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Devops consultant at Siemens Healthineers
Real User
Top 5
Good compiling and deployment features that are ideal for open-source development
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features are compiling and deployment."
  • "The performance around the deployment feature could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

We use Bamboo as our continuous integration server.

How has it helped my organization?

We have a project based on AWS and Java, and Bamboo is the solution that fit our needs.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are compiling and deployment.

What needs improvement?

The performance around the deployment feature could be improved.

Buyer's Guide
Bamboo
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about Bamboo. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
831,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Bamboo for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have experienced a couple of crashes, which is why we have upgraded to new versions as they are released. It seems now that everything is okay. We have 70 people who use this solution, most of which are developers using it for compilation. There are two or three system integrators.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

In the context of our project, scalability is enough for our purposes.

How are customer service and support?

I have not personally been in touch with technical support. One of my colleagues may have been, but I haven't heard any feedback.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was a lovely experience for us because the first time we tried it, it was ok.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not evaluate other options because we primarily use Microsoft development technology and we have only a few targets that are not supported. We had done some research and found the Microsoft Azure DevOps VSTS was not competent enough to support Core Java lambda functions, so we picked up Atlassian Bamboo and we are happy with it.

What other advice do I have?

Bamboo is a solution that I recommend, especially for open-source development organizations that use all open-source tools. Atlassian suite is the best partner for such organizations.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user185772 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Architect with 5,001-10,000 employees
Vendor
Jenkins vs. Bamboo vs. Travis

This is the first article of the Continuous Integration, Delivery and Deployment series. We’ll start out journey with brief explanation of Continuous Delivery. After short exploration of some of the tools used today, we’ll move towards the flow (from setting up brand new environment and getting the code from the repository to the creation of fully tested and verified distribution). Each section will present different approaches, compare different tools and, finally, provide some hand-on examples. After the flow, we’ll explore changes required in the development life cycle. Finally, we’ll dive into last steps required for the transition from Continuous Integration towards Continuous Delivery and Deployment.

“Legacy code is code without tests” – Michael Feathers

According to Martin Fowler:

Continuous Delivery is a software development discipline where you build software in such a way that the software can be released to production at any time.

You’re doing continuous delivery when:

  • Your software is deployable throughout its life-cycle
  • Your team prioritizes keeping the software deployable over working on new features
  • Anybody can get fast, automated feedback on the production readiness of their systems any time somebody makes a change to them
  • You can perform push-button deployments of any version of the software to any environment on demand

There is a certain confusion as to what is the difference between Continuous Deployment, Continuous Delivery and Continuous Integration, so let us start with definitions.

  • Continuous Deployment means that every change goes through the pipeline and automatically gets put into production, resulting in many production deployments every day.
  • Continuous Delivery just means that you are able to do frequent deployments but may choose not to do it, usually due to businesses preferring a slower rate of deployment. In order to do Continuous Deployment you must be doing Continuous Delivery.
  • Continuous Integration usually refers to integrating, building, and testing code within the development environment. Continuous Delivery builds on this, dealing with the final stages required for production deployment.

Each of the points above depend on those below. In order to do Continuous Deployment, one must be able to continuously integrate and deliver.

In order to successfully and efficiently implement Continuous Delivery, new tools need to be adopted. That adoption should be followed by a change in development procedures and workflow.

Some of the commonly used CI tools are Jenkins, Hudson, Travis and Bamboo. Basic principle behind all of them is the detection of changes in the code repository and triggering a set of jobs or tasks.

Jenkins and Hudson

Both share the same code base and very similar (if not the same) set of features. Both are easy to extend, powerful and free. Their main advantage is in the number of plugins and community support. One can hardly imagine a need that is not already covered by one or more plugins. Jenkins/Hudson can be extended easily. As a downside, such architecture based on plugins comes at a cost of stability. Plugins are of different quality and it is not uncommon for an update to break existing jobs or to provoke unexpected behavior of the system. If one is looking for robust and flexible solution without any cost, Jenkins/Hudson is the best choice.

What is the difference between the two? In 2011, Jenkins forked from Hudson and continued being developed as a OSS (Open Source Project). The decision to fork was made by the creator of Hudson, Kohsuke Kawaguchi. Hudson, continued being under Oracle. In 2012, Oracle formally transferred Hudson to the Eclipse Foundation.

Hudson is oriented more toward enterprise organizations. Additional effort is put to clean the code, stability and performance. On the other hand, Jenkins is more accepted by the community, more vibrant and dynamic. In terms of numbers (commits, new lines of code, plugins…), Jenkins is winning over Hudson.

Jenkins is probably the most popular CI tool. Because of that, finding help and other users is easy.

