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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Continuous Integration
  4. Continuous Integration
  5. CircleCI vs Drone.io

CircleCI vs Drone.io

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

CircleCI
CircleCI
Stacks14.5K
Followers7.1K
Votes974
Drone.io
Drone.io
Stacks884
Followers456
Votes258

CircleCI vs Drone.io: What are the differences?

Key Differences between CircleCI and Drone.io

  1. Pricing Model: One of the key differences between CircleCI and Drone.io is their pricing model. CircleCI follows a subscription-based pricing model where the cost is determined based on the number of concurrent builds and the number of users. On the other hand, Drone.io offers a self-hosted option with no licensing fees, allowing users to run an unlimited number of builds and users on their own infrastructure.

  2. Integration and Compatibility: CircleCI offers seamless integration with popular version control systems like GitHub and Bitbucket, making it easy to set up and use. Additionally, it supports a wide range of programming languages and provides extensive documentation for building and deploying applications. Drone.io also provides integration with popular version control systems but has a more limited range of programming language support, requiring additional configuration in certain cases.

  3. Scalability and Performance: CircleCI is known for its scalability and performance, allowing users to build and test applications quickly and efficiently. It can handle a large number of concurrent builds and provides optimized infrastructure for faster build times. Drone.io also offers scalability, but its performance may vary depending on the hardware and infrastructure used for self-hosting.

  4. Community and Support: CircleCI has a large and active community of users, making it easy to find support, troubleshoot issues, and share best practices. It also provides comprehensive documentation, live chat support, and an extensive knowledge base. Drone.io, being an open-source platform, has an active community but may have limited official support options compared to CircleCI.

  5. Configuration and Flexibility: CircleCI uses a configuration file written in YAML format to define build steps, dependencies, and deployment processes. It provides a wide range of pre-configured environments and containers for different programming languages and frameworks. Drone.io also uses a similar YAML-based configuration but offers more flexibility in defining custom build pipelines and steps, allowing for more granular control over the build process.

  6. Enterprise Features: CircleCI offers enterprise-grade features like single sign-on (SSO), user access controls, and audit logs, which are essential for larger organizations. It also provides additional integrations with tools like AWS, Docker, and Slack. While Drone.io does not have built-in enterprise features, being open-source allows users to customize and extend the platform based on their specific requirements.

In summary, CircleCI and Drone.io differ in terms of their pricing model, integration and compatibility, scalability and performance, community and support, configuration and flexibility, as well as the availability of enterprise features.

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Advice on CircleCI, Drone.io

Benjamin
Benjamin

CTO at NessPay

Feb 19, 2022

Decided

We chose github + github actions in order to manage the code versioning and the CI on the same software. Furthermore, while it is not that much, I believe that for a large team it is considerably cheaper to have one github subscription instead of a git subscription and a CI/CD software subscription.

281k views281k
Comments
Phillip
Phillip

Developer at Coach Align

Mar 18, 2021

Decided

The introduction of Orbs a few years ago has really streamlined CircleCI configuration files and made them really easy to work with. Haven't tried GitHub Actions and decided to go with what was familiar instead of trying something new. Tried to make AWS Codepipeline work a few years back on different projects and found it to be incredibly frustrating, lacking support for some of the most basic features and use cases.

41.1k views41.1k
Comments
Felipe
Felipe

May 24, 2020

Needs advice

My website is brand new and one of the few requirements of testings I had to implement was code coverage. Never though it was so hard to implement using a #docker container.
Given my lack of experience, every attempt I tried on making a simple code coverage test using the 4 combinations of #TravisCI, #CircleCi with #Coveralls, #Codecov I failed. The main problem was I was generating the .coverage file within the docker container and couldn't access it with #TravisCi or #CircleCi, every attempt to solve this problem seems to be very hacky and this was not the kind of complexity I want to introduce to my newborn website.
This problem was solved using a specific action for #GitHubActions, it was a 3 line solution I had to put in my github workflow file and I was able to access the .coverage file from my docker container and get the coverage report with #Codecov.

