When comparing AppVeyor vs Solano CI, the Slant community recommends AppVeyor for most people. In the question“What are the best continuous integration tools?” AppVeyor is ranked 4th while Solano CI is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose AppVeyor is:
AppVeyor is free for public GitHub repositories.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Free for open-source projects
AppVeyor is free for public GitHub repositories.
Pro Supports Windows build enviroment
AppVeyor has a build environment for Windows available.
Pro Clear, straight-forward user interface
Well I suggest you check it out for yourself, but what I like most is that it's simple yet effective: no bells and whistles, simple black/grey/light-blue/white color scheme, it's immediately clear where you have to go for each specific task, and build settings pages are like that as well. Getting a 'standard' build running literally took me a minute the first time I used it.
Pro Easy access to build VM
AppVeyor allows the user to login to the actual build VM.
Pro The initial setup is easy
There's practically no setup involved prior to working with AppVeyor: simply sign in, add the project, and start a new build.
Pro Extremely fast parallel testing
Solano CI offers safe parallel execution and dynamic task distribution which finish builds automatically and up to 80x faster.
Pro Excellent customer support
Solano CI offer highly-responsive customer support, while extensive documentation and tutorial materials help customers keep Solano CI running in optimal condition.
Pro CLI interface
Solano CI has a CLI interface available, making it less time-consuming to work with and allowing for remote usage over the internet.
Pro Highly compatible and integrates easily with existing workflows
Solano CI supports popular languages seamlessly such as Java, C/C++, Python, Ruby, Javascript, Scala, PHP, and Go. It also works with Mercurial, Git, and Perforce via Git Fusion.
Pro Fully-managed cloud infrastructure
Solano CI provides cost-effective and resizable capacity. It also manages time-consuming systems' administration tasks, freeing you up to focus on your applications and business.
Pro Simple dashboard view and intuitive UI
Solano CI has a simple dashboard view that allows you to see test results in real-time, providing all relevant system output for failed tests.
Pro Build Pipelines feature
Build Pipelines allow users to chain together multiple Solano CI sessions into a Continuous Deployment pipeline. Each step represents a separate session, so each can run with its own set of parallel workers.
Cons
Con Not free
This is open-source but not free.
Con Configuration is limited
AppVeyor's configuration (which is done from the .yaml file in the root of the project) is unfortunately very limited. The configuration is either tied to a branch or, in other cases, it's global. This limits the developer to a single build process.
However, since you can use arbitrary scripts for building, all those limitations can be overcome. Configuration can also be done from the web UI without a .yaml file.
Con No free OSS plan.
There is only a 14-day free trial available for Solano CI.