Bamboo

Bamboo is the product of Atlassian. When compared to Jenkins, Bamboo is sexy. It is easier to use and it looks better. Usability is one of the first differences one would notice. Moreover, it is well-integrated with the rest of Atlassian’s products (JIRA, Confluence, BitBucket, etc).

Major downsides are its price and extensibility. It is the only tool listed in this article that is not free. If one needs to perform some non-common task, it is much more likely that plugin exists only for Jenkins. Same applies to help. Even though Atlassian provides great support, it is not so easy to find other users to talk to or ask for help.

If ease of use or integration with Atlassian products is priority and licensing price is not an obstacle, Bamboo is a great choice.

Travis

Main strength of Travis is that it is simple. Unlike Jenkins that allows almost unlimited plugins, creation of innumerable jobs, complicated flows, etc, Travis is based on a single file .travis.ylm that resides in the root of your code. Even though contents of that file can become complicated, in most cases Travis assumes that we’re following certain standards. Use of standards and simplicity is what often leads to a better and more efficient design.

Travis most of the time knows what should be done without any need to explicitly define the flow. For example, if there is the build.gradle file, Travis will understand that it should be compiled, tested, etc. using Gradle. It inspects your code and acts accordingly. One can switch from Ant to Maven to Gradle without making any changes to Travis or the configuration file.

Travis has a strong dependency with GIT. In cases when some other version controls system is used, Travis is not a good option. If, on the other hand, you are using GIT, working with Travis is like forgetting that CI even exists. Whenever the code is pushed to the repo Travis will detect it and act depending on changes in the code (including .travis.ylm). If there is a problem, you will be notified by email. All CI tools, when setup correctly, should work like that. Kind reminder when there is a problem, oblivion when there is none. Travis, brings this to the next level by, in most cases, removing the need to deal with jobs, configurations and other nuances.

Keeping CI configuration (.travis.ylm) as integral part of the code brings advantages. Through that config, you tell it what to do and he does it.

Simplicity comes at a cost. When complicated, non-standard, nobody-heard-of-it-before type of things are needed, Travis tends to be difficult to fight with.

Tools Summary

All four tools described in this article are worthy candidates as your CI solution. They are by no means all tools one should have in account. There are many others to explore.

My preferences for Jenkins and Travis over Hudson and Bamboo are based more on details than big differences. One cannot say that any of them is clearly better than the other. It is often a matter of personal choice, type of the project or what we’re used to.

For new projects, Travis is my favorite and I use it extensively. It is the new kid on the block (at least when compared with Jenkins, Hudson and Bamboo). It requires a switch in the approach to the CI setup. At the first look, its simplicity can be confusing. However, soon after the initial shock, Travis proved to be valuable, great, easy and fun to use.

Jenkins, on the other hand, fulfills my “corporate” needs that often require I-wish-this-does-not-exist-but-I-have-to-maintain-it type of tasks. It is a beast on its own. While it does require additional setup, maintenance and administration work, that overhead is compensated with almost limitless possibilities.

Read more here

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user326337 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user326337Customer Success Manager at PeerSpot
Real User

Victor, is your overall preference for Jenkins still relevant today (since you wrote this review in February 2015)?

See all 3 comments
Buyer's Guide
Bamboo
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about Bamboo. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
831,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.
PeerSpot user
Senior Build & Release Engineer at a non-tech company with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor
The REST API for our deployment project is still very basic, but with Bamboo, we've been able to implement an on-demand, push-button release strategy.

What is most valuable?

The Deployment Project

How has it helped my organization?

Bamboo, along with its integrated deployment and release pipeline, enabled us to go from a monolithic, once a month release cycle, with many post-release incidents to an on-demand, push-button release strategy where we deployed over 200 times a month with very few to no release-related incidents.

Using this tool, we were able to empower the dev teams to push their own changes to production rather than rely on the operations or release teams to release it.

What needs improvement?

The REST API for our deployment project is still very basic and lacks the ability to provide a decent amount of custom automation. For many things, we had to resort to direct database queries simply because certain data was not exposed via the API.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used it for five years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No issues encountered.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Every once in a while deployments would hang and we weren't able to clear them without restarting the service. It didn't happen a lot and it may have been due to how we configured the app on the server.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Not really. As long as your organization is willing to pay a bit more, Bamboo can scale to meet your needs.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

7/10 - sometimes you just want to talk to someone over the phone, but this isn't very easy with Atlassian. They have a ticket support system that's pretty good at connecting you with a customer service rep, but sometimes this means you have to go back and forth, waiting for the representative to reply on the issue in order to isolate a problem.

