Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

GoCD vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

GoCD
Ranking in Release Automation
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (16th), Build Automation (16th)
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Release Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (1st), Network Automation (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of GoCD is 1.4%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 5.0%, up from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Release Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform5.0%
GoCD1.4%
Other93.6%
Release Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Nishant Narayan Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplifies the pipeline process, but the access control system needs enhancement
One area of product improvement is the access control system. It is difficult to assign different access levels because it relies on separate keys for developer and admin access, which could be simplified. The folder structure is another aspect that could be enhanced, as all jobs are displayed on a single page without the clear organization seen in Jenkins. Implementing a more structured approach to organizing jobs would improve user experience. AI could simplify job creation. For example, instead of manually editing pipelines as code, an AI tool could allow users to input variables and automatically generate the required jobs. It would help reduce human errors, such as issues that arise from incorrect edits in large code files.
Sudhir Kumar Tiwari - PeerSpot reviewer
Have managed thousands of servers with streamlined configuration processes
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is very helpful due to passwordless integration and the ability to interact with multiple servers at once, which is especially advantageous when dealing with thousands of servers. The integration aspect of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has optimized my IT ecosystem significantly by consolidating multiple tools, such as a CI/CD pipeline with Jenkins, where we validate everything, including testing and SonarQube code quality. The agentless architecture of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, using the SSH key, makes it passwordless and allows us to push configurations with one click, creating a major advantage. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform's main benefit is that it allows us to push configurations to multiple servers without manually visiting each one, maintaining efficiency.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most notable aspect is its user interface, which we find to be user-friendly and straightforward for deploying and comprehending pipelines. We have the ability to create multiple pipelines, and in addition to that, the resource consumption is impressive."
"The UI is colorful."
"GoCD's open-source nature is valuable."
"Permission separations mean that we can grant limited permissions for each team or team member."
"There are new modules available, which help to simplify the workflow. That is what we like about it."
"Ansible provides great reliability when coupled with a versioning system (git). It helps providing predictability to the network by knowing exactly what's being pushed after validating it in production."
"I like Ansible's ease of use. If you have Linux skills, you can create a reusable template for the dependencies and other configurations. I can store the templates in a repository and share them with my customers or other developers. It's a popular solution, so there is a large user base that can share templates."
"Managing our inventory is a big pain point. Right now, we have Satellite, but we can tie it in with Satellite, so we can actually manage things and automate the entire deployment stack, instead of trying to grab things from tickets, then generating Kickstart, and using that to get things in Satellite. That doesn't work well. We can do the whole deployment stack using the inventory share between Tower and Satellite."
"I like the inventory management. It's a very nice, simple, concise way to keep all that data together. And the API allows us to use it even for things that are not Ansible."
"The automation manager is very good."
"Feature-wise, the solution is a good open-source software offering broad support. Also, it's reliable."
"The biggest thing I liked about Ansible is the check mode so that we can verify, after we've pushed, that the config there is actually what we intended."
 

Cons

"The aspect that requires attention is the user management component. When integrating with BitLabs and authenticating through GitLab, there are specific features we desire. One important feature is the ability to import users directly from GitLab, along with their respective designations, and assign appropriate privileges based on that information. Allocating different privileges to users is a time-consuming process for us."
"The documentation really should be improved by including real examples and more setup cases."
"The tool must be more user-friendly."
"It is difficult to assign different access levels because it relies on separate keys for developer and admin access, which could be simplified."
"The technical support is not adequate. The Ansible sales and technical support services need significant improvement."
"Ansible can face scalability issues, such as limitations when trying to scale up infrastructure. It might struggle with connection dropping or spawning additional VMs under certain conditions."
"There should be consistency. I know that it is always changing, but when we are trying to get some users to do something in basic Ansible that they are not really interested in doing but their job requires them to do it, they start finding inconsistencies."
"There have been some differences between the operating systems that we have noticed. It could be down to cryptographic policies, but we have noticed some speed issues. They should work on the speed of deployment on different operating systems."
"The user interface on the Ansible Tower product could be better, but it is functional."
"For Ansible Tower, there are three tiers with ten nodes. I would like them to expand those ten nodes to 20, because ten nodes is not enough to test on."
"There are some options not available in the community edition of the solution."
"When you set up Playbooks, I may have one version of the Playbook, but another member of the team may have a different vision, and we will not know which version is correct. We want to have one central repository for managing the different versions of Playbooks, so we can have better collaboration among team members. This is our use case for using Git version control."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's an open-source and free tool."
"This is an open-source solution and it is inexpensive."
"The pricing is okay."
"I am using the community edition of the solution which is free."
"We went with product because we have a subscription for Red Hat."
"Customers need to pay yearly for the license."
"It’s an open-source tool."
"Ansible Tower is free. Until they lower the cost, we are holding off on purchasing the product."
"The solution is inexpensive compared to other products."
"You don't need to buy agents on servers or deploy expense management when using the solution, which affected our decision to go with it."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Release Automation solutions are best for your needs.
868,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Educational Organization
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise48
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with GoCD?
One area of product improvement is the access control system. It is difficult to assign different access levels because it relies on separate keys for developer and admin access, which could be sim...
What is the difference between Red Hat Satellite and Ansible?
Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management have been outstanding. If you have a large environment, patching systems is much ...
How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that the set up will take depends on the kind of technical architecture that your org...
What do you like most about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.
 

Also Known As

Adaptive ALM, Thoughtworks Go
Ansible
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ancestry.com, Barclay Card, AutoTrader, BT Financial Group, Gamesys, Nike, Vodafone, Haufe Lexware, Medidata, Hoovers
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about GoCD vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.