Armory v. Octopus Deploy

Automatic and reliable declarative cross-environment deployment orchestration that you don’t have to spend time building.

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Armory and Octopus Deploy are two popular deployment solutions that can make deploying applications much easier. Both solutions provide a range of features and have different approaches to automating deployments. Armory is focused on enabling developers at every scale to easily, safely, and reliably deploy to Kubernetes, while Octopus deploys across other technologies including Windows, Linux, and containers.

What is Armory?

Armory automates, orchestrates and scales your software promotion lifecycle across all clusters and environments, so you don’t have to spend needless hours building and maintaining a custom solution. Integrate with your existing CI tool and leverage your existing automations like security scanning and integration tests. Commit your code and watch it automatically deploy from dev to stage and on to production using built-in advanced progressive strategies like Blue/Green and Canary – no matter how many environments you have.

What is Octopus Deploy?

Octopus Deploy is an automated deployment and release management tool used by developers to deploy applications and services. It helps teams automate deployment processes, such as setting up infrastructure, running integration tests, managing multiple environments, configuring application settings, and deploying database changes.

What does Octopus Deploy Do?

Octopus Deploy has support for managing multiple applications and tracking the deployment of applications across multiple environments. This is meant to make it easier for teams to keep track of their deployments and ensure that changes are applied consistently across all environments. By automating deployments, teams can reduce the time and resources.

What are Octopus Deploy’s Strengths?

Octopus Deploy is a simple automated deployment and release management tool to deploy software applications to multiple environments.

  • Deployment strategy options other than Kubernetes
  • Good support and documentation
  • Integrates with most CI tools/servers
  • Emphasis on low code for inexperienced teams

Octopus Deploy allows teams to define repeatable processes for the various stages of the deployment pipeline. It supports deployments for virtual machine images and Windows Installers, as well as cloud-based solutions such as Azure App Services and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Octopus also integrates with popular CI/CD tools like Jenkins, TeamCity, and Bamboo.

What are the Top Octopus Deploy Challenges?

Octopus Deploy, while a serviceable tool for deployment automation, does have some significant weaknesses. 

  • Unable to easily deploy to or rollback tightly coupled services out of the box
  • No automated rollbacks
  • No advanced deployment features like Canary or Blue/Green out of the box
  • Features are relatively basic, requiring teams to build custom scripts 
  • Building too many scripts to support your needs creates complexity and fragility
  • The simplicity can turn from providing a basic tool that gets the job done into a tool that lacks the features that advanced development teams need
  • There is no observability functionality and the tool lacks useful reporting and metrics
  • No YAML support

Octopus Deploy has relatively limited scalability options, which makes it unsuitable for large deployments that require high throughputs. This can lead teams to build homegrown scripts and solutions on top of Octopus Deploy, leading to more complexity, fragility, and risk.

Lack of support for certain operating systems and programming languages is one notable limitation. Additionally, the user interface can be somewhat difficult to use and is not as intuitive as some alternatives. 

Users have also reported intermittent problems with stability and uptime when using Octopus Deploy. While these issues are usually resolved, they can be disruptive to businesses relying on the software. Compared to Armory, Octopus Deploy has a lower average uptime, which can be costly to your business.

All in all, while Octopus Deploy is an acceptable choice for basic deployment automation tasks, understanding its limitations is important to ensure that you choose the right deployment tool for your organization.

Armory Deployment Strengths in Detail

In contrast, Armory offers continuous deployment solutions for both on-prem and cloud-first teams at any scale. 

  • Automated, Out of the Box Deployment Orchestration incl. Rollbacks – Powerful, yet simple, deployments and rollbacks, even for complex, multi-environment and tightly coupled services
  • Out of the Box Advanced Deployment Strategies – Blue/Green Deployments, Canary Deployments, right out of the box without having to write your own scripts
  • Automated Impact Analysis – Out of the box, allow you to automatically analyze observability data for canary analysis and change verification throughout your pipeline, not just at the deployment stage.
  • Easily integrate with existing tools – easily trigger a deployment from any CI tool with a simple CLI; there’s no need to ‘lift and shift’, no migrations required. Continue to leverage automated testing and orchestrate your existing automations using Armory’s webhooks. 
  • Easy multi-cluster maintenance  – A lightweight agent allows all clusters to easily and securely deploy. Even clusters that are not internet accessible. Connect with a single command and no need to update every time a new version is released.
  • Deploy and validate any change the same way – All changes follow the same strategy, regardless of what changed; Armory runs the complete deployment, not just updates to the replicaset. 
  • Leverage the power of Git – Branches are Gits superpower. Structure Git repositories in whatever way makes the most sense to you. You can trigger Armory easily from any branch; wherever you are doing things today. 
  • Deploy any set of K8s objects together, without changing their existing packaging – Armory can deploy any kubernetes object type, you simply deploy your manifests as they exist today. If you’re not a fan of CRDs we’ve got you covered. Armory keeps it simple with a mantra of “Deploy it as-is” There’s no need to repackage your application manifest to a CRD. 
  • Scale with the Best – Armory has proven ability to scale with large deployments. Check out our success stories.

Armory vs. Octopus Deploy Companies at a Glance

Updated: 2023/03/02

Feature

Comparison Armory Logo
Comparison octopus Logo

World-class support team

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Availability

99.9% uptime

99.54% uptime

Declarative Deployment Options

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Not out of the box

Multi-Environment

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Not out of the box

Manages the Promotion Lifecycle

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Not out of the box

Production-Ready Deployment Strategies (Canary, Blue/Green)

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Not out of the box

Tooling for Maturing Development Teams

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Armory empowers developers to continuously improve and assure their customer experience and scale their business; building a sustainable competitive advantage through software. Armory makes Continuous Deployment achievable and effortless at any scale, for all developers. Armory’s Continuous Deployment solutions enable development teams to easily, reliably, safely, and securely deploy software.


Company size

101-250


Founded

2016


Funding

$82M


Category

Continuous Deployment


Octopus Deploy software is a deployment automation server both on-premises or in the cloud. The software manages QA, acceptance testing and production deployments. Complex deployment steps for .NET, Java, and other platforms are made simple. Manage Access control and measure the performance via Dashboard. Developers, Small and Medium companies make use of the software.


Company size

100


Founded

2011


Funding

$172.5M


Category

Continuous Delivery

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