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Atlassian Logo
3,403 views|3,414 comparisons
75% willing to recommend
Chef Logo
Read 18 Chef reviews
373 views|251 comparisons
95% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Bamboo and Chef based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Build Automation solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Bamboo vs. Chef Report (Updated: May 2024).
772,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The most valuable features are compiling and deployment.""It's one of the best solutions in this line of work. We have many Atlassian products. We use Bamboo, JIRA, Service Desk, and some other Atlassian plugins. We like that it's easy to integrate into each other. It's a suite of services.""Bamboo was used extensively in our organization for PCA compliance.""The most valuable feature of Bamboo is that it is a good tool for CI/CD integration.""In Bamboo, build and deployment have been segregated. The build plan and deployment plan are different. When comparing Bamboo to other solutions, the native feature you will not find in another tool, such as Jenkins. They have segregated the build and deployment plan. This means, building the application and deploying it are two separate parts in Bamboo, they have segregated it apart from the UI. This makes the tool a bit better compared to other tools.""Bamboo's integration with the rest of Atlassian's tech tools, like Jira, helps manage the end-to-end development and release process.""The platform helps us with automated and timely backup. It provides data replication as well.""The most valuable features of Bamboo are its performance and UI. Additionally, there are a lot of useful plugins, integration with other solutions, such as Bitbucket and Jira, and a helpful online community."

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"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools.""Deployment has become quick and orchestration is now easy.""One thing that we've been able to do is a tiered permission model, allowing developers and their managers to perform their own operations in lower environments. This means a manager can go in and make changes to a whole environment, whereas a developer with less access may only be able to change individual components or be able to upgrade the version for software that they have control over.""Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code.""We have had less production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning.""This solution has improved my organization in the way that deployment has become very quick and orchestration is easy. If we have thousands of servers we can easily deploy in a small amount of time. We can deploy the applications or any kind of announcements in much less time.""Chef recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments.""Manual deployments came to a halt completely. Server provisioning became lightning fast. Chef-docker enabled us to have fewer sets of source code for different purposes. Configuration management was a breeze and all the servers were as good as immutable servers."

More Chef Pros →

Cons
"Bamboo’s technical support services, in terms of speed of response, need improvement.""One area that could be enhanced is the governance process, particularly with regard to building approvals and transitions between stages. In comparison to other solutions, such as Jira, which features a workflow that supports approval processes, this capability is not natively available in Bamboo. To implement this functionality, integration with other solutions, such as GSM may be necessary. Although some add-ons, such as Adaptavist ScriptRunner, are available in the market to circumvent this limitation, they may not offer the exact functionality needed. Therefore, there is certainly room for improvement in this area.""Scalability depends on the use case. If it is really a big customer with a lot of tests, it might not be a scalable option for them.""The marketing strategy of Bamboo is an area of concern where improvements are needed.""Bamboo can improve by providing more with scripting, such as they have with Jenkins. Bamboo is more UI-driven at this time, Jenkins is going in that direction too.""Bamboo could improve by having compatibility with GitLab. It would be better to have this platform for deploying code and storing container registries. Bamboo does not have a container registry. Additionally, there could be more features added.""It's a little outdated. It's three years old.""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."

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"I would rate this solution a nine because our use case and whatever we need is there. Ten out of ten is perfect. We have to go to IOD and stuff so they should consider things like this to make it a ten.""If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best.""Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation.""There is a slight barrier to entry if you are used to using Ansible, since it is Ruby-based.""Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms.""The agent on the server sometimes acts finicky.""It is an old technology.""There appears to be no effort to fix the command line utility functionality, which is definitely broken, provides a false positive for a result when you perform the operation, and doesn't work."

