We performed a comparison between Chef and CircleCI 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."It has been very easy to tie it into our build and deploy automation for production release work, etc. All the Chef pieces more or less run themselves."
"Chef can be scaled as needed. The Chef server itself can scale but it depends on the available resources. You can upgrade specific resources to meet the demand. Similarly, with clients, you can add as many clients as you need. Again, this depends on the server resources. If the server has enough resources, it can handle the number of servers required to manage the infrastructure. Chef can be scaled to meet the needs of the infrastructure being managed."
"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."
"Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code."
"The product is useful for automating processes."
"Deployment has become quick and orchestration is now easy."
"The scalability of the product is quite nice."
"Automation is everything. Having so many servers in production, many of our processes won't work nor scale. So, we look for tools to help us automate the process, and Chef is one of them."
"Some of the most valuable features include container-based builds, integration with Bit Bucket and being able to store artifacts."
"The solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery."
"It's a stable product."
"The ability to automate the build process in a seamless way and run workflows effortlessly. It supports parallel builds so it can scale well. Also, it covers the basics of any build and integration tool, including email notifications (especially when tests are fixed), project insights, etc."
"Enables us to detect exactly which build failed and why, and to push multiple builds to our production environment at a very fast rate."
"The automation workflow in CircleCI related to third-party applications is very good and allows standardization of applications."
"The solution could improve in managing role-based access. This would be helpful."
"Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation."
"Vertical scalability is still good but the horizontal, adding more technologies, platforms, tools, integrations, Chef should take a look into that."
"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."
"In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."
"Billing is a mess."
"Integration with Microsoft Azure is one area for improvement. Azure is growing in its user base, and supports various cloud infrastructure components such as Service Fabric, App Service, etc. Some of Azure’s deployment models (like Kudu) require a steep learning curve, but if CircleCI would come up with such features (deployment to App Service) out of the box, it would be amazing."
"There needs to be some improvement in the user interface of CircleCI."
"The solution’s pricing could be better."
Chef is ranked 13th in Build Automation with 18 reviews while CircleCI is ranked 11th in Build Automation with 5 reviews. Chef is rated 8.0, while CircleCI is rated 6.6. The top reviewer of Chef writes "Useful for large infrastructure, reliable, but steep learning cureve". On the other hand, the top reviewer of CircleCI writes "Unhelpful support, unclear billing, and has offers ability to track usage". Chef is most compared with Jenkins, AWS Systems Manager, Microsoft Azure DevOps, Microsoft Configuration Manager and BigFix, whereas CircleCI is most compared with TeamCity, Tekton, Jenkins, GitHub Actions and AWS CodeBuild. See our Chef vs. CircleCI report.
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