# Zadig vs. Jenkins Detailed Comparison: The Choice of the Era and Developers
A article on Zadig's official WeChat public account titled "It's Time to Say Goodbye to Jenkins (opens new window)" has sparked heated discussions in the industry. As one of the most widely used continuous integration and delivery tools, Jenkins' status in the field seems to be challenged. One highly upvoted comment stands out:
As the creator of Zadig, I believe it's necessary to share a detailed comparison with everyone. Throughout my career, I've witnessed the constant iteration of tools, technologies, and infrastructure - from TeamCity and Hudson over a decade ago to Jenkins, Travis, CircleCI, and Drone. I have personally managed or deeply used almost every product and tool in enterprise environments. Jenkins was once a choice I highly advocated.
Looking back at Zadig's journey, seven years ago it was just a concept (Spock - Star Trek's science officer and first officer); five years ago, it was an environment management tool; three years ago, it had become a user-friendly CI/CD platform for developers. Today, under the use of large-scale customers, it has become an enterprise-level integrated cloud-native DevOps platform, widely connecting partners to provide a simple and easy-to-use collaboration plane for enterprise developers (including product managers, developers, testers, SRE, operations, and colleagues with different responsibilities).
In the following sharing, I will stand at the product and technical level to detail the similarities and differences between Zadig and Jenkins from the dimensions of design philosophy, functional differences, and Zadig's highlights. I hope that through this comparison, everyone can better understand Zadig's advantages and features, as well as the tremendous value it can bring to developers in continuous delivery and development processes.
# Product Design Philosophy
My earliest experience was writing C# based on the .Net Framework, then Java applications, and starting in 2014, cloud computing with Golang microservices. I kept thinking: we're always writing software to improve efficiency for various industries, but software engineering itself is very inefficient. Why isn't there a tool that can make development teams less tired while better and faster meeting the delivery requirements of large customers?
This thought actually comes from my five years of experience leading the engineering team at Qiniu Cloud. As a cloud computing provider, Qiniu Cloud bears the responsibility for the business stability of 700,000 small and medium enterprises, with extreme quality requirements. With the rapid development of multiple business lines, collaboration among thousands of engineers, numerous complex heterogeneous environments, and parallel delivery of multiple businesses, pressure grew exponentially. Around 2015, we built continuous delivery pipelines based on Jenkins with elastic container nodes, creating quite a few innovations, but still couldn't bear the delivery burden - operational efficiency was low, maintenance costs extremely high, and engineers weren't happy using it. At that time, Kubernetes was gradually emerging - could we build a delivery platform for developers based on it? Who would have thought this path would last 7 years? During this time, we created Spock, which completely improved Qiniu Cloud's delivery efficiency and quality while reducing delivery costs. Later, we started our own business to independently build Zadig, which has been open source serving many enterprises since 2021, evolving into today's cloud-native DevOps platform with a complete quality engineering system.
# Functional Comparison
Jenkins is an open-source, extensible automation build and delivery tool. Its design intent is to meet the needs of different teams and projects, providing a highly extensible and flexible platform. Through plugins and extensions, Jenkins empowers development teams with continuous integration and delivery capabilities, helping to achieve automation, collaboration, and rapid delivery in software development.
Zadig is an open-source, distributed DevOps platform independently designed and developed based on Kubernetes. It features flexible and easy-to-use high-concurrency workflows, developer-oriented cloud-native environments, efficient collaborative test management, powerful maintenance-free template libraries, and objective and precise efficiency insights, providing engineers with a unified collaboration platform. Zadig has built-in best practices for complex scenarios such as K8s YAML, Helm Chart, and host environments, suitable for large-scale microservices and high-frequency, high-quality delivery cloud-native scenarios. Zadig's commercial version provides flexible and extensible workflows, multiple release strategy orchestrations, one-click security audits, AI efficiency improvements, and diagnostics. At the same time, the commercial version supports customized enterprise-level XOps agile efficiency dashboards, deep integration with various enterprise-level platforms, and rapid batch access through project templating, achieving one-click management and governance of thousands of services. Its main goal is to help enterprises achieve digital transformation of product research and development, making engineers the engine of innovation, and providing support for the unlimited value chain of the digital economy.
