Buildkite vs Digital.ai Release comparison

Buildkite and Digital.ai are both solutions in the Build Automation category. Buildkite is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.2, while Digital.ai is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.0. Additionally, 92% of Buildkite users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Digital.ai users who would recommend it.

Buildkite

Read 14 Buildkite reviews

254 Views
99 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Digital.ai Release

Read 4 Digital.ai Release reviews

494 Views
258 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Buildkite

Digital.ai Release

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Digital.ai Release and Buildkite are competitors in the DevOps automation sector, each offering unique features. Buildkite has a competitive edge due to its comprehensive capabilities and advanced functionality.

Features: Digital.ai Release efficiently manages release orchestration, complex workflow automation, and integrates well with various deployment tools. Buildkite offers robust continuous integration functionality, an intuitive user interface, and YAML-based configuration for customizing pipelines.

Room for Improvement: Digital.ai Release could enhance its integration flexibility, user interface design, and expand template variety. Buildkite could improve initial user learning curve, cloud provider integrations, and deployment cost transparency.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Digital.ai Release is noted for its seamless deployment and strong customer support, easing transitions and resolving issues effectively. Buildkite provides flexible deployment in cloud-native environments, though it offers less immediate support, focusing more on self-management.

Pricing and ROI: Digital.ai Release offers a cost-effective solution with strong ROI for automation-intensive projects. Buildkite, while requiring a higher initial investment, delivers long-term value through its rich feature set and efficient build processes.

To learn more, read our detailed Buildkite vs. Digital.ai Release Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite vs. Digital.ai Release

April 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

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Digital.ai Release

Ranking in Build Automation

17th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Release Automation (12th), DevSecOps (12th)

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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Navanath Gajare

DevOps Tech Lead at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Effectively automates deployments and applies one template across applications

Our company uses the solution to handle deployments for new releases. Whenever there is a new release, the solution creates a new provision template for deployment. We also orchestrate and manage all users. We integrate with other tools like GitHub, Jenkins, or Digital.ai Deploy to manage…

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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

"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."

"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."

"The documentation is quite helpful."

"You don't have to set up an agent in Buildkite like in Jenkins."

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

"The product's initial setup phase was easy."

"The tool is simple and has no learning curve. If you know YAML, you can master it. It is simple to learn."

"It is a stable solution."

More Buildkite pros

"The solution can apply one template across multiple applications."

"The time is also reduced because the manual work has tremendously decreased. We just have to click one button, and it will create everything for us."

"The most valuable feature of Digital.ai Release is its ability to communicate with various deployment systems, such as XLD and batch deployments, as well as integrate with tools, such as Flyway and Bamboo. We use Bamboo as our build orchestrator, and Digital.ai Release also integrates with Jira, another Atlassian solution. These capabilities make it a powerful tool for managing workflow, test automation, and other processes."

"The orchestration, building the release, and then just executing it and managing that pipeline — the orchestration capabilities are great for that."

Cons

"As a newbie, I think BuildKite has several issues. For example, it can't get the status of a PR once it's closed. The syntax is easy to use, but updating a pipeline requires administrator settings, and viewing pipelines for others isn't straightforward."

"There is a need for rework occasionally, and issues like syntax errors can occur multiple times, especially when manual changes are made in AWS or Amazon Connect that are not captured in the code."

"The solution should offer more options for installing an agent and give users the option of having a separate self-hosted or provisioned agent."

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

"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."

"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."

"Most of our projects involve both front-end and back-end development. We write the code and then create a file to set up our process, including specifying the tests we want to run. Before deploying to production, we need to install and configure certain things. We need something like Docker Pro, but I'm unsure about that. I'm familiar with the steps for using Buildkite for this process. We start by defining which tests to run."

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

More Buildkite cons

"Currently, we put artifact details manually. What we could improve, in our case, is the deployment instruction base. Developers input all the information, including which artifact and where it needs to be deployed. What Digital.ai could do is automatically go to the deployment instruction page, take those artifact details, and implement them."

"Digital.ai Release could improve by having a better plugin that works with Guardian that we use for mainframe migrations. If there could be an interface or plugin for Guardian that would be beneficial."

"The backfill could be improved, we could automate that. Right now it's subjective — it's up to the lead developer's memory to remember to backfill."

"The solution is a little bit expensive."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The self-hosted option is pretty cheap."

"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."

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

"We used the solution’s free version."

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

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

"The solution's license includes all features."

"Overall, the price is just too high; especially considering we're in the middle of a pandemic."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Educational Organization

45%

Financial Services Firm

24%

Computer Software Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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 do you like most about Digital.ai Release ?

The time is also reduced because the manual work has tremendously decreased. We just have to click one button, and it will create everything for us.

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What needs improvement with Digital.ai Release ?

There are many areas of improvement. Currently, we put artifact details manually. What we could improve, in our case, is the deployment instruction base. Developers input all the information, inclu...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Digital.ai Release ?

It helps with creating documentation, release processes, deploying to lower environments, scheduling meetings, and sending emails to stakeholders. The goal is to reduce manual work and save time.

See all answers

Comparisons

GitHub Actions vs Buildkite

Compared 55% of the time

Tekton vs Buildkite

Compared 23% of the time

Nx vs Buildkite

Compared 21% of the time

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Jenkins vs Digital.ai Release

Compared 59% of the time

GitLab vs Digital.ai Release

Compared 41% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite

April 2025

Download Buildkite product report

Buyer's Guide

Digital.ai Release

April 2025

Download Digital.ai Release product report

Also Known As

No data available

XL Release, XebiaLabs XL Release

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

Automate, orchestrate, and gain visibility into your release pipelines at scale using Digital.ai Release, a release management tool that is designed for enterprises. Control and track releases, standardize processes, and bake compliance and security into your software release pipelines.

Digital.ai

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

3M, GE, John Deere, Deutsche Telekom, Cable & Wireless, Xerox, and Société Générale, Liberty Mutual, EA, Rabobank

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite vs. Digital.ai Release

April 2025

Free Report: Buildkite vs. Digital.ai Release

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