Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Spinnaker comparison

Microsoft and Spinnaker are both solutions in the Release Automation category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.2, while Spinnaker is ranked #12 with an average rating of 7.3. Microsoft holds a 38.9% mindshare in RA, compared to Spinnaker’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 75% of Spinnaker users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Azure DevOps

Read 130 Microsoft Azure DevOps reviews

13,529 Views
10,943 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Spinnaker

Read 4 Spinnaker reviews

303 Views
199 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure DevOps

Spinnaker

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

Microsoft Azure DevOps and Spinnaker compete in the continuous integration and delivery tool category. Spinnaker is preferred for its rich feature set while Azure DevOps boasts lower costs and comprehensive support.

Features: Microsoft Azure DevOps provides integrated development lifecycle management, including a strong repository system, robust tracking, and flexible pipeline management. Spinnaker shines with multi-cloud deployment capabilities, intuitive Kubernetes integration, and a pluggable cloud driver allowing seamless management of diverse cloud environments.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Azure DevOps could enhance multi-cloud capabilities and intuitive UI for pipeline customization. Spinnaker may improve its interface for less technical users, require more comprehensive documentation, and offer better integration with existing non-cloud infrastructures.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Azure DevOps facilitates deployment with its cloud-based architecture offering easy setup and dedicated support. Spinnaker features a flexible deployment model suited for organizations with varied cloud providers, backed by a community-driven service model.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Azure DevOps offers competitive pricing with various tiers, making it cost-effective for small to medium-sized teams. Spinnaker demands a larger upfront investment but delivers high ROI for enterprises with complex deployment needs, justified by its advanced features and scalability.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Azure DevOps vs. Spinnaker Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs. Spinnaker

January 2025

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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

Microsoft Azure DevOps

Ranking in Release Automation

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

130

Ranking in other categories

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (2nd), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (1st)

Spinnaker

Ranking in Release Automation

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure DevOps is 38.9%, up from 36.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spinnaker is 0.7%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Release Automation

Featured Reviews

Akshat Prakash

Consultant at BP

Allows us to deploy code to production without releasing certain features immediately and agile project management capabilities offer resource-leveling

My company has experienced benefits from using it or from recent updates in Azure Pipelines. For instance, we can manage different code versions from the same repository across different environments. We also use feature flags; the code is deployed, but the feature can be made visible to the end user at a later time. Additionally, as part of the deployment, we integrate automated and regression testing, which stops the deployment if testing fails, thus preventing regression bugs. This saves time and increases productivity by reducing the need for manual testing. Lastly, it integrates with the project management aspects, allowing us to link code deployments with project milestones. Azure DevOps supported our shift towards DevOps culture or practices. We shifted to the cloud environment and started migrating from our data centers about eight or nine years back. It has been a long journey. However, we have used Azure DevOps for almost five to six years in every project. We also use automation testing in Azure, so we have an integrated test suite that allows us to perform functional and regression testing effectively via the Azure DevOps system.

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Anurag Bandyopadhyay

Product Development Engineer at Razorpay

Useful to create custom pipelines

Regarding areas for improvement, one significant issue is the lack of maker-checker flows to ensure that newly created pipelines are accurate and tested. We currently use an in-house abstraction over Spinnaker to verify pipeline specs, environment variables, etc. It would be beneficial if Spinnaker could offer this functionality within their product.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The nice thing about Visual Studio Code is that it's a modular design. So if you're working on a strange language that has a different syntax, you can just get a plugin that'll format your code for you based on the language it's in."

"Microsoft Azure DevOps integrates well with other components, such as Synapse, which is a data warehouse tool of Azure. It is a framework platform for BI and integrated with other tools, such as Power BI."

"Microsoft has good integration with its other products, such as Office, Teams, et cetera."

"Azure enables us to create a staging environment through to a production environment in an easier way and then get the code and run that."

"The solution is easy to implement and easy to use."

"The most valuable feature is automation with version control."

"I like the tracking and that we can monitor our velocity."

"The integration of the whole cycle is the main strength of the tool. If I want to control the cycle with other tools on the market, I would have to use several tools. However, this is not the case with Azure DevOps or TFS."

More Microsoft Azure DevOps pros

"Spinnaker is used for automating a variety of deployment tasks, infrastructure, provisioning tasks, and all kinds of things."

"There is a good community around the product that makes troubleshooting possible."

"The most valuable feature of Spinnaker is the rollback."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its intuitive interface for converting existing Kubernetes specs into working pipelines. It's easy for anyone to deploy anything on any environment when they need to test or deploy for a specific merchant or use case. Instead of going into the specs and changing different variables, they can do it through the UI, which is very useful."

Cons

"This product would be improved if the helpdesk were included."

"I would like to see better integration and collaboration between tools."

"When comparing with Jira, I find that the task management capabilities in Azure DevOps are not yet fully comprehensive and should be enhanced."

"The solution should have fewer updates."

"The user management in the solution could improve."

"Reporting could be better. We would like to see how many applications are onboarded in DevOps and in which phase they are. We would like to know for how many applications we have done only the repository, but we have not yet done the build pipeline or deploy pipeline. Currently, there is no such report. We have to figure it out ourselves. There is no way to check how many applications are completing their build pipelines, how many applications are completing their deploy pipeline, how many are ready to use, and how many pipelines are working."

"The ability to extend work items was more flexible than it is now. Talking version control, one of our customers had some issues because they found it very difficult to manage more than 1000 repositories for one team project."

"With Microsoft, I would prefer to have more test plans. It's very difficult to find individual test plan module training."

More Microsoft Azure DevOps cons

"Log-wise, we need to understand why something has failed so that we can understand and try to fix it the moment the issue is reported. The solution could use more robust monitoring."

