Buildkite vs CloudBees comparison

Buildkite and CloudBees are both solutions in the Build Automation category. Buildkite is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.2, while CloudBees is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.3. Buildkite holds a 1.6% mindshare in BA, compared to CloudBees’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Buildkite users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of CloudBees users who would recommend it.

Buildkite

Read 14 Buildkite reviews

394 Views
394 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

CloudBees

Read 20 CloudBees reviews

993 Views
794 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Buildkite

CloudBees

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

CloudBees and Buildkite compete in the CI/CD platform category. CloudBees has the upper hand in enterprise scalability and integration capabilities, while Buildkite offers a cost-effective solution with efficient deployment processes suitable for smaller teams or startups.

Features: CloudBees stands out with its scalability for large teams, integration capabilities with various tools, and strong security features. It offers significant flexibility and automation in CI/CD processes, appealing to large enterprises working with multiple Jenkins instances and platforms. In contrast, Buildkite provides straightforward management and intuitive YAML configuration with efficient cache handling and pipeline automation. It simplifies deployment processes for developers by reducing dependency on separate DevOps teams.

Room for Improvement: CloudBees encounters performance issues with complex pipelines and relies on proprietary support for updates. It also faces challenges such as extensive log management and potential reauthentication disruptions. Buildkite experiences difficulties with its Directed Acyclic Graph implementation and limited third-party integrations. Its logging can be cumbersome, and some users find the cache layering less intuitive during troubleshooting.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CloudBees supports diverse deployment environments including on-premises and hybrid models and offers robust customer service that is responsive but could improve prioritization and issue resolution time. Users sometimes report repeated issues despite a comprehensive support system. Buildkite is deployed primarily in public cloud settings and has a less extensive support base. Users value the straightforward deployment process but wish for more comprehensive resolution mechanisms.

Pricing and ROI: CloudBees is perceived as a premium offering due to its enterprise-level support and robust feature set, providing notable ROI by saving time in deployment and process automation. Buildkite is considered more cost-effective, especially favorable for startups and smaller teams. Its pricing model allows scaling with user numbers, making it a budget-friendly option for organizations focused on Docker and containerization.

To learn more, read our detailed Buildkite vs. CloudBees Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite vs. CloudBees

July 2025

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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

Buildkite

Ranking in Build Automation

9th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

CloudBees

Ranking in Build Automation

6th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Configuration Management (11th), Value Stream Management Software (2nd), DevSecOps (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of Buildkite is 1.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CloudBees is 1.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

Prabin Silwal

Senior Engineering Consultant at ASSURANCE IQ, INC.

Has an easy setup phase while also offering good documentation

The problem we are facing sometimes is that we have lots of unit testers, and we have to wait about ten minutes to complete all of those because we want to run or find a way. It's not directly due to the limitation of the tool as well, but when we are running the spec, we want to run those parallelly and decrease the downtime so that our deployment can be faster. I think that one is not possible only due to the it also depends upon the unit test framework as well we are using. When we tried with the multiple test cases in a parallel manner, there were some dependencies, and one over another kept failing. We make those sequential calls. The aforementioned area consists of the issues my company faced while using Buildkite.

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YashBrahmani

Senior Associate at BNP Paribas CIB

Offers a clear visualization and overview of workflows and helpful in managing CI/CD processes

Improvement in the sense that they can do better in terms of management of logs and stuff like that because the console logs are very extensive, and that causes a lot of storage issues. That is one of the things which is there. Also, with respect to the traditional platform and the modern platform, many things have upgraded, and it has quite improved. But when we talk about the performance of the agents, it’s still very crucial because it’s not up to par. It takes a lot of time to provision the agent and to finish the build because of the SSH connection and the JNLP connection. Due to that, sometimes the agent doesn’t get provisioned. Those are some of the blockers that meet up the time in terms of administering the instance.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"They have great plugins, scalability, UI, and pipeline options. They also offer webhooks that allow integration with custom setups to send events dynamically."

"Buildkite allows us to build automations and integration tasks effectively."

"It is a stable solution."

"Buildkite makes it easier to conduct deployment. When I merge a PR in Buildkite, it automatically starts the deployment process. It used to be challenging to shift code from the development branch to the testing branch because I had to follow up with multiple developers. Previously, I was dependent on the DevOps team and developers to handle deployments, but now it allows me to deploy the solutions myself.This has made it much easier for me to handle both non-production and production environments."

"What I like best about Buildkite is its workflow management. You define YAML files to specify what needs to be done. The jobs can run based on a schedule, like a cron job, where you set it to run every night or every week. Additionally, you can set up triggers, such as new pushes to a repository."

"Buildkite's UI is particularly intuitive, making it simple to add steps to your pipeline. It also provides detailed logging."

"If you join our team, it's very easy to learn Buildkite. We have our own boilerplate, so you can just clone it and add your configuration steps. Plus, we have documentation available to guide you through the process."

"Using Buildkite, it's much easier to manage pipelines. It's straightforward to understand what each pipeline returns, making it easy to edit configurations, such as passwords. Although there is a steep learning curve initially, the overall process is still comprehensible. Additionally, Buildkite offers features like hooks and triggers; for example, an action in the app can automatically trigger a pipeline. These elements can be added to specific pipelines, ensuring the entire process is automated."

More Buildkite pros

"CloudBees operates seamlessly. Deploying to a cluster is straightforward—just one click, and the job is done."

"CloudBees is the Jenkins tool for building and deploying. There's open-source Jenkins, which is free and can be used by any organization, but it offers a different architecture for Jenkins. If your organization is larger, you might choose the architecture. This way, you can have different masters for different applications, and different teams can manage their masters separately. However, a single person can still control all the masters, whoever manages it for the organization."

