When comparing AppVeyor vs AWS CodeBuild, the Slant community recommends AppVeyor for most people. In the question“What are the best hosted continuous integration services?” AppVeyor is ranked 17th while AWS CodeBuild is ranked 25th. 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 Security
Scoped down IAM service roles and managed policies. AWS CloudTrail intergation for API access tracking. AWS Config integration for enforcing complaince rules. Native support for Parameter Store for storing/passing secrets securely to build container.
Pro GitHub cloud, GitHub Enterprise and Bitbucket cloud support
Native support for AWS CodeCommit, S3 and popular git repositories, except GitLab and Bitbucket server.
Pro Compliance
CodeBuild is compliant for PCI, ISO, SOC, and HIPAA workloads.
Pro Documentation and support
Pretty thorough documentation and troubelshooting steps in the CodeBuild user guide @ https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codebuild/latest/userguide/welcome.html.
Questions on the service forum mostly gets prompt response @ https://forums.aws.amazon.com/forum.jspa?forumID=230
Pro Availability
Had minimal to no issues with the service being available. Also, being an AWS service, it has regional endpoint across various AWS regions.
Pro Amazon VPC integration
CodeBuild can access resources within a VPC from it's build containers. Useful for customers who have resources in an Amazon VPC, like RDS instance, ElastiCache, GitHub Enterprise source repo, artifact repo, etc.
Pro On-demand CI. Zero queueing
Users get 20 or so concurrent builds per AWS account ID. Build start up within seconds with no queueing.
Pro Windows support
Support for .NET builds using windowsservercore Docker containers. Preconfigured image have .NET Core and several other runtimes like Java, Node, Ruby. Supports custom images for proprietary tooling like full Visual Studio build targets.
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 iOS support
Limited to Linux and Windows builds.
Con No support for GitLab and Bitbucket server
Off the popular git based source control management system, Bitbucket server and GitLab cloud/on-prem is missing. Generic git support is also not available.
Con No support for Docker layer caching
Customer managed images may be slower for a cold startup than CodeBuild managed ones.
Con No unlimited free builds for Open source repo
CodeBuild gives 100 free mins every month, but no unlimited free builds for Open source repository like Travis CI for example.
