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

GoCD vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

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
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (15th), Build Automation (15th)
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Release Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (1st), Network Automation (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of GoCD is 1.3%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 5.3%, up from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Release Automation
 

Featured Reviews

RajeshReddy - PeerSpot reviewer
The UI is colorful, but the user experience must be improved
We can see all the pipelines with a simple search. The UI is colorful. The user experience is very rich. The product is very easy to learn if we know a bit of the basics. If we have someone to show us how to use it, it is very easy.
Surya Chapagain - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to manage and simple to learn
We use Red Hat a lot. I open tickets for the Red Hat cases, however, with Ansible, I haven't opened any cases. My manager worked with them a bit. If we have a problem with some file and we need to get Red Hat to analyze the issue and the file is 100GBs, we'll have an issue since we need to provide a log file for them to analyze. If it is around 12GB or 13GB, we can easily upload it to the Red Hat portal. With more than 100GBs, it will fail. I heard it should cover up to 250GB for an upload, however, I find it fails. Therefore, Red Hat needs to provide a way to handle this.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Permission separations mean that we can grant limited permissions for each team or team member."
"GoCD's open-source nature is valuable."
"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."
"The UI is colorful."
"We can automate a few host configurations using the product."
"Ansible Tower offers use a UI where we can see all the pushes that have gone into the server."
"One of the most valuable features is that Ansible is agentless. It does not have dependencies, other than Python, which is very generic in terms of dependencies for all systems and for any environment. Being agentless, Ansible is very convenient for everything."
"The automation capabilities streamline deployment processes, providing reliability and reducing manual intervention and errors."
"It is all modular-based. If there is not a module for it today, someone will write it."
"When you have an enterprise-level number of network devices, the ability to quickly push out security updates to thousands of devices is the biggest thing"
"There are so many models that I don't have to create one."
"The most valuable features of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform are the agentless platform and writing the code is simple using the Yaml computer language."
 

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 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."
"The tool must be more user-friendly."
"The documentation really should be improved by including real examples and more setup cases."
"At this time, I do not have anything to improve. What we struggle with is the knowledge base, but that is more about us having to go and find it and learn the platform on our own rather than an actual Ansible issue."
"There needs to be improvement in the orchestration."
"It is a little slow on the network side because every time you call a module, it's initiating an SSH or an API call to a network device, and it just slows things down."
"The support could be better."
"Documentation could be improved. Many times, if I'm looking for something, I have to Google it in a lot of places, then figure out what the best approach will be. There are some best practices documents, but they don't give you the information."
"The communication on it is not probably where it could be. We could use some real life examples where we could point customers to them and say, "This is what you are trying to do. If you follow these steps, it would at least get you started a bit quicker.""
"Some of the Cisco modules could be expanded, which would be great, along with not having to do so much coding in the background to make it work."
"The area which I feel can be improved is the custom modules. For example, there are something like 106 official modules available in the Ansible library. A year ago, that number was somewhere around 58. While Ansible is improving day by day, this can be improved more. For instance, when you need to configure in the cloud, you need to write up a module for that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution and it is inexpensive."
"It's an open-source and free tool."
"Everything is generally fair. No one ever likes to pay a lot of money, but we are getting the value. We also get support with it. It has been fair and worthwhile."
"We went with product because we have a subscription for Red Hat."
"Ansible is a lot more competitive than any of the others. Its setup was also straightforward. In fact, we just implemented Ansible on OpenShift, so that is how we are running the Ansible Automation Platform now."
"Customers need to pay yearly for the license."
"I don't see the pricing or licensing features, but from what I understand, it is fairly reasonable."
"You don't need to buy agents on servers or deploy expense management when using the solution, which affected our decision to go with it."
"Ansible Tower is pretty expensive."
"The pricing is pretty standard."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Release Automation solutions are best for your needs.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Retailer
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
32%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with GoCD?
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 sim...
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 ...
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...
What do you like most about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.
 

Also Known As

Adaptive ALM, Thoughtworks Go
Ansible
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ancestry.com, Barclay Card, AutoTrader, BT Financial Group, Gamesys, Nike, Vodafone, Haufe Lexware, Medidata, Hoovers
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about GoCD vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.