198k views198k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

CircleCI
CircleCI
Drone.io
Drone.io

Continuous integration and delivery platform helps software teams rapidly release code with confidence by automating the build, test, and deploy process. Offers a modern software development platform that lets teams ramp.

Drone is a hosted continuous integration service. It enables you to conveniently set up projects to automatically build, test, and deploy as you make changes to your code. Drone integrates seamlessly with Github, Bitbucket and Google Code as well as third party services such as Heroku, Dotcloud, Google AppEngine and more.

Language-Inclusive Support;Custom Environments;Flexible Resource Allocation;SSH Or Local Builds For Easy Debugging;Improved Caching;Unmatched Security;Parallelism;Insights
Free for open-source;GitHub, BitBucket integration;Browser testing;Deplot with Amazon, Heroku, Google AppEngine;Flexible scripting;Team billing;
Statistics
Stacks
14.5K
Stacks
884
Followers
7.1K
Followers
456
Votes
974
Votes
258
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 226
    Github integration
  • 177
    Easy setup
  • 153
    Fast builds
  • 94
    Competitively priced
  • 74
    Slack integration
Cons
  • 12
    Unstable
  • 6
    Scammy pricing structure
  • 0
    Aggressive Github permissions
Pros
  • 51
    Open source
  • 50
    Built on docker
  • 27
    Free for open source
  • 23
    GitHub integration
  • 18
    Easy Setup
Cons
  • 3
    Very basic documentation
Integrations
dotCloud
dotCloud
GitHub
GitHub
Xcode
Xcode
Azure Container Service
Azure Container Service
Slack
Slack
Heroku
Heroku
JavaScript
JavaScript
Node.js
Node.js
Python
Python
Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2
Docker
Docker
Bitbucket
Bitbucket
Google App Engine
Google App Engine
Heroku
Heroku
GitHub
GitHub
Amazon S3
Amazon S3
dotCloud
dotCloud

What are some alternatives to CircleCI, Drone.io?

Jenkins

Jenkins

In a nutshell Jenkins CI is the leading open-source continuous integration server. Built with Java, it provides over 300 plugins to support building and testing virtually any project.

Travis CI

Travis CI

Free for open source projects, our CI environment provides multiple runtimes (e.g. Node.js or PHP versions), data stores and so on. Because of this, hosting your project on travis-ci.com means you can effortlessly test your library or applications against multiple runtimes and data stores without even having all of them installed locally.

Codeship

Codeship

Codeship runs your automated tests and configured deployment when you push to your repository. It takes care of managing and scaling the infrastructure so that you are able to test and release more frequently and get faster feedback for building the product your users need.

TeamCity

TeamCity

TeamCity is a user-friendly continuous integration (CI) server for professional developers, build engineers, and DevOps. It is trivial to setup and absolutely free for small teams and open source projects.

wercker

wercker

Wercker is a CI/CD developer automation platform designed for Microservices & Container Architecture.

GoCD

GoCD

GoCD is an open source continuous delivery server created by ThoughtWorks. GoCD offers business a first-class build and deployment engine for complete control and visibility.

Shippable

Shippable

Shippable is a SaaS platform that lets you easily add Continuous Integration/Deployment to your Github and BitBucket repositories. It is lightweight, super simple to setup, and runs your builds and tests faster than any other service.

Buildkite

Buildkite

CI and build automation tool that combines the power of your own build infrastructure with the convenience of a managed, centralized web UI. Used by Shopify, Basecamp, Digital Ocean, Venmo, Cochlear, Bugsnag and more.

Snap CI

Snap CI

Snap CI is a cloud-based continuous integration & continuous deployment tool with powerful deployment pipelines. Integrates seamlessly with GitHub and provides fast feedback so you can deploy with ease.

Appveyor

Appveyor

AppVeyor aims to give powerful Continuous Integration and Deployment tools to every .NET developer without the hassle of setting up and maintaining their own build server.

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