| Zadig | Jenkins | |
|---|---|---|
| Product Capabilities | ||
| Product Positioning | Cloud-native DevOps Platform | CI/CD Tool |
| Product Versions | Open source code, divided into basic/commercial versions based on functionality | Open Source & Enterprise Versions |
| Company | KodeRover | CloudBees |
| Extensibility | Custom workflows can connect to any external system | Extend capabilities through plugins |
| Portability | Based on Kubernetes environment, can be launched anytime, multi-cloud support | Supports cross-platform installation |
| Elastic Scaling | Based on Kubernetes scheduling expansion, unlimited concurrency | ⛔️ Dynamic scaling through plugins |
| Ease of Use (3-easy, 1-difficult) | ★★★ Out of the box | ★★☆ Writing many scripts |
| Maintainability (3-high, 1-low) | ★★☆ Large template library provided, supports operational observability and monitoring | ★☆☆ Many plugins, high maintenance difficulty |
| Scenario Support | ||
| Host Scenarios | ✅ | ✅ |
| Existing Project Migration | ✅ | ⛔️ Writing many scripts |
| K8s yaml Scenarios | ✅ | ⛔️ Writing many scripts |
| Helm Scenarios | ✅ | ⛔️ Writing many scripts |
| Private Deployment Scenarios | ✅ | ❌ |
| Workflow | ||
| Project Management Task Status Changes | ✅ | ❌ |
| Configuration Changes | ✅ | ❌ |
| Data Changes | ✅ | ❌ |
| Approval Process | ✅ Built-in Zadig approval, Feishu approval, DingTalk approval | ⛔️ Approval through plugins |
| Canary Release | ✅ Built-in blue-green, canary, batch gray, istio, etc. release tasks | ⛔️ Writing many scripts |
| Any Code Hosting Platform (GitHub/GitLab/Gerrit/Gitee and other standard Git protocol code sources) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Environment Management | ||
| Service Management | ✅ | ❌ |
| One-click Create/Copy Environment | ✅ | ❌ |
| Developer Self-test Environment | ✅ | ❌ |
| Runtime Service Information Visualization | ✅ | ❌ |
| Real-time Service Log Query | ✅ | ❌ |
| Container Service Debugging | ✅ | ❌ |
| Business Management, Quality & Version Management | ||
| Project Collaboration Management | ✅ Through project division, establishing business-oriented management planes | ❌ Workflow perspective |
| Integrated Project Management | ✅ Built-in support for JIRA, Feishu, bi-directional automated triggering | ✅ Plugins, one-way status synchronization |
| Automated Test Management | ✅ | ⛔️ Implemented through workflow chaining, but lacks an independent test management plane |
| Code Scanning | ✅ | ⛔️ Script writing/implementation through plugins |
| Deliverable Tracking | ✅ | ✅ |
| Version Management | ✅ | ❌ |
| Data Views | ||
| Efficiency Insights | ✅ | ❌ |
| AI Efficiency Analysis | ✅ | ❌ |
| System, Security, and Developer Extensions | ||
| SSO/LDAP/AD Integration | ✅ | ✅ Plugins, low standardization |
| ABAC, RBAC-based Access Control | ✅ | ⛔️ Unable to implement fine-grained permission control |
| Operation Logs | ✅ | ❌ |
| Developer API | ✅ | ✅ |
# Core Capability Differences in Detail
# Pioneering Parallel Multi-service Build and Deployment
Jenkins
Jenkins was born before microservices became popular, so it leaves much to be desired in supporting microservices. Especially in terms of observability and monitoring when having many microservices, each microservice has its own pipeline process. Due to not supporting integrating and testing multiple services at once, Jenkins lacks the basic functionality for microservice applications. Its main implementation method is through writing Jenkinsfile in Groovy language, using parallel to complete concurrent building and deployment of multiple services. Different service combination scenarios may require modifying workflow configurations or creating new workflows, which leads to an increase in the number of workflows, increasing management costs.
Zadig
Born during the explosion phase of large-scale applications, with better adaptability to Kubernetes environments, Zadig natively supports concurrent building, deployment, and testing of microservices. When executing workflow tasks, service combinations and their corresponding code information can be freely selected for updates according to actual needs, with the freedom to choose Branch, PR/MR, Branch+PR/MR, or Tag methods for building.
