For our organization, we are using the enterprise CI/CD build tool. We have been using it for about a year on the CloudBees platform. Before that, we were on the open source Jenkins.

What is most valuable?

Their plugin support is its most valuable feature. Since it is open source, having a company backing these plugins and supporting them all the way throughout their lifecycle makes it easier for us to use it.

What needs improvement?

It being the only company or tool that provides you enterprise support with Jenkins, we don't have other options, and we're sort of stuck with it.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

How is customer service and technical support?

Once in awhile, we'll reach out to technical support because we have something in a DocPress container, and we have run into some issues there. Their support has always been helpful for us.

Which solutions did we use previously?

Before CloudBees, we had about 40 to 50 Jenkins instances. There was no management on them. Each one was running different versions. There were no one master nodes and spin up. Our support worked really hard because everyone was running different versions, types of build tools, and versions of plugins. When we got CloudBees, we obtained the consistency of everyone having one master and the multiple nodes all being the same. From the support side, that was the biggest part for us.

How was the initial setup?

In our AWS environment, we have Jenkins integrated with our GitLab, which makes it really easy. Once you check in your code or building on a pull request, it will automatically do our build, then we also use either GitLab for deployments, Ansible Tower, or UrbanCode. It integrates with all of those as well.

What was our ROI?

I think we will see return in investment in a little while once we start seeing all the teams transitions over to the product.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

From our viewpoint, the price point is high for the product. It goes by a "per developer" price. Being an open source tool, and having their plugins being created on a stable platform, it is very highly priced. That is the only downside to it.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

There aren't many companies who have an enterprise platform for Jenkins. Therefore, we were sort of left with CloudBees. However, they are also the industry trend. If you have Jenkins, and you want an enterprise-ready version, you will go with CloudBees.

What other advice do I have?

* You need to figure out how big your enterprise is. Because when you go to CloudBees, spinning out multiple nodes, you need to be able to have the infrastructure to back up all of those nodes, even if it is in AWS.

* I would take a look at different build tools. If you have GitLab, it can also build. Even though it is not a fully integrated plugin, you can save a lot of money for your enterprise.