CloudBees vs GoCD comparison

CloudBees and Thoughtworks are both solutions in the Build Automation category. CloudBees is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.3, while Thoughtworks is ranked #16 with an average rating of 7.3. CloudBees holds a 1.7% mindshare in BA, compared to Thoughtworks’s 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of CloudBees users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of Thoughtworks users who would recommend it.

CloudBees

Read 20 CloudBees reviews

1,050 Views
840 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

GoCD

Read 7 GoCD reviews

960 Views
624 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

CloudBees

GoCD

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 10, 2025

GoCD and CloudBees are competitive products in the CI/CD space. CloudBees seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive enterprise-grade features and strong integration capabilities, which many find worth the premium cost compared to GoCD's competitive pricing.

Features: GoCD is valued for its robust pipeline visualization, flexibility, and permission separation. It allows for the management of complex workflows and integrates well with LDAP for user management. CloudBees is admired for its scalability, advanced security, and integration capabilities. It offers application delivery automation and pipeline release orchestration, making it highly appealing for large enterprises with diverse needs.

Room for Improvement: GoCD could enhance its plugin ecosystem and reduce limitations in extending features through third-party plugins. Improving the user interface would further increase its usability. CloudBees needs better management of plugin version mismatches and enhanced monitoring features. Improvements in seamless integration across multiple Jenkins instances could also benefit CloudBees users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GoCD is praised for its straightforward setup and configuration, offering greater control over deployment processes. CloudBees offers a simpler deployment model with its cloud-centric approach, reducing infrastructure management overhead. CloudBees’s customer service is noted for its responsiveness and effectiveness, often providing prompt assistance through calls.

Pricing and ROI: GoCD is recognized for its open-source model, which reduces initial setup costs and offers a strong ROI for budget-conscious teams. CloudBees requires a larger upfront investment, but its advanced features and enterprise-level capabilities can offer a higher long-term ROI. Despite the larger initial cost, many users find it justified by CloudBees's efficiency and the reduced need for extra tools.

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

Buyer's Guide

CloudBees vs. GoCD

September 2025

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Helped 869,566 peers since 2012

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

Ranking in other categories

Configuration Management (11th), Value Stream Management Software (2nd), DevSecOps (4th), AI-Augmented Software-Testing Tools (2nd)

GoCD

Ranking in Build Automation

16th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (16th), Release Automation (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of CloudBees is 1.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GoCD is 1.8%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
CloudBees	1.7%
GoCD	1.8%
Other	96.5%

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

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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Nishant Narayan Singh

DevOps Architect at Cognizant

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

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

"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 can manage multiple Jenkins instances."

"CloudBees is a user-friendly tool."

"CloudBees assists by automating tasks, previously done manually, in the pipeline setup."

"The customer support is good. You get good representatives from CloudBees to help you and understand your requirements."

"Scalability largely depends on how the tool is set up within your infrastructure"

More CloudBees 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."

"GoCD's open-source nature is valuable."

"Permission separations mean that we can grant limited permissions for each team or team member."

"The UI is colorful."

Cons

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

"I think a preview of the errors would be good just at the point where the error occurs."

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

"The setup is somewhat complicated. You need a cloud architect and engineer to set it up properly. The initial setup will take time, so you need a good engineer and architect to handle it."

"To use the tool, you need to be familiar with the tool itself and with how it will be incorporated into the culture."

"I would like to see improved speed and availability."

"A lot of stability issues are there with CloudBees."

"It could improve the document upload process."

More CloudBees cons

"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 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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"It's an open-source and free tool."

"This is an open-source solution and it is inexpensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Legal Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	1
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	17

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	3

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.

See all answers

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

What do you like most about GoCD?

The UI is colorful.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GoCD?

The product is free of cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with GoCD?

See all answers

Comparisons

GitLab vs CloudBees

Compared 33% of the time

Harness vs CloudBees

Compared 21% of the time

Jenkins vs CloudBees

Compared 17% of the time

Digital.ai Release vs CloudBees

Compared 15% of the time

Tekton vs CloudBees

Compared 14% of the time

More CloudBees Competitors

GitLab vs GoCD

Compared 33% of the time

Jenkins vs GoCD

Compared 31% of the time

GitHub Actions vs GoCD

Compared 21% of the time

Tekton vs GoCD

Compared 15% of the time

More GoCD Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudBees

October 2025

Download CloudBees product report

Buyer's Guide

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

September 2025

Download GoCD product report

Also Known As

No data available

Adaptive ALM, Thoughtworks Go

Overview

CloudBees provides a highly scalable and secure platform that supports seamless integration and automation across multiple environments. It excels in managing Jenkins instances and offers flexible deployment options, enhancing efficiency for large teams.

CloudBees is recognized for its integration with Jenkins, SonarQube, and Ansible, allowing companies to leverage its robust automation capabilities for continuous integration and deployment. With its strong support for Docker and Kubernetes, teams benefit from streamlined code management and operational efficiency. Its scalable architecture, real-time feedback, and premium vendor support help manage large-scale applications and microservices. Despite its strengths, users report challenges with pipeline setup, service availability, and GUI accessibility, which suggest room for improvement in these areas.

What are the key features of CloudBees?

User-friendly interface: Simplifies navigation and improves workflow efficiency.
Robust scalability: Supports growth and large-scale application management.
Advanced security: Ensures data security and compliance.
Integration capabilities: Seamlessly integrates with Jenkins, SonarQube, and Ansible.
Flexible deployment: Adapts to different infrastructure needs across environments.

What benefits should users expect in reviews?

Enhanced efficiency: Automation reduces manual workload.
Real-time feedback: Provides immediate insights into pipeline performance.
Vendor support: Offers assistance for troubleshooting and growth.
Scalable architecture: Accommodates business expansion requirements.

In tech and software industries, companies implement CloudBees for managing complex CI/CD pipelines. Its integration with DevOps tools facilitates automation and workflow optimization. Industries with large teams managing thousands of microservices use CloudBees to maintain high availability, streamline processes, and ensure security compliance, driving efficient production workflows.

CloudBees

GoCD is an open source continuous delivery server created by ThoughtWorks. GoCD offers businesses a first-class build and deployment engine for complete control and visibility. It was designed for continuous delivery and the concepts essential to this practice are built in at the core.

Thoughtworks

Sample Customers

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

Ancestry.com, Barclay Card, AutoTrader, BT Financial Group, Gamesys, Nike, Vodafone, Haufe Lexware, Medidata, Hoovers

Buyer's Guide

CloudBees vs. GoCD

September 2025

Free Report: CloudBees vs. GoCD

Find out what your peers are saying about CloudBees vs. GoCD and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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