Software deployment tools make the process of distributing software and updates as easy as possible. Often, these tasks are automatic or scheduled to enable software developers to focus on what they do best – writing code. And the best tools work with a variety of platforms and types of infrastructures, making it easy to streamline your workflow in your preferred environment.
Software deployment tools also allow developers to collaborate on their projects, track progress, and manage changes. Continuous integration and continuous deployment may be utilized to deploy software as changes are made, providing seamless updates for end users.
To make deployment less complicated, Stackify now offers Deployment Tracking inside of Retrace. Deployment Tracking is extremely valuable so you can see when deployments happened and how they affected your application’s performance. There will be visual indicators on your timelines when these events took place and you can easily use them to drill down into metrics that will give you an exact idea of what is happening in your application.
Choosing the best software deployment tool is tricky because what works best for one development team may not meet another team’s needs. We’ve rounded up 25 of the best software deployment tools that can help many dev teams streamline their workflow and optimize efficiency to deliver better software, faster.
Atlassian’s Bamboo is a continuous integration server that automates release management for applications and general software, allowing teams to establish a streamlined pipeline of build delivery. It ties automated builds, testing, and releases into an integrated workflow. Mobile developers can deploy their apps back to the Apple Store or Google Play automatically.
Key Features:
Deployment tracking tip: Learn how to notify Retrace via Atlassian Bamboo
JetBrains’ TeamCity is a continuous integration and software deployment server with Docker images for servers and agents. It offers a wide range of developer-oriented features to take team performance to the next level. Special additional functionality can be added from over 100 ready-to-use plugins.
Key Features:
Cost: Free license with fees for additional capacity
Deployment tracking tip: Learn how to notify Retrace via TeamCity
AWS CodeDeploy is a service from Amazon Web Services that automates code deployments to any instance. It works with any platform, language, and application. AWS CodeDeploy makes it easier to rapidly release new features, helps avoid downtime during application deployment, and handles the complexity of updating applications. AWS CodeDeploy can automate software deployments.
Key Features:
Cost: Free for code deployments to Amazon EC2 instances; $0.02 per on-premises instance update
Deployment Tracking Tip: Learn how to notify Retrace via AWS CodePipeline
Octopus Deploy is an automated system designed to simplify deployment of ASP.NET applications, Windows Services, and databases. It enables software developers to automate application deployments, whether on-premises or in the cloud.
Key Features:
Cost: Pricing based on tiers, ranging from free for small teams to $40,000 for unlimited users and nodes
Deployment Tracking Tip: Learn how to notify Retrace via Octopus Deploy
ElectricCloud’s ElectricFlow is a platform that helps develop software, deliver it, and maintain it with regular updates. ElectricFlow helps model, automate, and track cloud-native, container, and legacy application deployments with ease.
Key Features:
Cost: Contact for a quote
PDQ Deploy offers the ability to remotely install software or patches to Windows systems. Pre-built ready-to-deploy packages are available for applications such as Adobe Flash, Java, Firefox, and more for all computers.
Key Features:
Cost: Free, Pro, and Enterprise tiers; contact for Pro and Enterprise pricing
Red Hat’s Ansible Tower is a large-scale software system that automates software provisioning, configuration management, and software deployment. It can help scale IT automation, manage complex deployments, and speed productivity.
Key Features:
Cost: Three pricing tiers ranging from $5,000 to $14,000 per year
Chef manages infrastructure across servers. The server infrastructure is treated as software code, and Chef deploys updates, manages testing, and manages versions. Chef can be used to manage any number of servers by turning infrastructure into code that’s flexible, human-readable, versionable, and testable.
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Cost: Three tiers ranging from free to $137 per node
Codeship is a continuous integration and delivery platform. It automatically tests and deploys any coding change when the code repository is updated.
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Cost: Free basic plan and several pro tiers with pricing up to $1,200 per month
AppVeyor is a continuous integration and delivery cloud service for Windows and .NET tools with automatic testing.
