Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Puppet VS CircleCI

Compare Puppet VS CircleCI and see what are their differences

Puppet logo Puppet

Easily create custom dashboards for your users

CircleCI logo CircleCI

CircleCI gives web developers powerful Continuous Integration and Deployment with easy setup and maintenance.
  • Puppet Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-23
  • CircleCI Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05

Puppet

Website
puppet.com
Release Date
2009 January
Startup details
Country
United States
State
Oregon
City
Portland
Founder(s)
Andrew Shafer
Employees
250 - 499

CircleCI

Release Date
2011 January
Startup details
Country
United States
State
California
Founder(s)
Allen Rohner
Employees
500 - 999

Puppet features and specs

  • Scalability
    Puppet is designed to handle large-scale deployments efficiently, making it suitable for enterprises with thousands of nodes.
  • Declarative Language
    Puppet uses a high-level declarative language that simplifies the definition of system configurations, enabling easier maintenance and readability.
  • Extensive Ecosystem
    Puppet has a vast ecosystem of modules and plugins available through the Puppet Forge, allowing for quick implementation of common tasks and integrations.
  • Strong Community and Support
    Puppet has an active community, comprehensive documentation, and robust support offerings, including professional services, making it easier to get help and resolve issues.
  • Cross-Platform Support
    Puppet supports a wide range of operating systems, including various Linux distributions, Windows, and Unix, providing flexibility in diverse environments.

Possible disadvantages of Puppet

  • Steep Learning Curve
    New users may find Puppet's DSL (Domain-Specific Language) challenging to learn, requiring significant time and effort to become proficient.
  • Resource Intensive
    Puppet server can be resource-intensive, especially in large environments, necessitating robust hardware to ensure optimal performance.
  • Lower Flexibility
    Puppet's declarative nature, while simplifying configurations, can limit the flexibility to implement custom complex logic compared to some other configuration management tools.
  • Cost
    Though Puppet offers an open-source version, the enterprise features and support are part of paid plans, which could be a consideration for budget-conscious organizations.
  • Initial Setup Complexity
    The initial setup and configuration of Puppet can be complex and time-consuming, particularly for organizations new to configuration management tools.

CircleCI features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    CircleCI offers a user-friendly interface and straightforward configuration, making it accessible for both beginners and experienced users.
  • Scalability
    CircleCI easily scales with your project, allowing for flexible resource allocation and handling multiple workflows in parallel.
  • Extensive Integrations
    CircleCI supports a wide range of integrations with various tools and services like GitHub, Bitbucket, Docker, and Slack, enabling seamless workflows.
  • Speed and Performance
    With features like advanced caching, dependency management, and parallelism, CircleCI enables faster builds and quicker feedback cycles.
  • Customizability
    CircleCI provides powerful configuration options through YAML files, allowing users to tailor their CI/CD pipelines to specific project requirements.
  • Free Tier Availability
    CircleCI offers a free plan that includes several features, making it suitable for small projects and open-source contributions.

Possible disadvantages of CircleCI

  • Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    While CircleCI is generally user-friendly, mastering advanced configurations and optimizations can take time and require a deeper understanding of the platform.
  • Cost for Higher Tiers
    The pricing for higher-tier plans can become expensive, especially for large teams or enterprises requiring extensive usage and advanced features.
  • Limited Concurrency in Free Plan
    The free plan has limited concurrent builds, which might not be sufficient for larger projects with high parallelization needs.
  • Occasional Stability Issues
    Users have reported occasional performance and stability issues, particularly during high-demand periods, which can slow down the build process.
  • Configuration Complexity
    If not properly managed, the YAML configuration files can become complex and difficult to maintain for larger projects, leading to potential misconfigurations.

Analysis of Puppet

Overall verdict

  • Puppet is considered a good choice for organizations looking for a mature, reliable, and scalable infrastructure automation tool. Its active community, comprehensive documentation, and enterprise level support make it a strong contender in the configuration management space.

Why this product is good

  • Puppet is a widely-used configuration management tool that helps automate and manage infrastructure efficiently. It is appreciated for its robust features that allow system administrators and DevOps teams to manage large environments with ease. Puppet's declarative language enables users to define the desired state of their infrastructure, ensuring consistency and reducing the risk of configuration drift.

Recommended for

    Puppet is recommended for large organizations, DevOps teams, and system administrators looking to automate the management of complex and heterogeneous IT environments. It is particularly beneficial for enterprises that need to ensure consistency across numerous servers and configurations.

Puppet videos

Echelon Reflect Review

More videos:

  • Review - JBL REFLECT FLOW Truly Wireless Earphone - REVIEW
  • Review - Reflect (Pre-rolled pack) by Cove reviewed | OCS Review

CircleCI videos

CircleCI Part 1: Introduction to Unit Testing and Continuous Integration

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How To Setup CircleCI On Your Next Project (Vue, React, or Angular)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Puppet and CircleCI)
DevOps Tools
11 11%
89% 89
Continuous Integration
Project Management
100 100%
0% 0
Product Deployment
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Puppet and CircleCI

Puppet Reviews

Best 8 Ansible Alternatives & equivalent in 2022
Puppet enterprise tool eliminates manual work for software delivery process. This Ansible equivalent software helps developer to deliver great software rapidly
Source: www.guru99.com
12 Open Source/Commercial Software for Data Center Infrastructure Management
Puppet Enterprise has a free and fully-functional version for 10 computers. A yearly license cost is $120 per device.
Source: www.tecmint.com

