‘Quality performance at greater speed.’

The above statement is the new trend in the software development field.

Organizations are becoming attentive to DevOps methods & Agile development processes to strengthen the speed of software delivery and make sure that the software quality is as expected.

Quality and speed can be gained using suitable continuous integration & continuous delivery (CI/CD) tools.

There are various continuous integration tools in the marketplace that act as an addition to the software development task. By leveraging CI, you can save time and money on your business.

On the other hand, you will see that CI and agile development have the same end goals. In this article, we will see some best CI tools for swift software development.

So, let’s dive in!

What is Continuous Integration (CI)? Basic Overview

CI or continuous integration, and the other two terms that are- continuous delivery & continuous deployment are closely related. Here’s the difference between them:

CI- Continuous Integration means merging new updates of the code regularly to the main source code
CD- Continuous delivery means the approach that encourages the teams to build software using intermittent cycles.
Continuous deployment means a software release procedure that depends heavily on the process of automated testing. Each update has to go through different stages of the software development life cycle (SDLC).

The primary idea of these processes is making simultaneous updates in software; that means strict examining of errors and making improvements till the end step.

Let’s discuss some best continuous integration tools that help in easy custom software development.

8 Best Continuous Integration Tools to Use in 2023

1# CircleCI

The CircleCI tool provides a platform for delivery and integration. It helped hundreds of teams globally to release their coding using test automation, build automation, and panoramic deployment procedures.

With the latest approach towards the requirements of the latest software teams, one can rest assured that the CircleCI tool will help you enhance productivity, build confidence, and scale the project effortlessly as per your team’s requirements.

Here are the key features of CircleCI:

Make an account, add the project you want to develop and start building.
Easy integration with Gradle, Maven, and other build tools.
Leverage Nose, Django, RSpec, etc., and let this tool do a powerful job of testing the code of your system.
Smooth integration with Heroku, AWS, Cloud, and others
This tool automatically utilizes language-particular tools like virtualenv and rvm for ensuring dependencies.

2# Jenkins

Jenkins tool is one of the open-source servers that provides automation in which the CI process and central build take place. It is a self-contained Java-based program made for macOS, Windows, and other similar operating systems. With various plugins available in Jenkins, it also supports developing, deploying, and automating software development projects.

Jenkins has the given key features:

Quick installation and upgrade on different Operating Systems
Easy and user-friendly UI
Extensible and has huge support and user community
Easy env configuration in UI
Also, support for distributed builds that have master-slave structure
Supports Windows command execution
Also, support for notifications of build status

3# TeamCity

TeamCity tool is a subset of JetBrains, which is a Czech software development firm that is popular for creating well-known IDEs like IntelliJ and PyCharm.

Of course, JetBrains will do much more tasks than these IDEs. For example, TeamCity, a powerful Continuous integration tool helps you to free your first hundred build configs.

The feature set warrants competition to control the production environment. If you want to run 3 builds together, or make an import of source code from different VCSs (Version Control Systems), TeamCity can help you with that.

Here are the great support of TeamCity:

It has great support of Visual Studio, framework testing, tool versioning, code analysis, and code coverage, all in one without external scripts
Strong version control feature for managing your project
Detailed reports for failures, creations, and additional updates made in the project
Instinctive foundation that reuses settings so there’s no need to duplicate the code
This tool leverages cloud computing by dynamically scaling out its developing agents on MS Azure, Amazon EC2, & VMware vSphere

4# GitLab

This platform is a collection of tools used for managing various aspects of the SDLC. The core of this suite is the Git repository which is a web-based repository manager that has features like analytics, issue tracking, and Wiki.

This tool also allows you to run tests, trigger builds, and deploy the code with every push or commit. You can develop jobs in a docker container, virtual machine, or on another server.

Here are the key features of GitLab:

Integrate directly into the workflow of GitLab
Add additional machines to upscale your performance tests
Performing custom version tests for verifying branches equally
The feature of CMD build script allows developers to code the scripts in any particular language
Effortless rollback capabilities and manual deployment

5# Wercker

Werker is a continuous integration tool that helps software development teams achieve their goals using microservices and Docker. Using cloud-native and container-specific automation features, teams can deploy and test their apps easily.

Wrecker praised the platform for becoming highly efficient in the automated build and deployment process. Making a unique difference from hiccups and errors in the pipeline.

Here are the key features of Wercker:

Easy config management with the use of YAML
Spectacular user interface of the primary dashboard
Robust support for GitHub and Bitbucket projects
Quick setup for strong microservice structures
Streamlined deployment is possible using concurrent pipelines

6# Buddy

Other than the rich and beautiful UI in the Buddy tool, the web platform is wobbling. You also get a qualitative service for automating the development process without the complexity of purchasing custom tools.

The main feature of Buddy tools is simplicity, and it also shines using their automated pipeline function that helps the developers to build, ship, and test their system for quicker production than before.

Here are the key features of Buddy:

Customized actions are present for automating deployment, launching containers, and setting up the monitoring process
Small philosophy for ship, building, and deploying that is a pre-existing part of this tool
Deploys easily to your favorite hosting & cloud service
Automated algorithm for tracking, and alternative to rollback each time
Custom support for Gulp, Grunt, MySQL, and MongoDB

7# Shippable

Shippable is a necessary tool for giving software companies a way to increase their business growth, without any time-consuming manual labor.

It is an integrated framework that is developed with one purpose to assist the teams to manage the process of pushing the apps in production and build stability and security for them.

This tool aims to maintain balance in the interactive field by commoditizing custom CI/CD platforms that companies like FB and Amazon are currently relying on and help every business to change faster.

Here are the key features of Shippable:

Acts like a unified platform that combines CI, deployment, and automation
It also supports any languages, cloud providers, and software tools
Custom YML configurations that versioned using Git
It has policy-driven permissions to enable separation of security, compliance, and duties
It is developed by keeping Docker in mind
It can build custom reports for code coverage and testing, and get a similar taste of the coding environment

8# Assertible

Assertible tools change the way you think QA is with the use of its extraordinary infrastructure. It helps in continuous testing & monitoring your applications, APIs, and websites. It has a robust set of functions that help the teams to stop worrying about errors and concentrate on production.

This tool also promotes a secure testing environment where each team member gets a chance to complete most of their tasks at work.

Here are the key features of Assertible:

It has a simple process of deployment for GitHub projects
Custom alerts are present for failed tests using Email / Slack
Collaborative and custom team environment using groups
Automatically run the tests when you make new updates to production or staging
Monitor the availability and uptime of all essential APIs

Final Verdict

In the end, the software development world has transformed significantly by the use of advanced Continuous integration tools.

The tools that we saw in the above article are powerful platforms that help streamline the development process and enable the development teams to give efficient and qualitative output.

From providing easy integration with VCS (Version Control Systems) to automating the deployment and testing pipelines, these best CI tools provide various useful features as per your project needs.

Whether you choose Jenkins, GitLab, CircleCI, etc., each tool has its own comprehensive set of features that bring unique strengths to your software. Finally, the choice is yours. You have to decide on any one CI tool based on your custom project requirements. But, stay assured that choosing CI will be an important step towards achieving a productive step towards project development workflow.

Best Continuous Integration Tools in 2023