Knapsack Pro

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

Travis CI

https://travis-ci.org

Semaphore CI

https://semaphoreci.com
Unique feature

Build Matrix, ease of use, GitHub integration

Autoscaling made easy / Great CLI

Type of product

SaaS, Self-hosted / On Premise

SaaS

Offers a free plan

Yes

Free for open source projects

Yes

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

Predictable pricing

Yes

Clearly defined monthly plans, depending on concurrent jobs needed.

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

Available via email, or dedicated online interface for paid plans.

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

TravisCI makes it very easy to split your build into different stages which are then run in parallel (ie: run integration tests separate from the unit tests). TravisCI calls this a build matrix: https://docs.travis-ci.com/user/build-matrix/. You can also very easily split tests accross several VMs using the knapsack_pro gem.

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

N/A

N/A

Containers support / Build environment

Yes

TravisCI runs each build in a isolated virtual machine. Pre-build packages include a few which support specific languages (Ruby and JavaScript included) or other software (Git, various databases), but vanilla packages such as Ubuntu Trusty are also available.

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

Available by default in Travis (this is what most of the web UI consists of)

Yes

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

N/A

Yes

Self-hosted option

Yes

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.

No

Specifically built around GitHub pull requests. Pipelines can be defined, but parts of the process need to be implemented separatelly in GitHub.

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.

Yes (partial)

No persistent storage eliminates the possibility of code coverage reports on TravisCI alone. There is support for integrated 3rd parties such as Coveralls for reporting code coverage.

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?

No plugin support in TravisCI, plugins for other tools

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

TravisCI is designed to be a simple way to integrate CI/CD in your workflow so it has a couple of features aimed at specific languages, such as Ruby, starting from pre-built containers (with RVM already installed, for example) all the way to automatically running specific platform commands (such as detecting a Gemfile in the root of the project and automatically bundling dependencies). TravisCI also builds a Ruby SDK for easier use of the API.

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

TravisCI is designed to be a simple way to integrate CI/CD in your workflow so it has a couple of features aimed at specific languages, such as Javascript, starting from pre-built containers (with node already installed, for example) all the way to automatically running specific platform commands (such as detecting a package.json in the root of the project and running npm test)

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

By default, TravisCI is built to work with GitHub. Additionally, there is strong support for 3rd party tools like Coveralls, BrowserStack, etc.

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

Offers a feature-rich API that allows both reading data, as well as triggering or cancelling builds.

No

Auditing

N/A

Yes

Additional notes

List of features is based on Semaphore 2.0

Travis CI build matrix feature how to use it for CI parallelisation

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

Travis CI parallelism integration

Semaphore CI parallelism integration

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