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CloudBees vs GNU Make comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 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

CloudBees
Ranking in Build Automation
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (11th), Value Stream Management Software (2nd), DevSecOps (5th)
GNU Make
Ranking in Build Automation
17th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of CloudBees is 1.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GNU Make is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

YashBrahmani - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
reviewer2561757 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhances productivity with efficient dependency handling and a straightforward setup
GNU Make is used as a build system tool. Most people don't use GNU Make directly but utilize other systems like CMake to generate Make files, which are then run by GNU Make. This is common for tasks like compiling C++ code. In the industry, AI developers, for example, use GNU Make in their work…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One recent product feature that stands out is the pipeline explorer, which is providing significant value for us right now."
"The most beneficial aspect is that CloudBees integrates with everything, like version one, GitHub, and PDM."
"The customer support is good. You get good representatives from CloudBees to help you and understand your requirements."
"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."
"CloudBees assists by automating tasks, previously done manually, in the pipeline setup."
"It can manage multiple Jenkins instances."
"The most valuable features are Java features, microservice communication, payment validation, Jenkins Sonar, management master to CloudBees, Blue Ocean, JobConfig, and support."
"The initial setup is easy."
"Makefiles are extremely easy to work with using any preferred editor. GNU Make can be run directly from the terminal, not requiring any time wasted on clicking."
"GNU Make is such an essential tool that it is almost impossible to imagine working without it. Not having it, developers would probably have to resort to doing everything manually or via shell scripts."
"Setup is extremely straightforward."
"The initial setup of GNU Make is straightforward."
"Full-featured syntax allows building strategies as simple or as complex as one wishes, and declarative approach fits the task really well. Wide adoption also means that everybody knows what GNU Make is and how to use it."
"I have not encountered any scalability issues with GNU Make. It is as scalable as the project's structure is, and then some."
 

Cons

"The user interface of CloudBees is good but could be even more intuitive. Improving the user-friendliness of the interface and having simpler setup configurations would greatly benefit new users."
"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'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."
"There are connection issues with CloudBees, specifically between Sybase and CloudBees. W"
"I think a preview of the errors would be good just at the point where the error occurs."
"It could improve the document upload process."
"Sometimes, there are performance issues, however, they may be due to our organization's configuration."
"One challenge I'd like to highlight is that with CloudBees CI growing bigger and bigger, there are limitations in terms of managing old plugins and services and upgrading them with time."
"GNU Make requires using the Tab symbol as the first symbol of command line for execution. In some text editors this can be problematic, as they automatically insert spaces instead of tabs."
"GNU Make does not provide traditional customer support."
"Vanilla GNU Make does not support any kind of colored output. A wrapper named colormake exists to work around this, but native (opt-in) support would be welcome."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"GNU Make is free and open source software."
"There is no price for this product. No licensing. It’s open-source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Legal Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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.
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GNU Make?
GNU Make is a free solution that comes with Linux, which positively impacts operational costs by eliminating licensing fees.
What needs improvement with GNU Make?
I am not familiar enough with it to suggest any specific new features or areas for improvement. It occupies its niche well.
What is your primary use case for GNU Make?
GNU Make is used as a build system tool. Most people don't use GNU Make directly but utilize other systems like CMake to generate Make files, which are then run by GNU Make. This is common for task...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Capital One, PEGA, vistaprint, HSBC, BOSCH, Starbucks Coffee
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about CloudBees vs. GNU Make and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.