Technical Support:

7/10 - sometimes you just want to talk to someone over the phone, bu this isn't very easy with Atlassian. They have a ticket support system that's pretty good at connecting you with a customer service rep, but sometimes this means you have to go back and forth, waiting for the representative to reply on the issue in order to isolate a problem.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Bamboo was already being used.

How was the initial setup?

It was pretty straightforward. Atlassian standardizes setup across products for the most part, so it was easy for us to install, configure, and navigate.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented it ourselves in-house.

What was our ROI?

We got a ton of product and development time back across the board, which could be translated to several tens of thousands of dollars.

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

Keep in mind that Bamboo pricing is based on number of remote agents. Agents are what you used to load balance build and deployment tasks, so depending on how large your development shop is, what your software architecture looks like, and how often you intend to build and deploy new versions of software, it can get fairly pricey to support a higher volume pipeline.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Jenkins and Thoughtworks Go. At the end of the day, Bamboo just integrated better with the other tools we were already using - JIRA, Stash, Confluence - and provided better push button deployment control. Bamboo provided such a seamless delivery pipeline and visibility to all stakeholders through its easy integrations with our already existing toolset.

What other advice do I have?

Make sure you don't become dependent on the tool for basic delivery of software. And this goes for any tool you use for automating the building and deploying of your apps. Meaning, if Bamboo were to go down for whatever reason, you want to make sure you can still build and deploy software. To avoid Bamboo becoming a single point of failure, have all of your script tasks run a file that is managed in a repository instead of writing it in line in Bamboo.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1198131 - PeerSpot reviewer
C.T.O at a computer software company with 1-10 employees
Real User
Top 20
A good tool for CI/CD integration with a helpful technical support team
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of Bamboo is that it is a good tool for CI/CD integration."
  • "The marketing strategy of Bamboo is an area of concern where improvements are needed."

What is our primary use case?

Bamboo is a CI/CD tool for low-cost teams in my company. Some of my company's customers come to us with a certain level of comfort they experience, and we help them continue with that.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of Bamboo is that it is a good tool for CI/CD integration. Bamboo is not a tool like Jira, which is mostly a ticketing system.

What needs improvement?

People know more about Jira than Bamboo. In general, people should know that Jira and Bamboo are similar solutions. The marketing strategy of Bamboo is an area of concern where improvements are needed.

I believe that Bamboo should provide some support as there are too many scripts when we try to do something in GitHub. Every tool has its own style of automation, which is something I would like to be standardized so that the tools become more friendly when it comes to porting so that I can use Bamboo or GitHub Actions freely. I want all the tools to have the same standards, which would help our company.

I feel there is always a scope for improvement in the product's initial setup phase.

Bamboo should provide a permanent free tier, not a time-bound one for startups, as it helps users know if something works well and is utilized or not. Bamboo should offer some permanent free trial for one user or ten users, whatever it is.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Bamboo for almost eighteen months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Most of the time, our scripts were bad. There were also some memory issues and delays around building scripts. My company could handle script issues since most of them were because of the problems at our end. Apart from the aforementioned area, we found no issues with the product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

My company has been happy with Bamboo's scalability options, especially considering that more developers have joined my company.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a seven to eight out of ten.

One of my company's clients has 15 users of the solution.

How are customer service and support?

The solution's technical support is good since my company hasn't had any issues with them. My company's interaction with Jira's support was more compared to Bamboo. My company doesn't have issues with Bamboo's quality or response time. Most of the time, my company interacted via Bamboo's online forums, and we used to get answers.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

My company can be described as a diverse company, so we use what our customers use. I have experience with Bitbucket, CircleCI, and GitHub.

How was the initial setup?

The product's initial setup phase is okay for us since our company is an expert in it.

The solution is deployed on the cloud.

What other advice do I have?

For those who have a suite from Atlassian, my company would prefer them to use Bamboo. My company doesn't want our clients opting for one tool for CI and another tool for ticketing. Generally, we prefer to go with the corresponding solutions offered by a vendor. GitHub is always good, but it is limited as it is a free tool.

Bamboo should offer products for free to startups or the first ten users, rather than just thirty days, an approach through which it can hook people. There should always be a free tier of products, and as Bamboo grows, I think its costs would be nothing, considering the value it gives users.

I never heard about Bamboo in the past as much as Jira or Confluence. I came to know of Bamboo through meetings or emails in my company with our customers. It doesn't seem like Bamboo is digitally marketed very well. With DevOps becoming popular, products like Bamboo have so much to offer.