"It’s a very good tool for auditing your project pipelines as well."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its flexibility."

"I find the automation feature most valuable. CloudBees is highly scalable and supports both small and large teams. The deployment process is also faster when compared to on-premise."

"CloudBees is a user-friendly tool."

"One recent product feature that stands out is the pipeline explorer, which is providing significant value for us right now."

"CloudBees updates its features frequently, so if we need something like SSL login, they enable it."

More CloudBees pros

Cons

"Buildkite has issues while creating or extending branches as only the first five builds in the user-interface can be accessed and post that one has to access the next builds by remembering branch names without pagination which can be inconvenient."

"Since we were using Buildkite for the first time, we had a lot of difficulty understanding how it worked. We didn't find any documentation from third parties; only Buildkite provided documentation. As a result, we faced a steep learning curve. After some time, it became much easier to use. Initially, understanding certain features, like the R integration, was challenging."

"BuildKite should follow some providers like GitHub Actions. They can offer a shared agent or cloud agent."

"It gets very complex if you want the tool to scale automatically."

"I would like to see some improvements in the hooks implementation."

"The product must provide better integration with other tools."

"My company has had problems with the tool's parallel running and execution time. The testing framework also has some limitations. The tool cannot do everything."

"Compared to market leaders like Azure DevOps and Jenkins, Buildkite's community is smaller, but they do have some documentation."

More Buildkite cons

"The problem with CloudBees is that when you merge it, the pipelines would randomly fail multiple times."

"We've noticed occasional issues with folder permissions changing unexpectedly. Specifically, permissions sometimes shift from the CloudBees user to the root user. This can cause pipeline failures, as pipelines require the correct CloudBees user permissions to execute properly."

"If you're logged in and working for about thirty minutes and then go idle for five to ten minutes, Jenkins will prompt you to re-authenticate."

"We did face some challenges, particularly with the infrastructure."

"There could be improvements in the ease of use."

"I noticed that CloudBees runs too slowly because some applications run more than 50 pipelines."

"It could improve the document upload process."

"Sometimes, there are performance issues, however, they may be due to our organization's configuration."

More CloudBees cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I find Buildkite cost-effective as it has definitely increased my productivity, especially on the deployment side. It saved a lot of my time and improved data management because I can handle different environments myself now."

"Buildkite is known to be cheaper than GitHub Workflows, which is considered a standard in the industry. It can be cost-effective, especially for organizations that heavily utilize Docker and containerization, because every code change triggers a new build. Its integration with AWS, particularly with ECR, and its caching capabilities with layers are powerful features."

"The self-hosted option is pretty cheap."

"The solution's per-user pricing model suits huge enterprises but is expensive for small to medium businesses."

"I don't think the tool is expensive."

"For a business plan, it was 19 USD per month per user."

"We used the solution’s free version."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

23%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Legal Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Buildkite?

One area that needs improvement in Buildkite is the requirement for rework of the code. There can be syntax errors when running the Buildkite pipeline, especially if someone has made manual changes...

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What is your primary use case for Buildkite?

I use Buildkite for deployment tasks related to building AMI images and deploying routing profile queues into Amazon Connect. This involves using Buildkite in conjunction with GitHub. We create fil...

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What advice do you have for others considering Buildkite?

With two years of experience on Buildkite, I would recommend it to others due to its manageable pipeline and the support team available for big issues. I am satisfied with it, rating its stability ...

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What needs improvement with CloudBees?

There are connection issues with CloudBees, specifically between Sybase and CloudBees. We often encounter connection problems, and there are issues with the pipelines.

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What is your primary use case for CloudBees?

We use CloudBees for deploying the code in higher environments, such as QA, C2, staging, and production.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering CloudBees?

I would recommend CloudBees to others because building jobs is much easier than with other solutions.

See all answers

Comparisons

GitHub Actions vs Buildkite

Compared 34% of the time

Harness vs Buildkite

Compared 16% of the time

Tekton vs Buildkite

Compared 15% of the time

GitLab vs Buildkite

Compared 13% of the time

Nx vs Buildkite

Compared 12% of the time

More Buildkite Competitors

GitLab vs CloudBees

Compared 43% of the time

Harness vs CloudBees

Compared 21% of the time

Tekton vs CloudBees

Compared 13% of the time

Jenkins vs CloudBees

Compared 12% of the time

Digital.ai Release vs CloudBees

Compared 12% of the time

More CloudBees Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite

August 2025

Download Buildkite product report

Buyer's Guide

CloudBees

August 2025

Download CloudBees product report

Overview

Buildkite is a powerful CI/CD tool praised for its scalability and flexibility in automating and managing complex workflows across multiple platforms. Its integration capabilities with various systems and supports for secure, customizable environments enhance development efficiency and data privacy. The feedback highlights significant boosts in productivity and operational cost reduction, making Buildkite a strategic asset for businesses aiming to streamline development tasks and align with organizational goals.

Buildkite

CloudBees DevOptics is a robust software utilized primarily to enhance CI/CD processes by offering real-time visibility into Jenkins pipelines. It facilitates effective monitoring, incident management, and decision-making through comprehensive data analysis. Users value its features like DevOps performance metrics and seamless tool integration, leading to improved operational efficiency and productivity in organizations.

CloudBees

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Capital One, PEGA, vistaprint, HSBC, BOSCH, Starbucks Coffee

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite vs. CloudBees

July 2025

Free Report: Buildkite vs. CloudBees

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