Compare
Migrate your CI/CD from Jenkins to Semaphore
- βοΈ Modernize aging code delivery processes
- βοΈ Accelerate deployment frequency with faster builds
- βοΈ Free up developersβ time for more valuable work
Remove obstacles π£οΈ
With Jenkins, CI/CD is a black box locked in a silo. Without access, itβs hard for developers to focus on quality, shorten test cycles, and ensure safe deployment. With Semaphore, you get:
- βοΈ Clutter-free UI
- βοΈ Effective pipeline visualizations
- βοΈ Help getting on board
- βοΈ Support
Eliminate heavy lifting ππ»ββοΈ
There are entire books written about running Jenkins, and for a reason. Itβs free to use but puts the burden of managing, securing, and scaling CI/CD squarely on your team. With Semaphore, you get:
- βοΈ auto-scaling or hybrid cloud
- βοΈ No maintenance
- βοΈ Focus on building great products
Increased productivity πͺ
The data is in: after switching to Semaphore, an average team of a dozen engineers saves over 500 human hours per month (see whitepaper). The reason? Faster builds, infinite on-demand capacity to test in parallel, and smart pipeline.
- βοΈ Saves +500 human hrs/mo
- βοΈ Faster builds
- βοΈ Capacity to test in parallel
- βοΈ smart pipeline optimization
Standardize CI/CD π¨βπ»
Jenkins adoption is typically fragmented, with each team having their unique instance with challenges that include brittle configuration and outdated plugins. With Semaphore, you get:
- βοΈ CI/CD config as code
- βοΈ Runs on multiple environments
- βοΈ Permission management
βIβve been doing CI/CD for more than 15 years. Semaphore is hands-down the best product Iβve used. An incredibly flexible platform, but without the open-ended bloat of Jenkins. Itβs extremely intuitive and easy to navigate.β
Ben Peterson
Principle Software Engineer
Compare Semaphore vs. Jenkins
Semaphore | Jenkins | |
---|---|---|
Product type | ||
SaaS | β
βSaaS with autoscaling resources |
β |
Hybrid | β
βHybrid: run Semaphore agents on customer-managed infrastructure, use cloud-based UI
|
β |
Fully on-premises | β | β
βFully hosted and configured by the end user
|
Setup | ||
Standard project set up a in a few clicks | β
βAuthenticate with Git provider, select repository, import repository as project
|
β
βProvision machines for CI/CD, install Jenkins on them, install plugins for Git integration and any additional functionality
|
GitHub support | β | β |
Bitbucket support | β | β |
Gitlab support | Pending | β |
Standardized product | β
βAll users use the same product maintained by Semaphore
|
β βPiece together functionality from plugins with varying syntax, documentation, and best practices
|
Graphical pipeline configuration | β
βWorkflow Builder: point-and-click interface to create and edit pipelines
|
β |
Standardized configuration language | β
βDeclarative YAML configuration for all features
|
β βMultiple DSLs: pipelines are defined in one of two Groovy-based domain specific languages, one for simple declarative tasks, and one for more complex scripting.
|
Command-line interface | β
βCLI can manage projects and do everything the UI can.
|
β βCLI limited to managing Jenkins instances
|
Ease of Maintenance | ||
No maintenance required for hardware | β | β βEnd user maintains the machines
|
No maintenance required for platform software | β
βOfficial VMs and Docker images are refreshed weekly, include popular OSS tools out-of-the-box
|
β βRequires dedicated person / team (SPOF)
|
No maintenance required for user-facing product | β
βAll UI, including real-time and historical pipeline visualizations, logs, and test results is made and continuously improved by Semaphore
|
β βEnd user maintains individual plugins with varying release cycles and support
|
Declarative configuration of services | β
βSupported via CLI
|
β |
Hot upgrades without downtime | β
βUse new product features as soon as they are released
|
β βTroubleshoot plugins for interoperability and deal with breaking changes
|
Operating system support | ||
Linux, macOS | β | β
βJenkins can run anywhere but end user must assemble their own hardware and software stack
|
Windows, ARM | β
βVia self-hosted agents
|
|
Performance | ||
Guaranteed desktop-grade performance | β
βIn SaaS version
|
β βDepends on user’s choice and plugins
|
Autoscaling parallelism | β
βServerless model
|
β βManually add/remove machines and installations to scale capacity
|
Allocate more CPUs and RAM to complex jobs | β
βChange one line of configuration
|
β βManually tweak plugins or upgrade machines to increase performance
|
Each job runs in a pristine, isolated environment | β | β βJobs share disk space which may cause issues
|
Scalable dependency cache | β | β |
Built-in artifacts store | β | β |
Built-in Docker registry | β | β |
Debugging feedback loop | β
βFast debugging via SSH access to both running and finished jobs
|
β βNo direct SSH access to job environment, only log inspection
|
Permission management | ||
Mirror permissions from GitHub | β
βVia official GitHub App
|
β βAll users given full access by default
|
Role-based access | β
βAdmins can limit access to deployment, secrets
|
β βManual setup of permissions
|
Okta / SAML for LDAP integration | β βOnly SaaS version supports Okta
|
β
βOkta / SAML for LDAP supported via plugin
|
Declarative configuration of permissions | β | β |
Security | ||
Application-level security | β | β βSingle-layer of security around the fleet of Jenkins machines
|
Runtime isolation | β | β βAdditional security created must be created manually
|
IP allow list | β | β βDepends on end user configuration
|
Audit logs | β | β
βAvailable via plugin
|
ISO 27001 certificate | β | β βNo standard certification available, varying levels of security for OSS plugins, must be audited accordingly
|
SOC 2 certificate | Pending | β |
Support | ||
Email-based account and technical support | β | β |
Video call support | β | β |
Support SLAs | β | β |
Custom solution engineering | β | β |
Dedicated customer success manager | β | β |
Private Slack channel | β | β |
Licensing model | ||
SaaS subscription: Semaphore provides a typical cloud computing pay-as-you-go plan and Enterprise plans with per-seat price | Jenkins is open source and free to use, but lack of support and maintenance add to total cost of ownership |
βWe eliminated waiting times at the end of each sprint, which were usually very challenging as we deploy a lot of changes on the last day, with Semaphoreβs automatic CI scaling. We are now paying 38% of what we would be paying somewhere else and experience is great.β
Krzysztof Szromek
CTO @ Exlabs
βIt may seem that Jenkins is cheaper than Semaphore. But, after a while, the benefits are very clear: your team becomes more efficient.β
CΓ©sar Luiz dos Anjos
CEO na Asseinfo
Case studies
These teams have switched from Jenkins to Semaphore. Discover their ROI:
βWe were using Jenkins to build the old system, and it was hard to maintain and quite painful. We looked at other hosted CI services, but they were very unreliable. When we found Semaphore, we got our application up and running pretty quickly. We now use it for all projects.β
Lukas Oberhuber
CTO at Simply Business
βSemaphore allows us to build anywhere from two to twenty branches in parallel, each one in a threaded environment. We had thousands of tests that were running for a really long time and with Semaphore we got the build to run in under 20 minutes.β
Artem Lypiy
QA Lead at 500px
βSemaphore 2.0 allows us to build, tag, push, and run Docker images easily. This makes building a powerful pipeline where we can deploy to our Kubernetes cluster fairly easily and quickly.β
Nic Cavigliano
Senior Software Engineer