When comparing Codeship vs AWS CodeBuild, the Slant community recommends Codeship for most people. In the question“What are the best hosted continuous integration services?” Codeship is ranked 2nd while AWS CodeBuild is ranked 25th. The most important reason people chose Codeship is:
Support for public and private GitHub and BitBucket repositories. It also has support for multi-user teams.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro GitHub & Bitbucket integration
Support for public and private GitHub and BitBucket repositories. It also has support for multi-user teams.
Pro Keeps it simple. Doesn't allow too many "tricky" things which means builds are generally very stable once they are up and going.
Pro Headless browser support
Alongside latest Chrome and Firefox, Codeship supports the use of Selenium, PhantomJS, CasperJS as well as tools like Capybara.
Pro Build status GIF
There's a continuously updated GIF of the build status of the repository allowing you to determine whether build was successful or not.
Pro Support for multiple tools, languages and databases
Support for e-mail, HipChat, Slack, Campfire, Flowdock, Grove, Webhook, Github Status API.
Support for Ruby, Python, Node, Dart, PHP, Java, Scala, Groovy, Clojure, Go.
Support for: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, Memcached, ElasticSearch, SQLite.
Pro Supports 7 cloud providers
Support for AWS, Digital Ocean, Rackspace, Google Compute, Joyent, Softlayer, Openstack.
Pro Docker support
Pro Simple deployments with a choice of 5 deployment tools
Support for Capistrano, Fabric, Chef, Puppet, Ansible and allows for writing your own scripts to deploy and manage your infrastructure.
Pro Supports 10 hosting providers
Support for Heroku, Engine Yard, Nodejitsu, dotCloud, App Engine, AppFog, Modulus, Openshift, Cloud Foundry, Fortrabbit and you can also run your own script to deploy anywhere.
Pro FTP, SFTP, SCP, RSYNC and SSH support
You can use FTP, SFTP, SCP, RSYNC and SSH for Continuous Deployment.
Pro Code Climate & Coveralls support
Automated code review for RoR and JavaScript and test coverage history and statistics with Code Climate and Coveralls.
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 Doesn't support git modules
If repo contain private submodule - build will fail, no way to add your private key.
Con Any time you ask support for help on Codeship basic (which isn't free anyway), they will just try to up sell you to Pro version.
Con No Global variables that can be shared amongst all projects.
Con Environment variables are exposed. Any keys or secrets can just be copied.
No option to mask them unless you reduce permissions for those users. Developers need to be able to modify a job but probably shouldn't be able to copy a production api key. Just needs one more level of permissions here.
Con Too many permissions on Bitbucket
When registering with Bitbucket Codeship it requests way to many permissions, even "Read and write to your team's projects and move repositories between them". Before giving all these permissions you have to be sure you can trust this service.
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.