"Every time it goes to run a pipeline, it just generates a lot of data, and its database is not exactly tuned out of the box, meaning it is not tuned for high scalability."

"Regarding areas for improvement, one significant issue is the lack of maker-checker flows to ensure that newly created pipelines are accurate and tested. We currently use an in-house abstraction over Spinnaker to verify pipeline specs, environment variables, etc. It would be beneficial if Spinnaker could offer this functionality within their product."

"Spinnaker's configuration setup is too complicated and should be made easy."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Azure DevOps is an expensive solution."

"Licensing cost per user is approximately $11 to $15. We have about 400 users, but not all are active. We have around 200 to 300 active users."

"There is a license for this solution."

"The cost is quite affordable."

"Its pricing is reasonable for the number of features that you get and the functionality that you can utilize for the agile delivery, which is what we are using it for. I found it extremely cost-effective."

"Most of the things that we need and use are incorporated in the corporate solution — there are no additional costs."

"It has an annual subscription. It can be cheaper for partners. Many open-source products are available in the market, and it would be great if they can be a little bit more competitive in terms of pricing. A lot of startups are looking for an open-source, free, or cheap solution. If they can accommodate such requirements, it will be good for the product in the long run."

"Compared to other tools, Microsoft Azure DevOps is a cheap solution."

More Microsoft Azure DevOps pricing and cost advice

"Spinnaker is an open-source product. The tool is completely free for users."

"Spinnaker is a free-to-use, open-source solution."

"The solution is open-source."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

Financial Services Firm

27%

Computer Software Company

20%

Retailer

12%

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Jira or Microsoft Azure DevOps?

Jira is a great centralized tool for just about everything, from local team management to keeping track of products and work logs. It is easy to implement and navigate, and it is stable and scalabl...

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Which is better - TFS or Azure DevOps?

TFS and Azure DevOps are different in many ways. TFS was designed for admins, and only offers incremental improvements. In addition, TFS seems complicated to use and I don’t think it has a very fri...

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Azure DevOps?

Valuable features for project management and tracking in Azure DevOps include a portal displaying test results, check-in/check-out activity, and developer/tester productivity.

See all answers

What do you like most about Spinnaker?

The most valuable feature of Spinnaker is the rollback.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Spinnaker?

The solution is open-source.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Spinnaker?

See all answers

Comparisons

GitLab vs Microsoft Azure DevOps

Compared 43% of the time

Jira vs Microsoft Azure DevOps

Compared 16% of the time

Rally Software vs Microsoft Azure DevOps

Compared 6% of the time

OpenText ALM / Quality Center vs Microsoft Azure DevOps

Compared 4% of the time

TFS vs Microsoft Azure DevOps

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Azure DevOps Competitors

Octopus Deploy vs Spinnaker

Compared 34% of the time

UrbanCode Deploy vs Spinnaker

Compared 21% of the time

AWS CodeDeploy vs Spinnaker

Compared 21% of the time

More Spinnaker Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure DevOps

January 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Release Automation

January 2025

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Also Known As

Azure DevOps, VSTS, Visual Studio Team Services, MS Azure DevOps

No data available

Learn More

Microsoft

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Spinnaker

Overview

Microsoft Azure DevOps is a cloud service that enables developers to collaborate on code development projects and create and deploy applications quicker than ever before. The service helps unite developers, project managers, and software development experts through a collaborative experience while using the application. For the users' convenience, Azure DevOps offers the user cloud services through Azure DevOps Services or an on-premises service using Azure DevOps Server. In addition, it supports integration with additional services and adding extensions, including the ability for the user to create their own custom extensions.

Azure DevOps provides a variety of unified features that can be accessed through their web browser or IDE client, such as:

Azure Pipelines - Develop and deploy services to support ongoing application integration and delivery. Azure pipelines, which work with almost every project type and most languages, will automatically test code projects in order to make them available to others.
Azure Artifacts - Share packages and integrate package sharing between teams. Packages include NuGet, npm, and Maven, in addition to other private and public sources. Developers can now share and consume packages with other developers from different public registries.
Azure Repos - Offers source control of your code through Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) or Git repositories. Developers can now keep track of any changes that are made in their code over the course of their project.
Azure Test Plans - Offers continuous and manual/exploratory app testing through several tools. Test Suites, or a collection of Test Cases, are grouped together in a container called a Test Plan.
Azure Boards - Provides a suite of Agile tools to track work, support planning, code defects, and general issues while using Kanban and Scrum software. Teams are in need of tools that are flexible and will help them grow. Azure Boards is a service that helps developers manage their software projects.

Benefits of Microsoft Azure DevOps

Microsoft Azure DevOps offers many benefits, including:

A quick setup and easy deployment
An elastic scale
Exceptional security
No-maintenance operations
Effortless collaboration through domains
The ability to create and deploy products faster than traditional software

Reviews from Real Users

Microsoft Azure DevOps stands out among its competitors for a variety of reasons. Two major ones are its ability to forecast how long each task will take and the ability for users to follow the entire development process.

PeerSpot viewers note the effectiveness of this solution. An executive chief operating officer for a cloud provider notes, “We can forecast tasks and the number of hours a task will take and can compare it with how long a task actually takes.”

Carlos H., a product and system director at SPCM, writes, “I think the most usable thing is that you can follow the whole progress of the development process. This makes it very useful for us.”

Spinnaker provides application management and deployment to help you release software changes with high velocity and confidence. Spinnaker is an open-source, multi-cloud continuous delivery platform that combines a powerful and flexible pipeline management system with integrations to the major cloud providers. If you are looking to standardize your release processes and improve quality, Spinnaker is for you.

Sample Customers

Alaska Airlines, Iberia Airlines, Columbia, Skype

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs. Spinnaker

January 2025

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