Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS, Microsoft Visual Studio Team System) is an agile development product that is an extension of the Microsoft Visual Studio architecture. Azure DevOps includes software development, collaboration, and reporting capabilities.
$2
per GB (first 2GB free)
Codemagic
Score 9.7 out of 10
N/A
Codemagic is a developer's CI/CD tool for mobile app projects. Build Android, iOS, React Native, Ionic, Unity, and Flutter projects on Codemagic. Codemagic uses its own CLI tools under the hood to perform complicated tasks like code signing and distribution to the stores. These are open-sourced and available on Github. Codemagic offers pay as you go pricing for teams as well as an all-inclusive option with an unlimited plan (called the professional plan). Codemagic is used…
$0
Pricing
Azure DevOps Services
Codemagic
Editions & Modules
Azure Artifacts
$2
per GB (first 2GB free)
Basic Plan
$6
per user per month (first 5 users free)
Azure Pipelines - Self-Hosted
$15
per extra parallel job (1 free parallel job with unlimited minutes)
Azure Pipelines - Microsoft Hosted
$40
per parallel job (1,800 minutes free with 1 free parallel job)
Basic + Test Plan
$52
per user per month
Linux Standard VM
$0.015 / minute
macOS Standard VM
$0.038 / minute
Linux Preium VM
$0.045 / minute
Windows Premium VM
$0.045 / minute
macOS premium VM
$0.095 / minute
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure DevOps Services
Codemagic
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
—
Professional plans available for $299/month. Perfect for teams who need fixed costs.
This includes:
Unlimited premium macOS VM minutes
Unlimited premium Linux VM minutes
Unlimited premium Windows VM minutes
Teams with unlimited users
3 concurrent builds
In-app support
DevOps is much more user friendly than Git itself. There is a more GUI-centric interface, tighter integration with the Azure / Entra architecture. For those of use in the Microsoft-sphere, it really is excellent for code-centric project management. I rate this as an 8 because it does not seem quite as well suited for fully functional / non-code project aspects in implementation. Nor does it have customer / end-user portal / front end for easy reporting and insight.
For companies currently investing in Flutter app deployment, the CD/CI automation that Codemagic brings to the table is a game-changer. Its decision-making process needs to consider all the architecture in place and in a common scenario with other programming frameworks, the initial investments can seem high. In this sense, Flutter will reduce programming staff needs as you can attack multiple target environments and platforms easily, and at the same time the effort to get it working on app stores is now improved thanks to the focus Codemagic gave to support the FLutter community in targeting this solution to ease the process. If you invest in Flutter, you have to invest in Codemagic.
Flexible Requirements Hierarchy Management: AZDO makes it easy to track items such as features or epics as a flat list, or as a hierarchy in which you can track the parent-child relationship.
Fast Data Entry: AZDO was designed to facilitate quick data entry to capture work items quickly, while still enabling detailed capture of acceptance criteria and item properties.
Excel Integration: AZDO stands out for its integration with MS Excel, which enables quick updates for bulk items.
I did mention it has good visibility in terms of linking, but sometimes items do get lost, so if there was a better way to manage that, that would be great.
The wiki is not the prettiest thing to look at, so it could have refinements there.
I don't think our organization will stray from using VSTS/TFS as we are now looking to upgrade to the 2012 version. Since our business is software development and we want to meet the requirements of CMMI to deliver consistent and high quality software, this SDLC management tool is here to stay. In addition, our company uses a lot of Microsoft products, such as Office 365, Asp.net, etc, and since VSTS/TFS has proved itself invaluable to our own processes and is within the Microsoft family of products, we will continue to use VSTS/TFS for a long, long time.
Azure DevOps is a powerful, complex cloud application. As such there are a number of things it does great and something where there is room for improvement. One of those areas would be in usability. In my opinion it relies too much on search. There is no easy way to view all projects or to group them in a logical way. You need to search for everything.
When we've had issues, both Microsoft support and the user community have been very responsive. DevOps has an active developer community and frankly, you can find most of your questions already asked and answered there. Microsoft also does a better job than most software vendors I've worked with creating detailed and frequently updated documentation.
I have used the Slack channel without any problems, and I have gained a lot of feedback from using this tool. I have also been invited to provide reviews for the app before but in an "informal" manner, and using their own channels via Slack.
Microsoft Planner is used by project managers and IT service managers across our organization for task tracking and running their team meetings. Azure DevOps works better than Planner for software development teams but might possibly be too complex for non-software teams or more business-focused projects. We also use ServiceNow for IT service management and this tool provides better analysis and tracking of IT incidents, as Azure DevOps is more suited to development and project work for dev teams.
The steps to get Codemagic up and running are nothing compared to implementing a Jira solution and after using the CI/CD options it has enabled. For larger organizations that already have Jira, you might gain in the long run from features like automatic issue tracking and focused CI to remediate and test the apps. But if you are looking for true AGILE development, where you have teams that focus on value and need the CD process done easily, then Codemagic is a much better solution for emerging projects and companies to start.
We have saved a ton of time not calculating metrics by hand.
We no longer spend time writing out cards during planning, it goes straight to the board.
We no longer track separate documents to track overall department goals. We were able to create customized icons at the department level that lets us track each team's progress against our dept goals.