CircleCI Reviews

The Best Alternatives to Jenkins for Developers
CircleCI is a cloud-based CI/CD platform that has gained significant traction in recent years. With a focus on simplicity and ease of use, CircleCI offers a streamlined approach to automating your build, test, and deployment processes. One of its standout features is its strong support for Docker, making it a great choice for teams working with containerized applications.
Source: morninglif.com
Top 5 Jenkins Alternatives in 2024: Automation of IT Infrastructure Written by Uzair Ghalib on the 02nd Jan 2024
CircleCI– Get unparalleled performance and insights with CircleCI’s interactive dashboard and automatic upgrades – revolutionizing the way you build and deploy your applications.
Source: attuneops.io
Top 10 Most Popular Jenkins Alternatives for DevOps in 2024
CircleCI can be a Jenkins replacement for teams seeking a managed experience where performance and support options are priorities. CircleCI is also investing heavily in building new capabilities that cater to the pipeline requirements of apps using AI and ML.
Source: spacelift.io
35+ Of The Best CI/CD Tools: Organized By Category
CircleCI is a complete CI/CD pipeline tool. You can monitor the statuses of your various pipelines from your dashboard. Additionally, CircleCI helps you manage your build logs, access controls, and testing. It’s one of the most popular DevOps and CI/CD platforms in the world.
10 Jenkins Alternatives in 2021 for Developers
CircleCI is generally recognized for its flexibility and compatibility. Customization is obviously an important factor when making the switch from Jenkins and CircleCI certainly takes an impressive swing at providing users with a solid collection of features.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, CircleCI should be more popular than Puppet. It has been mentiond 78 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Puppet mentions (31)

  • Puppet best practice
    At betadots, during our Puppet code reviews, we often receive requests for a comprehensive summary of best practices and guidelines. In response, we've compiled this article to delve deep into Puppet's best practices and implementations. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Puppet container version schema update
    Prior the repositories have been handed over from Puppet Inc to Puppet Community, the container images were using the Puppet server and PuppetDB versions, which were used inside the container. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • What is the Role of AI in DevOps?
    There was still some confusion between Devs and the Ops folks with their tasks, and even though the word ‘DevOps’ was popping up here and there, it wasn’t used as a concrete methodology/practice in organizations. Hence, during this phase, the focus shifted from merely merging teams to fostering a cultural change emphasizing collaboration, shared responsibility, and continuous improvement. Automation played a... - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Using Let's Encrypt with the Puppet Enterprise console
    Had an itch I've been meaning to scratch for a while. I build my Puppet environment using Terraform, which makes it nice and easy to tear things down and rebuild them. That is great, but it does leave me with an issue when it comes to the console SSL certificates. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • How One Of The Oldest Forms Of Theater Survived 2000 Years: Artists in China have been making colourful puppets for 2,000 years. It is one of the oldest forms of entertainment. Audiences watched shadow puppets tell stories about heroes and villains, lovers and fantasy figures.
    Hi friend! This sub is for the configuration management tool, Puppet. You may be looking for r/puppetry or r/puppeteer. Source: over 2 years ago
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CircleCI mentions (78)

  • End-to-end testing and deployment of a multi-agent AI system with Docker, LangGraph, and CircleCI
    In this tutorial, you will walk through the process of building, testing, and deploying a multi-agent AI system using LangGraph, Docker, AWS Lambda, and CircleCI. You will develop a research-driven AI workflow where different agents,such as fact-checking, summarization, and search agents, work together seamlessly. You will package this application into a Docker container, deploy it to AWS Lambda, and automate the... - Source: dev.to / 2 days ago
  • Improving API Performance In Legacy Systems: A Guide for API Developers
    Tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, and CircleCI offer capabilities for parallel testing and test caching, allowing multiple tests to run simultaneously. This approach significantly reduces overall testing time and prevents unnecessary delays in deployment. Industry leaders such as Netflix and Amazon employ these practices to minimize outages and maintain high service quality. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Top 17 DevOps AI Tools [2025]
    CircleCI is a leading cloud-based platform for CI/CD that automates the software development process, enabling teams to build, test, and deploy applications with efficiency and precision. By integrating seamlessly with popular version control systems like GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket, CircleCI enhances collaboration and accelerates development cycles. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Building a serverless GenAI API with FastAPI, AWS, and CircleCI
    GitHub and CircleCI Accounts: You will need a GitHub account to host your project’s repository and a CircleCI account to automate testing and deployment through CI/CD. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • CircleCI vs. Jenkins
    CircleCI is a CI/CD platform that automates the process of building, testing, and deploying software. It helps developers integrate code changes more frequently and efficiently, ensuring that software development teams can detect and fix errors quickly. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Puppet and CircleCI, you can also consider the following products

Setapp - Your shortcut to prime apps on Mac, an App Store alternative

Jenkins - Jenkins is an open-source continuous integration server with 300+ plugins to support all kinds of software development

Konfigure - APARTMENTS | VILLA | WORKSPACE | RETAIL

Codeship - Codeship is a fast and secure hosted Continuous Delivery platform that scales with your needs.

Metavine Platform - Metavine Platform is a comprehensive Platform-as-a-Service that help businesses build agility and compete effectively in the digital world by enabling them to iterate and create apps quickly.

Travis CI - Simple, flexible, trustworthy CI/CD tools. Join hundreds of thousands who define tests and deployments in minutes, then scale up simply with parallel or multi-environment builds using Travis CI’s precision syntax—all with the developer in mind.