GoCD vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

Thoughtworks and Red Hat are both solutions in the Release Automation category. Thoughtworks is ranked #11 with an average rating of 7.3, while Red Hat is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.9. Thoughtworks holds a 1.5% mindshare in RA, compared to Red Hat’s 5.7% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Thoughtworks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

GoCD

Read 7 GoCD reviews

406 Views
58 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Red Hat Ansible Automation ...

Read 69 Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform reviews

1,702 Views
433 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

GoCD

Red Hat Ansible Automation ...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

GoCD and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform are both competitors in the continuous delivery and automation solutions market. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform tends to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive automation capabilities and integration support, providing a superior ROI despite higher upfront costs.

Features: GoCD offers granular control with intuitive pipeline management, visualization capabilities, and a user-friendly interface. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform stands out with agentless architecture, role-based access control, and extensive multi-platform support, highlighting its flexibility and robust automation features.

Room for Improvement: GoCD could enhance its plugin architecture and increase the number of available plugins, along with improving integration capabilities. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform can improve by simplifying YAML syntax and advancing its network modules while expanding its agent management features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GoCD is praised for its straightforward setup and uncomplicated deployment process. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers a smoother path for complex installations with extensive documentation and strong community support, helping ensure reliable performance.

Pricing and ROI: GoCD is cost-effective with lower setup costs, appealing to budget-conscious organizations. In contrast, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, despite higher initial costs, is preferred for its long-term value, with better ROI from its expansive features and integration capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed GoCD vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

GoCD vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

June 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 859,579 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

GoCD

Ranking in Release Automation

11th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (15th), Build Automation (17th)

Red Hat Ansible Automation ...

Ranking in Release Automation

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Configuration Management (1st), Network Automation (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of GoCD is 1.5%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 5.7%, up from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Release Automation

Featured Reviews

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

Muralitharan KS

Software Architect at OSELabs

Efficient server management and detailed reporting with flexible deployment capabilities

We are primarily using Ansible for automation purposes as it is a configuration management tool. It is utilized for various activities such as DNS activity, changes to web servers, virtual host settings, and other day-to-day tasks, all of which are templated in Ansible Ansible allows us to manage…

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

"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."

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

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

"The UI is colorful."

"I like the fact that Ansible is agentless."

"The biggest thing I liked about Ansible is the check mode so that we can verify, after we've pushed, that the config there is actually what we intended."

"The reason I like Ansible is, first, the coding of it is very straightforward, it's very human-readable. I'm also on a contract, and I can clearly iterate and bring people up to speed very quickly on writing a Playbook compared with writing up a Puppet manifest or a Salt script."

"There are new modules available, which help to simplify the workflow. That is what we like about it."

"It has made our infrastructure more testable. We are able to build our infrastructure in CI, then are more confident in what we are deploying will work, not breaking everything."

"The easy-to-read syntax for YAML files and the interoperability between modules are valuable."

"Ansible Tower offers use a UI where we can see all the pushes that have gone into the server."

"The solution can scale."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform pros

Cons

"It is difficult to assign different access levels because it relies on separate keys for developer and admin access, which could be simplified."

"The tool must be more user-friendly."

"The documentation really should be improved by including real examples and more setup cases."

"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."

"It needs better documentation."

"The job workflow needs to be worked on. It's not really clear to how you actually link things together. What they probably could do is provide an example workflow on how to stitch things together. I think that would be very helpful."

"There are challenges in using the graphical interface, particularly in open-source versions."

"Ansible is great, but there are not many modules. You can do about 80% to 90% of things by using commands, but more modules should be added. We cannot do some of the things in Ansible. In Red Hat, we have the YUM package manager, and there are certain options that we can pass through YUM. To install the Docker Community Edition, I'll write the yum install docker-ce command, but because the Docker Community Edition is not compatible with RHEL 8, I will have to use the nobest option, such as yum install docker-ce --nobest. The nobest option installs the most stable version that can be installed on a particular system. In Ansible, the nobest option is not there. So, it needs some improvements in terms of options. There should be more options, keywords, and modules."

"I have seen indications that the documentation needs improvement. They are providing a "How to Improve Your Documentation" presentation at this conference."

"When you set up Playbooks, I may have one version of the Playbook, but another member of the team may have a different vision, and we will not know which version is correct. We want to have one central repository for managing the different versions of Playbooks, so we can have better collaboration among team members. This is our use case for using Git version control."

