When comparing AppVeyor vs Drone.io, the Slant community recommends AppVeyor for most people. In the question“What are the best continuous integration tools?” AppVeyor is ranked 4th while Drone.io is ranked 11th. 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 Integrated with GitHub, BitBucket, and Google Code
Drone.io integrates perfectly with GitHub, BitBucket and Google Code.
Pro Easy self-hosted setup
Drone can be easily set up locally: all that's needed is Docker.
Pro Docker integration simplifies deployment
Drone uses Docker containers to build and test code. Using Docker containers makes it easier for developers to then deploy this code to production.
Pro Gitea support
Supports Gitea (Git server).
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 Does not allow you to configure two projects using the same GitHub repo
Drone.io does not let developers configure two different projects against the same repository. Instead, one must fork that repository into a new one and use that to create a new Drone.io project.