CircleCI pros and cons

Name: CircleCI
Brand: CircleCI
Rating: 3.4 (7 reviews)

Vendor: CircleCI

3.4 out of 5

7 reviews
75% willing to recommend

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Pros & Cons summary

CircleCI automates builds with seamless integration, parallel support, and rapid deployment, offering features like container-based builds and Bitbucket integration. Despite reducing build times and effort, improvement is needed for Azure integration and pricing. Billing issues and unclear ROI metrics are concerns, as is debugging complex pipelines. CircleCI facilitates standardization through third-party app automation and artifact storage, yet challenges in managing credits and workflow optimization persist.

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

CircleCI automates the build process and runs workflows effortlessly with seamless integration and parallel build support.

CircleCI efficiently detects build failures and facilitates rapid deployment to production environments.

CircleCI offers valuable features like container-based builds, Bitbucket integration, and artifact storage.

CircleCI's automation workflow related to third-party applications allows for standardization.

CircleCI has significantly reduced build and deployment times, resulting in substantial engineering time and effort savings.

CONS

Integration with Microsoft Azure requires improvement, as its deployment models can have a steep learning curve.

Pricing could be more competitive.

Billing processes are disorganized.

Return on investment with CircleCI is not evident, lacking metrics such as time saved or reduction in workforce.

Debugging complex pipelines and managing credits are sometimes challenging, particularly for large workflows.

CircleCI Pros review quotes

it_user790470

Full Stack Bot Engineer with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 18, 2017

The ability to automate the build process in a seamless way and run workflows effortlessly. It supports parallel builds so it can scale well. Also, it covers the basics of any build and integration tool, including email notifications (especially when tests are fixed), project insights, etc.

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reviewer993756

Automation & Network Engineer at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees

Oct 21, 2021

The automation workflow in CircleCI related to third-party applications is very good and allows standardization of applications.

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Mritunjay Kumar

Senior Engineer at Affinidi

Aug 29, 2023

It's a stable product.

Find out what your peers are saying about CircleCI, Jenkins, Travis CI and others in Build Automation. Updated: December 2025.

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reviewer0972521

Chief Technology Officer at Kyberlife

Sep 26, 2023

The solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery.

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reviewer2783499

SRE coordinator at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees

Dec 2, 2025

CircleCI has positively impacted the organization, as it has been used for many years and serves as the main source for application deployment.

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reviewer2785464

General Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Dec 13, 2025

CircleCI has significantly reduced build and deployment times, saving substantial engineering hours and effort for me, which has directly improved my productivity and release velocity, reflecting incredible ROI.

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CircleCI Cons review quotes

it_user790470

Full Stack Bot Engineer with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 18, 2017

Integration with Microsoft Azure is one area for improvement. Azure is growing in its user base, and supports various cloud infrastructure components such as Service Fabric, App Service, etc. Some of Azure’s deployment models (like Kudu) require a steep learning curve, but if CircleCI would come up with such features (deployment to App Service) out of the box, it would be amazing.

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reviewer993756

Automation & Network Engineer at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees

Oct 21, 2021

There needs to be some improvement in the user interface of CircleCI.

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Mritunjay Kumar

Senior Engineer at Affinidi

Aug 29, 2023

The solution’s pricing could be better.

Find out what your peers are saying about CircleCI, Jenkins, Travis CI and others in Build Automation. Updated: December 2025.

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879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.

reviewer0972521

Chief Technology Officer at Kyberlife

Sep 26, 2023

Billing is a mess.

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reviewer2783499

SRE coordinator at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees

Dec 2, 2025

A return on investment with CircleCI has not been observed, and no relevant metrics such as time saved or fewer employees needed can be shared.

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reviewer2785464

General Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Dec 13, 2025

I believe debugging complex pipelines and managing credits can sometimes be challenging, especially for large workflows, so these areas can be improved.

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