More Chef Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "There is a subscription required to use Bamboo."
  • "If Bamboo could provide more flexibility on pricing, that would help. On the agent side, if you want to increase the number of agents it should be less expensive. If they can provide some better pricing model, it will help, whether we are going to use it or are already using it."
  • "The server products for small teams used to offer excellent pricing. However, Atlassian has since changed the offering and the pricing is more expensive. I do still think the solution offers good value for money."
  • "The price of Bamboo is reasonable."
  • "I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten."
  • More Bamboo Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "When we're rolling out a new server, we're not using the AWS Marketplace AMI, we're using our own AMI, but we are paying them a licensing fee."
  • "The price per node is a little weird. It doesn't scale along with your organization. If you're truly utilizing Chef to its fullest, then the number of nodes which are being utilized in any particular day might scale or change based on your Auto Scaling groups. How do you keep track of that or audit it? Then, how do you appropriately license it? It's difficult."
  • "The price is always a problem. It is high. There is room for improvement. I do like purchasing on the AWS Marketplace, but I would like the ability to negotiate and have some flexibility in the pricing on it."
  • "Purchasing the solution from AWS Marketplace was a good experience. AWS's pricing is pretty in line with the product's regular pricing. Though instance-wise, AWS is not the cheapest in the market."
  • "We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."
  • "We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
  • "I wasn't involved in the purchasing, but I am pretty sure that we are happy with the current pricing and licensing since it never comes up."
  • "Pricing for Chef is high."
  • More Chef Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    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 much just got into its teen years in regards to mobile development. Well, subjectively, of course. You can see all levels of mobile CI these days. Some would still install builds from Xcode, others would have a quickly patched up build server under their desk. Xcode Bots meet the needs of yet another group of people. Travis CI is good and for open source projects it’s probably the best option. And guess what, I know few successful iOS development companies that develop apps for enterprise clients, and have no CI at all. The advanced level of CI would include distributed build systems with multiple build nodes, support for automated unit and UI tests, running tests on simulator and physical devices, automatic deployment to TestFlight, Hockey App, Over the Air, and much more. It becomes not just mobile development, but spans into areas like DevOps and others. Etsy’s blog post is somewhat outdated but still a very good example of where this path can take you. If you decide to take mobile CI under your total control, you have to pick a build server to start with. I personally have worked with Bamboo for 1.5 years and I’m dealing with Jenkins right now, so I have few insights… Read more →
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Bamboo's integration with the rest of Atlassian's tech tools, like Jira, helps manage the end-to-end development and release process.
    Top Answer:I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten.
    Top Answer:The tools and capabilities of the system are extensive. It can be challenging for someone new to the system or ecosystem to grasp, making it difficult to train new people and help them understand.
    Top Answer:Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code.
    Top Answer:Chef does not support the containerized things of Chef products. In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images.
    Ranking
    5th
    out of 41 in Build Automation
    Views
    3,403
    Comparisons
    3,414
    Reviews
    6
    Average Words per Review
    554
    Rating
    7.7
    15th
    out of 41 in Build Automation
    Views
    373
    Comparisons
    251
    Reviews
    4
    Average Words per Review
    304
    Rating
    6.8
    Comparisons
    GitLab logo
    Compared 43% of the time.
    Jenkins logo
    Compared 21% of the time.
    GitHub Actions logo
    Compared 8% of the time.
    Tekton logo
    Compared 7% of the time.
    Harness logo
    Compared 7% of the time.
    Jenkins logo
    Compared 20% of the time.
    AWS Systems Manager logo
    Compared 13% of the time.
    Microsoft Azure DevOps logo
    Compared 11% of the time.
    SaltStack logo
    Compared 9% of the time.
    Learn More
    Overview
    Bamboo is a continuous integration and delivery tool that ties automated builds, tests and releases together in a single workflow. It works great alongside JIRA and Stash providing a fully traceable deployment pipeline.

    Chef, is the leader in DevOps, driving collaboration through code to automate infrastructure, security, compliance and applications. Chef provides a single path to production making it faster and safer to add value to applications and meet the demands of the customer. Deployed broadly in production by the Global 5000 and used by more than half of the Fortune 500, Chef develops 100 percent of its software as open source under the Apache 2.0 license with no restrictions on its use. Chef Enterprise Automation Stack™, a commercial distribution, is developed solely from that open source code and unifies security, compliance, infrastructure and application automation with observability. Chef provides an unequaled developer experience for the Coded Enterprise by enabling users to express infrastructure, security policies and the application lifecycle as code, modernizing development, packaging and delivery of any application to any platform. For more information, visit http://chef.io and follow @chef.

    Sample Customers
    Neocleus, MuleSoft, Interspire
    Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company40%
    Financial Services Firm20%
    Marketing Services Firm10%
    Non Tech Company10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Government9%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company30%
    Comms Service Provider20%
    Non Tech Company10%
    Legal Firm10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Government8%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise30%
    Large Enterprise40%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business15%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise70%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business5%
    Midsize Enterprise35%
    Large Enterprise60%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise70%
    Buyer's Guide
    Bamboo vs. Chef
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Bamboo vs. Chef and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    772,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Bamboo is ranked 5th in Build Automation with 20 reviews while Chef is ranked 15th in Build Automation with 18 reviews. Bamboo is rated 7.4, while Chef is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Bamboo writes "High availability, helpful support, and plenty of plugins available". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Chef writes "Easy configuration management, optimization abilities, and complete infrastructure and application automation". Bamboo is most compared with GitLab, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Tekton and Harness, whereas Chef is most compared with Jenkins, AWS Systems Manager, Microsoft Azure DevOps, Microsoft Configuration Manager and SaltStack. See our Bamboo vs. Chef report.

    See our list of best Build Automation vendors.

    We monitor all Build Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.