The SRE Tech Leader of ByteDance's Feishu once mentioned in <Why ByteDance's Feishu Chose Zadig for Trunk-Based Development and Release (opens new window)>: "We deeply agree with Zadig's design philosophy and believe that Zadig truly solves the pain points of microservice integration testing. Zadig is undoubtedly an excellent CI/CD product in the industry, and it is a product that truly understands, values, and solves microservice pain points."
# Environment Management and Runtime Service Visualization
Jenkins
As a typical representative of traditional CI tools, Jenkins mainly focuses on continuous integration capabilities and does not directly provide environment management functions. However, in the actual product production and delivery process, in addition to CI capabilities, CD-related capabilities are also built. This process requires additional manpower to maintain.
Zadig
In addition to basic workflow capabilities, Zadig also supports environment management and runtime service visualization capabilities. Zadig supports minute-level creation or copying of a complete isolated environment to deal with frequent business changes and product iterations. Based on a full baseline environment, it quickly provides developers with an independent self-test environment. With one-click hosting of cluster resources, it becomes easy to debug existing services and verify business code. Through the environment, you can obtain various information related to services, such as service versions, logs, and networks, to help with problem diagnosis and daily communication and collaboration between team members.
The iMile operations team mentioned in <How iMile Uses Zadig for Thousands of Multi-cloud Environment Deployments Per Week, Cross-cloud Cross-region Continuous Delivery of Global Business (opens new window)>: "Zadig has connected various K8s components through workflows, and also connected our entire R&D team, greatly reducing script maintenance and environment governance, while also being very simple and efficient to get started. It has been a great help in project iteration and delivery, saving a lot of time costs, letting professional people do 'professional' things, allowing project R&D to run efficiently in parallel, reducing communication gaps between teams, and providing great help to our R&D delivery. In summary, it is 'simple and efficient'!"
# Permission Management and Collaboration Mode
Jenkins
Jenkins can implement permission control through plugins. The way this plugin controls Job permissions is by laying out users and roles in a table and configuring user permissions by checking boxes. As the number of users or Jobs continues to increase, the table becomes extremely complex and difficult to maintain.
Zadig
In the Zadig collaboration mode, through simple configuration, permission control can be supported for specified workflows and environment resources in the project.
# Secure and Reliable Production Environment Release
To ensure the safe release of new versions, automation capabilities are usually utilized to orchestrate canary release strategies, observe resources, and perform manual confirmation and other key steps in the release process according to actual situations.
Jenkins
In Jenkins, you need to write canary release scripts for each service and combine them with a series of plugins to complete the entire release process. However, this configuration is relatively cumbersome and has high maintenance costs.
The figure below takes the canary release process of a single service as an example. The actual release process may involve multiple services and needs to consider the management issue of YAMLs used in the canary process.
Zadig
Zadig's workflow supports in-system approvals, Feishu approval flows, and DingTalk approval flows. In addition, it supports connecting to external systems for compliance approvals. The workflow has built-in orchestration for blue-green, canary, batch gray, istio full-link, and other release strategies. The configuration process can be completed through the interface, making it simple to operate, with a transparent and reliable release execution process.
# Product Research Efficiency Insights and AI Diagnostic Analysis
Jenkins
Jenkins workflow steps are all implemented through scripts and do not have business attributes themselves, making it difficult to implement statistics and analysis of the efficiency of the development process, testing process, and release process as a complete business unit.
Zadig
Zadig has engineered project collaboration capabilities, providing full lifecycle efficiency data to help analyze the change process of various environments and efficiency bottlenecks. Zadig provides enterprise managers with more decision-making basis. Customized efficiency indicators can be added through Zadig, adding progress items: average requirement delivery cycle, requirement R&D delivery cycle. Enterprises can customize XOps agile efficiency dashboards, quickly identify shortcomings through project scoring comparison, set efficiency goals suitable for the current state of the enterprise, and use data to drive continuous improvement. At the same time, an AI enterprise efficiency analysis module based on LLM will be publicly available soon.
# Other Highlight Feature Introductions
# Smooth Transition Support for Existing Projects from Jenkins
For a large number of existing services, you can quickly connect your existing K8s cluster to Zadig through hosted projects with zero intrusion, and provide visualized K8s management functions that can meet developers' daily use. Switch to K8s YAML projects to achieve full lifecycle management of service YAMLs.
