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Digital.ai Release vs Spinnaker comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 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

Digital.ai Release
Ranking in Release Automation
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (15th), DevSecOps (9th)
Spinnaker
Ranking in Release Automation
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of Digital.ai Release is 0.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spinnaker is 1.5%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Release Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Jeanne-Mari Chandran - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience seamless project management and integration with robust tools
The features I find most valuable in Digital.ai Release are the integration with MS Teams, because we have MS Teams channels that publish or push notifications to that. When we start deployments, it sends a notification to the people that we are doing a deployment to their environment. It notifies them when the deployment is started, completed, or if attention is required. I also appreciate the fact that it has plugins for Bamboo and I use lots of Gradle and JSON scripts, and we do SQL upgrades as well, triggering Flyway scripts via Bamboo, along with the integration with XLD and Jira; it's all Atlassian software. Regarding environment management capabilities, Digital.ai Release is mostly useful for me, as it is more application related and that is managed via my XLD dictionary. We have one artifact that is environment agnostic, which has placeholders that correspond to my XLD keys and values, and at deployment time, it substitutes the placeholders with those environment specific values. We don't need to make a specific deployment artifact for dev, test, or production; it is all the same artifact using environment variables, ensuring what we take to production is what was tested.
Anurag Bandyopadhyay - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful to create custom pipelines
Regarding areas for improvement, one significant issue is the lack of maker-checker flows to ensure that newly created pipelines are accurate and tested. We currently use an in-house abstraction over Spinnaker to verify pipeline specs, environment variables, etc. It would be beneficial if Spinnaker could offer this functionality within their product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 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 solution can apply one template across multiple applications."
"Overall, I would give Digital.ai Release a rating of nine out of ten; there's always room for improvement, but it's really good."
"The orchestration, building the release, and then just executing it and managing that pipeline — the orchestration capabilities are great for that."
"The most valuable feature of Spinnaker is the rollback."
"There is a good community around the product that makes troubleshooting possible."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its intuitive interface for converting existing Kubernetes specs into working pipelines. It's easy for anyone to deploy anything on any environment when they need to test or deploy for a specific merchant or use case. Instead of going into the specs and changing different variables, they can do it through the UI, which is very useful."
"Spinnaker is used for automating a variety of deployment tasks, infrastructure, provisioning tasks, and all kinds of things."
 

Cons

"The solution is a little bit expensive."
"I would like to improve Digital.ai Release by exploring its cloud capabilities as we are currently in the middle of migrating to the cloud, but I actually have no idea what Digital.ai's cloud capabilities are."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Spinnaker's configuration setup is too complicated and should be made easy."
"Every time it goes to run a pipeline, it just generates a lot of data, and its database is not exactly tuned out of the box, meaning it is not tuned for high scalability."
"Log-wise, we need to understand why something has failed so that we can understand and try to fix it the moment the issue is reported. The solution could use more robust monitoring."
"Regarding areas for improvement, one significant issue is the lack of maker-checker flows to ensure that newly created pipelines are accurate and tested. We currently use an in-house abstraction over Spinnaker to verify pipeline specs, environment variables, etc. It would be beneficial if Spinnaker could offer this functionality within their product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Overall, the price is just too high; especially considering we're in the middle of a pandemic."
"The solution's license includes all features."
"Spinnaker is a free-to-use, open-source solution."
"The solution is open-source."
"Spinnaker is an open-source product. The tool is completely free for users."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Educational Organization
29%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Retailer
9%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What needs improvement with Digital.ai Release ?
Based on my experience, I would like to improve Digital.ai Release by exploring its cloud capabilities as we are currently in the middle of migrating to the cloud, but I actually have no idea what ...
What is your primary use case for Digital.ai Release ?
My use case for Digital.ai Release is that I work for an insurance company on a very big project that develops multiple different pieces of software. We use Digital.ai Release to move our software ...
What do you like most about Spinnaker?
The most valuable feature of Spinnaker is the rollback.
What needs improvement with Spinnaker?
Regarding areas for improvement, one significant issue is the lack of maker-checker flows to ensure that newly created pipelines are accurate and tested. We currently use an in-house abstraction ov...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

XL Release, XebiaLabs XL Release
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

3M, GE, John Deere, Deutsche Telekom, Cable & Wireless, Xerox, and Société Générale, Liberty Mutual, EA, Rabobank
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Digital.ai Release vs. Spinnaker and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.