I rate the overall tool an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1540521 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Consultant at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Fairly stable, scalable, and does CI pipeline well, but requires a lot of integration and not easy to use and learn
Pros and Cons
  • "It can do the CI pipeline well."
  • "It should be much easier to use. It shouldn't require a lot of reading to be able to use it. It should have just two or three screens rather than hundreds of screens requiring a lot of clicking. It also requires a lot of integration. It has a steep learning curve. It takes a lot of time to understand and put in the data. There is also no proper training."

What is our primary use case?

We are using it to push and pull containers and other data via CI/CD pipeline.

How has it helped my organization?

It didn't help me as such. It was just a part of the project.

What is most valuable?

It can do the CI pipeline well.

What needs improvement?

It should be much easier to use. It shouldn't require a lot of reading to be able to use it. It should have just two or three screens rather than hundreds of screens requiring a lot of clicking. It also requires a lot of integration.

It has a steep learning curve. It takes a lot of time to understand and put in the data. There is also no proper training.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for three months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It has a steep learning curve, but it is fairly stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Based on my understanding, it is scalable.

How are customer service and technical support?

There is limited technical support.

How was the initial setup?

Its initial setup is complex.

What about the implementation team?

We have a separate team that takes care of it.

What other advice do I have?

I am not completely satisfied with this solution. It performs one function well, but it requires so much integration. I would advise others to use a better-integrated system rather than Bamboo. We'll be moving to XebiaLabs, now known as Digital.ai, for production and other environments. XebiaLabs is a bit better than Bamboo in some aspects.

I would rate Bamboo a six out of ten. It is okay to use, but there is a lot of room for improvement.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Sibin John - PeerSpot reviewer
Site Reliability and DevOps Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 5
The solution can be used for PCA compliance, but it needs a more containerized deployment model
Pros and Cons
  • "Bamboo was used extensively in our organization for PCA compliance."
  • "It would be great if Bamboo could introduce a more containerized deployment model."

What is most valuable?

We are using Bamboo for CICD, where you need to build Java architect and boot application architect. Then, we deploy that into some Comcast web servers. Bamboo was used extensively in our organization for PCA compliance.

What needs improvement?

It would be great if Bamboo could introduce a more containerized deployment model. Bamboo should also provide more user-friendly flexibility. For example, if we want to maintain the Bamboo job configuration, we need to export the configuration to Java. However, it would be good if the coding syntax could be simplified.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Bamboo for one and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate Bamboo a seven out of ten for stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I rate Bamboo a seven out of ten for scalability.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I rate Bamboo a seven out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Software Development Consultant at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
There are some stability issues with Java 6, but it offers build agents for Windows and Linux.

What is most valuable?

  • Multiple build agents for both Windows and Linux
  • Automatic branch building - same build plan for trunk and branches
  • Connections with other Atlassian tools - JIRA and FishEye/Crucible

How has it helped my organization?

We have many developer teams building in Java, especially our Continuous Integration team. Bamboo has proven its value for the teams.

What needs improvement?

There are no areas that need improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used it for seven years,

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No issues encountered.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Once, with Java 6, there were some issues, but thanks to information from Atlassian support we changed to Java 7 and it works fine.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues encountered.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

I'm satisfied, 8/10.

Technical Support:

I'm satisfied, 8/10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used CruiseControl, and we switched because of better functionality in Bamboo.

How was the initial setup?

It was straightforward, as the default agent and remote agents install out-of-the-box. Only some memory tuning was needed.

What about the implementation team?

We did it in-house.

What was our ROI?

It's hard to say, the yearly license/support/maintenance costs are low in relation to the added functionality.

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

I see no problem in paying for support, especially because licensing is remote agent based.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

  • CruiseControl
  • Hudson

What other advice do I have?

It's dependent on how many build teams you have. For small development sites, Hudson or Jenkins will suffice, I think. Because we’re building our main applications in-house, we always choose supported and licensed tools.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
BalakrishnanS - PeerSpot reviewer
Engeener at Dell EMC
Real User
Reliable, great technical support, and scalable
Pros and Cons
  • "In my experience Bamboo is scalable."
  • "Bamboo is a bit complicated to use compared to other solutions, such as GitLab. You have to integrate different actions that are difficult that could be made easier."

What is our primary use case?

Bamboo is an automation tool.

What needs improvement?

Bamboo is a bit complicated to use compared to other solutions, such as GitLab. You have to integrate different actions that are difficult that could be made easier.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Bamboo for approximately eight months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Bamboo has been stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

In my experience Bamboo is scalable.

I work for an insurance company and our whole company uses Bamboo.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support provided by Atlassian is very good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have previously used Gitlab.

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

There is a subscription required to use Bamboo.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Bamboo an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user