In addition, to reduce the cost of migrating projects that are already using Jenkins as a CI tool to Zadig, Zadig workflows also support connecting multiple Jenkins builds. The DevOps engineer from Guoquan once mentioned in <How Guoquan Easily Implemented Operation Containerization Construction Using Zadig (opens new window)> that they adopted a hybrid solution to quickly achieve the transition from traditional release methods to containerized release methods.
# Template Library Helps Operations Standardize Governance
Zadig supports Dockerfile templates, K8s YAML templates, Helm Chart templates, build templates, and workflow templates. Enterprises can abstract several sets of service and build templates according to actual situations. Based on templates, they can quickly create hundreds or thousands of microservices, reducing the complexity of operations introducing new services and subsequent management costs. Chu Qiao, a DevOps engineer at Lotus, said in <How Lotus Uses Zadig to Achieve Hybrid Cloud Global Delivery (opens new window)>: "The template function is the most powerful among Zadig's advanced functions. It's no exaggeration to say that active use of templates can reduce over 90% of operational work for operations! Currently, we can already achieve maintaining just one set of K8S YAML templates, one set of DOCKERFILE templates, and one set of build templates to meet 95% of backend project needs. Operations can introduce a service in just 2 minutes."
# Security Scanning Orchestrated into the Product's Full Lifecycle
Zadig supports orchestrating Coverity, SonarQube, CleanSource SCA, DongTai, and other security tools and services into the entire delivery chain. Through powerful runtime environments and custom workflow capabilities, it provides strong security support for product research teams.
# Extensive Integration of Internal and External Systems Serving Developers
Every enterprise faces challenges such as existing systems, technical debt, and tool chains, which lead to fragmentation of the development process, affecting efficiency and team collaboration. Guided by the "platform engineering" approach, Zadig unifies fragmented constructions, relying on cloud-native technology to support key processes in product research delivery, realizing the concept of "one platform, one-click launch". Zadig deeply integrates project management platforms Jira/Feishu Meego, code management platforms GitHub/GitLab/Gitee/CodeUp, configuration management tools Nacos/Apollo, as well as data change tools DMS/Flyway/Mysql, transforming product research and development management from fragmentation to platformization. Teams can collaborate efficiently and automatically, with stable business iteration, ensuring the smooth progress of the research and development process.
# Test Management Helps Teams Build Quality Engineering
Zadig's test management module supports connecting to mainstream test frameworks such as Jmeter and Pytest, giving testers a platform to accumulate and manage UI, API, and E2E test case assets. Through workflows, it provides developers with pre-test verification capabilities. Through continuous testing and quality analysis, it fully unleashes the value of testing.
# Product Summary
In comparing Zadig with Jenkins, we've delved into their design philosophies, functional features, and Zadig's unique advantages. Both aim to simplify development processes and improve work efficiency, but in today's rapidly evolving technical landscape, choosing the right tools is more crucial than ever. Jenkins was once the go-to choice for many teams, but now, with technological advancements, we may need to consider solutions more aligned with modern requirements.
When selecting tools, enterprises should comprehensively assess their own needs, team size, business complexity, and developer experience to determine the most suitable technical support. For medium to large teams with over 20 microservices deployed in K8s containers, Zadig demonstrates significant advantages in continuous delivery, parallel multi-service deployment, runtime environment management, and multi-service orchestration, helping ensure stable and efficient project iteration.
It's worth noting that in non-cloud-native environments, Jenkins still maintains its market share, while cloud-native CI/CD tools such as GitLab CI, CircleCI, Argo, and Tekton can complement Zadig, collectively building a unified development collaboration platform to provide developers with more comprehensive support.
# Zadig Development and Future Direction
As an emerging open-source tool, Zadig has continuously improved over the past two years as the community has grown, serving numerous enterprises and engineers. Our team highly values user feedback, particularly focusing on enhancing the developer experience. To provide a smoother, more convenient user experience, we will continue to optimize the product interface and core functionalities.
In terms of extensibility, we will strengthen the custom task functionality of workflows, enabling users to customize personalized workflows according to their actual needs. Additionally, we will launch more developer OpenAPIs to allow users to more efficiently integrate Zadig into their existing systems.
We will continue to be dedicated to product improvement and innovation to meet growing user demands. Our goal is to provide developers with excellent delivery experiences and platform support, making Zadig a key partner in enterprise continuous delivery and development processes, jointly promoting product research innovation and progress.
