Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Bamboo vs Chef comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.8
Organizations saw significant ROI with Bamboo through cost savings, efficient development, and minimal maintenance expenses leading to financial benefits.
Sentiment score
8.1
Chef improved deployment time, reduced human error, enhanced scalability, optimized resource use, and strengthened compliance and security management.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.3
Atlassian Bamboo support is generally effective and responsive, though some users report delays and prefer direct communication methods.
Sentiment score
6.1
Customers commend Chef for its responsive support, active community, comprehensive documentation, and efficient issue resolution despite occasional delays.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.5
Bamboo is scalable with variable cost-effectiveness, best for enterprises with 200-500 users, but smaller setups face challenges.
Sentiment score
7.8
Chef is highly scalable, efficiently managing infrastructures of all sizes and accommodating numerous clients based on server capacity.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.7
Bamboo is robust and stable, with rare issues mainly due to configuration, effectively resolved by support and updates.
Sentiment score
7.7
Users rate Chef's stability 8-9/10, comparing it favorably to competitors like Ansible, and find it stable for various use cases.
 

Room For Improvement

Bamboo struggles with usability, limited integration, and support, hindering build customization, deployment efficiency, and modern workflows.
Chef needs better support, pricing, role management, flexibility, documentation, integration, and improved automation to compete with Ansible.
 

Setup Cost

Bamboo's enterprise pricing varies by agent count and subscription needs, with costs cited from $2,000 to $120,000 annually.
Chef offers subscription plans with valuable automation features, but enterprise pricing is high and requires contacting sales for quotes.
 

Valuable Features

Bamboo excels in integration, flexibility, and customization, offering affordable CI/CD solutions with user-friendly UI and multi-platform support.
Chef offers compliance, easy configuration management, and automation for IT infrastructure, integrating with CI processes and supporting multiple clouds.
 

Categories and Ranking

Bamboo
Ranking in Build Automation
6th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Chef
Ranking in Build Automation
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (12th), Configuration Management (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of Bamboo is 7.8%, down from 9.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 0.5%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Andrea Carella - PeerSpot reviewer
High availability, helpful support, and plenty of plugins available
I have used Google Cloud Platform and Amazon AWS for implementing Bamboo. It is not difficult to complete. The length of time it takes for deployment depends on a lot of variables, such as how the pipeline is deployed and what type of infrastructure is present. However, it typically takes only hours not days. I rate the setup of Bamboo a nine out of ten.
Aaron  P - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy configuration management, optimization abilities, and complete infrastructure and application automation
In terms of improvement, Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation. There is also an issue with shared resources like cookbooks lacking context, which could lead to problems when multiple companies use them. Chef should aim for wider availability, better flexibility, clearer documentation, and improved management of shared resources to prevent conflicts. Many companies are now moving to Ansible, so I would recommend better documentation, easier customer use, and simpler integration. I have concerns about the complexity of migrating to different servers and would prefer a simpler process.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Build Automation solutions are best for your needs.
842,194 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user217035 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 27, 2015
Bamboo vs. Jenkins
A biased and subjective comparison of Bamboo and Jenkins as CI servers for mobile development, based on practical experience with both. Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (Delivery, Distribution) has been around for quite a while. But surprisingly enough on a global scale it pretty…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Bamboo?
Bamboo's integration with the rest of Atlassian's tech tools, like Jira, helps manage the end-to-end development and release process.
What needs improvement with Bamboo?
Integrating workflows with other platforms can be challenging. The capabilities of these platforms sometimes fall short compared to others. Initially, it was difficult for us because the plugins we...
What do you like most about Chef?
Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code.
What needs improvement with Chef?
Chef does not support the containerized things of Chef products. In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Neocleus, MuleSoft, Interspire
Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
Find out what your peers are saying about Bamboo vs. Chef and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,194 professionals have used our research since 2012.