"The product could do a better job at building infrastructure."

"What we need is model-driven, declarative software infrastructure management. However, things tend to break with new versions, requiring a lot of work to fix…The focus should be on improving the support for Ansible in the area of AI coding."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"We use the open-source version of the solution."

"Red Hat's open source approach was a factor when choosing Ansible, since the solution is free as of right now."

"The cost is determined by the number of endpoints."

"Ansible Tower is free. Until they lower the cost, we are holding off on purchasing the product."

"If you only need to use Ansible, it's free for any end-user, but when you require Ansible Tower, you need to pay per Ansible Tower server."

"Ansible Tower is pretty expensive."

"We have to be mindful of how we use Ansible because of the licensing model. I am not saying that it is unfair or we do not find value in it. Because we are trying to automate so many different things, we have to be mindful of what we are doing and how we are doing it because we are trying to stay in compliance with it."

"Customers need to pay yearly for the license."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Release Automation solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

859,579 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Retailer

11%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Financial Services Firm

18%

Educational Organization

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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

What is the difference between Red Hat Satellite and Ansible?

Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management have been outstanding. If you have a large environment, patching systems is much ...

See all answers

How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that the set up will take depends on the kind of technical architecture that your org...

See all answers

What do you like most about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?

The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.

See all answers

Comparisons

GitLab vs GoCD

Compared 33% of the time

Jenkins vs GoCD

Compared 28% of the time

GitHub Actions vs GoCD

Compared 18% of the time

Tekton vs GoCD

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs GoCD

Compared 10% of the time

More GoCD Competitors

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 15% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Intune vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 6% of the time

BigFix vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 5% of the time

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

May 2025

Download GoCD product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

June 2025

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform report

Download Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform product report

Also Known As

Adaptive ALM, Thoughtworks Go

Ansible

Overview

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

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a powerful network automation solution that allows organizations to handle every aspect of their application launch process within a single product. It enables users to share their automations so that teams within an organization can collaborate on various projects with ease. Ansible Automation Platform is designed to be used by all employees involved in the network automation process.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform include:

Maximum benefit for reduced overhead. Ansible Automation Platform is an all-in-one solution that can enable users to do the jobs of multiple products with one. Users do not need to purchase multiple products to handle their network automation and application development needs. It is equipped with prefabricated content from more than one hundred companies that are partnered with it.

Scalable. Ansible Automation Platform is a highly scalable solution. It can easily be scaled up so that automations can be extended across the various devices that make up an organization’s network.

Flexibility. Ansible Automation Platform is highly flexible. It enables users to tackle any and all automation-related tasks.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Features

Automation analytics. Ansible Automation Platform comes equipped with an automation analytics feature. This feature enables organizations to measure the effects of their automations and plan how they are going to implement automations moving forward. It makes it easy for administrators to spot anomalies in their automations and resolve them before they can escalate and become major issues.

Integration suite. Ansible Automation Platform gives organizations access to a wide variety of integrations that enable them to connect to Ansible’s partners. Now users can augment their capabilities without needing to purchase additional solutions that will enable them to run features that are not normally a part of Ansible’s array of tools. The Ansible environment is built to handle the wide variety of integrations that their partners offer. In order to accomplish this it includes the APIs that users need in order to fully benefit from the integrations.

Centralized interface. Ansible Automation Platform comes with a centralized GUI interface that enables users to manage all of their network automation and application creation activities from a single location. Businesses can guarantee that their operations are going to be handled efficiently and according to a single standard. The management process is greatly simplified. All of the tools that users need are located in one place.

Reviews from Real Users

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a highly effective solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its automation manager and its comprehensive centralized GUI-based management interface.

MD J., a solution architect at STBL, says, “The automation manager is very good and makes things easier for customers with multi-cloud platforms.”

Aankit G., a Consultant at Pi DATACENTERS, writes, “We like the GUI-based interface for the tower. Before, we only had a command-line interface to run all the Ansible tasks. Now, the Ansible tower provides the complete GUI functionality to run, manage, and create the templates and the Ansible jobs. This includes the code and YAML file we can create. The GUI interface is the added advantage of this solution, including some integration with the different plugins.”

Red Hat

Sample Customers

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

HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank

Buyer's Guide

GoCD vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

June 2025

Free Report: GoCD vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Find out what your peers are saying about GoCD vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

859,579 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our GoCD vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform report.

See our list of best Release Automation vendors.

We monitor all Release Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.