staging environments.

Best GitHub integration possible

Type of product

SaaS

SaaS / On Premise

Offers a free plan

Yes

300 build minutes/month, 1 concurrent CI build

Yes

The on premise plan (not yet available) will be free, 2000 build minutes included in the free cloud plan. Completely free plan for open source projects.
Predictable pricing

Yes

Extra 500 build minutes costs $7/month. User seat $15/user/month.

Yes (partial)

While it's clear what the cost is (priced per build-minute), figuring out costs can be a hassle, especially as the price can vary quite a bit depending on commits to the project. One advantage for GitHub Actions is that the tiers define a maximum amount of minutes, so it's easier to predict the final cost. You can also purchase aditional runners with pricing dependent on the platform (MacOS, Linux, Windows)
Support / SLA

Yes

99.99% uptime SLA for Starter and Pro plan. Business plan has negotiable SLA.

Yes

Community support available for any tier, unclear at what point and if dedicated support is available. Safe to assume that eneterprise clients can access technical 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

Starter plan (free) has only 1 concurrent build but Pro plan has 3 concurrent builds included.

Yes

Matrix builds allow concurrent jobs, even multi-platform.
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

High-Performance Builds - The premium build environment gives more concurrency, processing power and asynchronous deploys.

N/A

No specific mention, but given the fact that tasks can be run on multiple platforms, it's likely that distributed builds are also available.
Containers support / Build environment

Yes

When you trigger a build on Netlify, their buildbot starts a Docker container to build your website. The buildbot will look for instructions about required languages and software needed to run your command before running build command. The instructions are called dependencies, and how you declare them depends on the programming languages and tools used in build. Build image selection is available. Until recently, all Netlify sites were built using the same build image. Netlify is experimenting with allowing customers to select from multiple Docker images with different operating systems and software versions.

Yes

Linux, macOS, Windows, and containers, or run directly in a VM.
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

Simple dashboard to see CI builds. Other than CI analytics Netlify has Netlify Analytics that brings data captured directly from their servers for your website.

Yes

Minimal status overview definitely available, with live logs and GitHub integration. Unclear how far it goes.
Management support
How easy is it to manage users / projects / assign roles and permissions and so on

Yes

Team members managment. Role-based access control only in business plan.

N/A

Unclear from the available documentation
Self-hosted option

No

Yes

Coming soon, not available yet.
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, partially

Simple steps, define your own steps in bash commands

Yes

Called GitHub Action Workflows, they are defined in separate Docker containers, using the YAML syntax (they used to support HCL, but they're migrating away from that)
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.

No

N/A

Unclear from the available documentation
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?

No

There are only small helpful things like incoming webhooks so other services can trigger Netlify deploys, and send outgoing webhooks as a deploy starts, succeeds, or fails.

Yes

Thanks to the large following, GitHub Actions already enjoys a wide varierty of available pre-made workflows, which you can browse right on the homepage: https://github.com/features/actions
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

It has support for Ruby.

Yes

Unclear how, but they mention Ruby support specifically on the homepage
Specific language support: JavaScript

Yes

It has support for JavaScript.

Yes

Unclear how, but they mention Javascript (Node.js) support specifically on the homepage
Integrations
1st party support for common tools (like Slack notifications, various VCS platforms, etc)

Yes

Netlify has incoming webhooks so other services can trigger Netlify deploys, and send outgoing webhooks as a deploy starts, succeeds, or fails. For instance you can integrate it with Slack.

Yes

Integrations made possible via the shared third party workflows available (AWS, Azure, Zeit, Kubernetes and many more)
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

No

N/A

Unclear at the moment, but assume GitHub Actions will be integrated with the GitHub GraphQL API (one of the more mature GraphQL API implementations available)
Auditing

N/A

N/A

Additional notes

How to run parallel tests on Netlify Build and Github Actions
to execute 1-hour test suite in 2 minutes?

Without Knapsack Pro

you have to wait 20 minutes for slow tests running too long on the red node

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Run fast parallel CI build with Knapsack Pro

CI build completes work in only 10 minutes because Knapsack Pro ensures all parallel nodes finish work at a similar time

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You can even run 20 parallel nodes to complete your CI build in 2 minutes

How it works

Step 1

Install Knapsack Pro client in your project


Step 2

Update your CI server config file to run tests in parallel with Knapsack Pro


Step 3

Run a CI build with parallel tests using Knapsack Pro

Diagram that shows files distributed to 3 parallel CI nodes


Knapsack Pro in Queue Mode splits tests in a dynamic way across parallel CI nodes to ensure each CI node finishes work at a similar time. Thanks to that, your CI build time is as fast as possible. It works with many supported CI servers.

How to install it

Programming Language Supported test runners Installation guide Knapsack Pro Library
README / Source
Ruby RSpec, Cucumber, Minitest, test-unit, Spinach, Turnip Install knapsack_pro gem
JavaScript Cypress.io Install @knapsack-pro/cypress
JavaScript Jest Install @knapsack-pro/jest
JavaScript / TypeScript Any test runner in JavaScript How to build native integration with Knapsack Pro API to run tests in parallel for any test runner @knapsack-pro/core
Any programming language Any test runner How to build a custom Knapsack Pro API client from scratch in any programming language -

Do you use other programming language or test runner? Let us know.

Do you know

Start using Knapsack Pro

Sign up and speed up your tests.

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Get faster feedback from Netlify Build and Github Actions server

  • save time & money
  • deliver features faster
  • catch errors earlier
Knapsack Pro terminal

GitHub Actions testing Ruby on Rails with RSpec and parallel jobs (matrix feature)

How to run Jest tests on GitHub Actions - JS parallel jobs with matrix feature (NodeJS YAML config)

GitHub Actions Cypress.io E2E testing parallel jobs with matrix feature (NodeJS YAML config)

Github Actions parallelism integration

Introduction to CI parallelisation with Knapsack Pro

Run tests in parallel on Netlify Build and Github Actions in the optimal way and avoid bottleneck parallel jobs.

Get started free

How much can you save with faster tests
on Netlify Build and Github Actions?

minutes
$

Monthly you can save hours
and up to $
on faster development cycle.

Features that make your tests perform better

Discover all features or see
how to use Knapsack Pro with your CI

Trusted solution

Join the teams optimizing their tests with Knapsack Pro.

We've been really enjoying Knapsack Pro, it's been saving us a ton of time.

Devin Brown Software Engineer at Pivotal

This is a fantastic product, it's been a total game-changer for us.

Geoff Harcourt CTO at CommonLit

We are using CircleCI and we noticed that builds were being limited by the slowest parallelized container. Knapsack Pro was really easy to setup and we saw huge improvements right away. Thank you for making this tool!

Martin Sieniawski Software Engineer at Collage

Knapsack Pro has helped us build an insanely fast and scalable build pipeline with almost no setup or maintenance.

Tim Lucas Co-founder of buildkite.com

Knapsack Pro saves us hours of engineer waiting time every week, and is the best solution for keeping our tests load balanced that we've used to date.

Michael Amygdalidis Senior Software Engineer at Popular Pays

I've been playing with Queue Mode. Love it! Wow, I love how fast it goes.

Michael Menne CTO at humanagency.org

I just logged into my account expecting it to say that I needed to add a credit card and was so surprised and delighted to see the trial doesn't count usage by calendar days but by testing days! This is incredible! I love it!!!

I just wanted to say that I really appreciate that small but very huge feature. Thank you for being so thoughtful :)

Shannon Baffoni Senior Software Engineer
at Blue Bottle Coffee

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