Buildkite

What do you like best about the product?

I like that Buildkite runs fast and makes it easy to debug issues with my MCP. It helps make sure that my tests are passing for a merge of my PRs. Also, I appreciate that the setup was easy, and using the MCP through Cloud Code allows it to quickly figure out what the issues are, making my PRs merge faster.

What do you dislike about the product?

I like it

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Buildkite ensures my tests pass for PRs and speeds up merges, while making debugging easy with MCP.

What do you like best about the product?

Lots of flexibility on how to design your pipelines. Great customer support. All data is available to query through GraphQL and the more used information is available through Rest. The ability to annotate pipelines in the UI allows us to highlight data/issues to our users. Very few stability issues this year and when there were they were either minor issues that users didn't notice or Github was down. Absolutely worth the money, it is allowing us to do things that would be very difficult out of the box with other providers.

What do you dislike about the product?

Not a fan of the new pipeline UI (hard to see what I need to debug infrastructure issues), but Buildkite hasn't forced anyone over to it since it was introduced a year ago. For SOX compliance, the user roles could use more granularity and the Audit log is difficult to use.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

It is solving management of our complex pipelines, allowing us to easily manage running hundreds of jobs for our test pipelines.

What do you like best about the product?

Buildkite lets us run CI pipelines reliably within our own infrastructure. It has a bunch of different plugins which makes our life easier. I really like its simplicity. The setup is mostly easy, especially when running on AWS, thanks to pre-built CloudFormation templates.

What do you dislike about the product?

I think Buildkite's member per active user subscription could be improved.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Buildkite lets us run CI pipelines reliably within our infrastructure. It is easy to setup and run using different plugins.

What do you like best about the product?

The developer-friendly environment to build CI/CD pipelines in a variety of different ways with lots of customisations via plugins that can be built to cater for different use-cases. The customer support is responsive and receptive to feedback as well, which makes dealing with issues a lot more painless. Furthermore, the option for self-hosted CI/CD agents allows us to ensure security and performance can be catered to our criteria.

What do you dislike about the product?

The integrations between buildkite and jira are less seamless, so linking builds to jira tickets with the relevant github pull requests all in a single view might have less first party support and make it more difficult to aggregate and correlate changes with successful builds.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Being able to run builds completely in our own environment was essential in a highly regulated industry like ours, with the alternatives at the time requiring significantly more workarounds and makeshift solutions, buildkite was able to provide a lot of the customisations that we wanted out of the box.

Furthermore, first party support via the pipeline primitives were a lot more versatile and worked well with transferring a lot of our legacy business processes over without requiring as much engineering effort but with greater reassurances that things will work the way we expect it to.

Overall, it provided us a strong CI/CD platform to continue grow out our cloud presence and being unhindered by the scaling challenges that come with most other CI/CD platforms.

What do you like best about the product?

I really appreciate Buildkite's self-hosted agents, which allow for more flexibility and fit well within our security posture. The core product has good UX, which is straightforward and easy to use, helping engineers debug and troubleshoot builds effectively. It has decent extensibility and simple to set up. The account team is nice to work with.

What do you dislike about the product?

I feel that the pace of product development in Buildkite has been a bit stagnant in recent years. However, there seems to have been some reinvigoration in the product team in the recent 6-8 months. If they keep it up they will definitely pull out of this.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

We run all of our CI on it with self-hosted agents. CI is essential to modern software delivery.

What do you like best about the product?

Helpful visualization tools to understand pipeline and issues. Highly customizable to suit CI needs

What do you dislike about the product?

Somewhat steep learning curve given high level of customization

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

CI pipeline and deployments

I use Buildkite for deployment tasks related to building AMI images and deploying routing profile queues into Amazon Connect. This involves using Buildkite in conjunction with GitHub. We create files, raise pull requests in GitHub, and then run the Buildkite pipeline for deployment tasks.

In Buildkite, I find it easy to manage the Buildkite pipeline with the ability to pull Buildkite IP directly to update security groups. The default upgrade is managed by Buildkite. We use version five integrated with Terraform. There is a team that assists with any significant issues, which adds to the reliability.

One area that needs improvement in Buildkite is the requirement for rework of the code. There can be syntax errors when running the Buildkite pipeline, especially if someone has made manual changes in AWS or Amazon Connect, which can cause the pipeline to stop.

I have been using Buildkite for two years.

We have faced multiple instances of syntax errors when running the Buildkite pipeline, especially when manual modifications have been made into AWS or Amazon Connect. While these issues occur, we rely on a dedicated team to manage and resolve significant issues.

The team managing Buildkite provides good support, and they handle significant issues that arise during operations.

Neutral

The initial setup is not something I witnessed directly as the pipeline was already in place when I joined. Therefore, I have no firsthand information about the initial setup process.

We are migrating our Buildkite pipeline to another tool, but I am not aware of why this decision was made. This migration capability is considered a pro.

With two years of experience on Buildkite, I would recommend it to others due to its manageable pipeline and the support team available for big issues. I am satisfied with it, rating its stability an eight out of ten. Overall, I rate Buildkite eight out of ten.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The tool is simple and has no learning curve. If you know YAML, you can master it. It is simple to learn. 

As a newbie, I think BuildKite has several issues. For example, it can't get the status of a PR once it's closed. The syntax is easy to use, but updating a pipeline requires administrator settings, and viewing pipelines for others isn't straightforward.

Another issue is the lack of additional support, especially with plugins. Most plugins, except for a few like Docker, aren't updated regularly on GitHub. While we haven't faced major issues, having someone actively maintain these plugins would increase confidence.

I have been working with the product for two years. 

The tool's support comes up with a solution, but its limitations affect it. 

Positive

The tool's deployment is straightforward. 

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten. 

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Most of our projects involve both front-end and back-end development. We write the code and then create a file to set up our process, including specifying the tests we want to run. Before deploying to production, we need to install and configure certain things. We need something like Docker Pro, but I'm unsure about that. I'm familiar with the steps for using Buildkite for this process. We start by defining which tests to run.

Once the tests are done, we can add a button to ensure the process doesn't proceed until the test is completed or until we manually press the button. We do this because we always have multiple stages of development, like dev, staging, and production. Once the code is deployed, we test it on dev and then press the button to move it to the stage for QA testing. After QA, we press the button again to deploy to production.

If you join our team, it's very easy to learn Buildkite. We have our own boilerplate, so you can just clone it and add your configuration steps. Plus, we have documentation available to guide you through the process.

I have been using the product for two years. 

Sometimes, the system breaks down when we have limited instances running. For example, our company is very large, and some share the Buildkite instances. If we expect to deploy to production on a Friday, but every team is also deploying on Friday, we might have around twenty projects using Buildkite simultaneously.

My company has 1000-2000 users. The solution is scalable. However, we are careful so as not to overspend. 

The solution is worth its cost if you are a large organization. It is flexible and easy to use. 

I haven't used any other CI/CD platform before this, except for GitLab CI/CD, which I only used at a surface level. We would write some build steps and deploy them as soon as the tests were done. I'm unsure if GitLab has the same capabilities as Buildkite, particularly the step configuration feature that allows you to customize and control the move from one stage to the next (dev to staging, staging to production). I find this feature in Buildkite very easy to integrate and use.

If you're considering using the solution for the first time, I suggest starting with GitLab CI/CD or GitHub Actions. Buildkite might be overkill for smaller projects or individual use. It's usually more expensive for new users but can be cost-effective for large-scale organizations. 

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten. 

Amazon Web Services (AWS)