Key Features:
Cost: Three tiers priced at $29/$59/$99 per month
Cost: Variable pricing from $10 per month to $40,000 per month
CircleCI is a continuous integration and delivery platform that supports Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, Node, Python, PHP, Java, and Clojure. It can automate the software development process using continuous integration and continuous delivery.
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Cost: Depends on platform
Travis CI is an open-source continuous integration service that automates testing and deploys code in GitHub projects.
Key Features:
Cost: Four pricing tiers priced at $69/$129/$249/$489 per month
Distelli is a set of software deployment tools that specialize in Kubernetes Clusters but can be used with any cloud service or physical server.
Key Features:
Cost: Based on the tool and tier of service
Jenkins offers continuous delivery and continuous delivery tools in an open-source automation server. Plugin structure supports building, deploying, and automating software projects. Jenkins can easily distribute work across multiple machines, helping drive builds, tests, and deployments across multiple platforms faster.
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Cost: Contact for cost information
Codenvy is a developer workspace that runs behind the firewall and can deploy software to a data center or any cloud. Teams can develop code with portable Docker runtimes.
Key Features:
Cost: Based on the number of developers and RAM needed
DeployBot is an automated software deployment app that deploys code from GIT repositories to anywhere. Deployments can be triggered automatically or manually, and code can be executed or compiled on servers during the deployment, using pre-defined or completely custom Docker containers.
Key Features:
Cost: Contact for cost information
IBM’s UrbanCode Deploy is an application release automation tool that automates software deployment to local and cloud-based environments. The software allows seamless deployments to distributed data centers, cloud, and virtualized environments as often as needed — on demand or on schedule.
Key Features:
Cost: Contact for cost and financing information
Buildbot is a job scheduling platform that can be used to automate software builds, tests, and releases. It can automate all stages of software development. Each Buildbot installation has one or more masters and a collection of workers. The masters monitor source-code repositories for changes, coordinate the activities of the workers, and report results to users and developers. Workers run on a variety of operating systems.
Key Features:
Cost: Contact for cost information
ThoughtWorks’ GoCD is an open source continuous delivery tool that handles continuous integration, testing, and software deployment. It replaces the commercial product Cruise.
Key Features:
Cost: Depending on pipelines needed, annual plans priced at $5,000/$15,000/$25,000 and up
Microsoft Team Foundation Server is a set of collaborative software development tools to share code and ship software. It integrates with an existing IDE or editor, enabling cross-functional teams to work effectively on software projects of all sizes.
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Cost: Contact Microsoft for pricing
Automic from CA Technologies applies software development and continuous integration tools to back-end systems. This allows software development to happen in an Agile and stable environment.
Key Features:
Cost: Contact for cost information
MidVision’s RapidDeploy is a software deployment and release automation tool built for DevOps teams and enterprise continuous delivery. It consistently delivers high-volume deployments that allow organizations to speed release cycles without compromising quality.
Key Features:
Cost: Contact for cost information (for teams using more than 10 nodes)
Canonical’s JuJu automates cloud infrastructure and deploys application architectures. The tool uses Charms, collections of scripts, to simplify configuration, management, maintenance, deployment, and scalability.
Key Features:
Cost: Contact for cost information
Rancher is an open source software that deploys and manage Docker containers and Kubernetes in production on any infrastructure. With Rancher, you can manage all aspects of running containers in development and production environments.
Key Features:
Cost: Contact for cost information
Drone.io is a continuous integration and deployment service in the cloud designed to automatically build, test, and deploy your code without human assistance.
Key Features:
Cost: $100 per month for up to 50 repositories and agents; $500 per month for unlimited repositories and agents
Choosing the right software deployment tools can make a substantial impact on your team’s productivity. Check out our list of continuous integration tools for more useful tools that can improve your development processes, and find out what 20 development pros have to say about the key differences between continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment. If you’re looking to adopt a DevOps approach, we’ve rounded up some reliable, proven tools to meet all your DevOps needs here. And finally, while deployment tools can speed up your development cycle, don’t forget to test. Check out our post for some insights on integrating APM into your testing strategy.
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