Best Software for 2025 is now live!
Save to My Lists
Claimed
Claimed

Top Rated Semaphore Alternatives

Semaphore Reviews & Product Details

Neil I.
NI
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about Semaphore?

Easy to search and understand documentation with good examples. Unparalleled flexibility and simple API. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Semaphore?

Pricing could offer a good price point for larger companies with low usage (e.g. not based on user count) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Semaphore solving and how is that benefiting you?

We have leveraged Semaphore to:

- run CICD of almost every pipeline we have

- automate weekly rebuilds of our base images

- provide chat notifications of build success/failure

- run rebuilds via our internal chat bot Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Semaphore Overview

What is Semaphore?

Semaphore is the fastest continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) platform on the market, powering the world’s best engineering teams. Our aim is to make CI/CD practices more accessible to developers, provide a great user experience, and treat our customers as we’d like to be treated. After you push code to GitHub or Bitbucket, it quickly runs your tests on a platform with first-class Docker, Kubernetes, iOS support and 100+ tools preinstalled. Automate any continuous delivery pipeline. Get complete control with customizable stages, parallel execution, control flow switches, secrets and dependency management. Use Semaphore CLI to start builds, inspect logs, SSH directly into jobs or create custom dashboards. Already trusted by thousands of businesses around the globe, it can help your team move faster too. Available in the cloud, on-premise or as a hybrid solution via self-hosted agents.

Semaphore Details
Languages Supported
English
Show LessShow More
Product Description

Semaphore is a hosted continuous integration and deployment service for open source and private projects.


Seller Details
Seller
Semaphore
Year Founded
2009
HQ Location
Vojvodina, Serbia
Twitter
@renderedtext
512 Twitter followers
LinkedIn® Page
www.linkedin.com
38 employees on LinkedIn®
Description

Semaphore is a continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) platform designed to help development teams automate their software testing and deployment processes. Offering a user-friendly interface and powerful features, Semaphore enables developers to build, test, and release applications faster and with greater efficiency. The platform supports various programming languages and integrates seamlessly with popular version control systems, making it a versatile choice for teams looking to enhance their DevOps practices. For more information, visit their website at https://semaphoreci.com.


GG
Overview Provided by:

Recent Semaphore Reviews

Fredrik August M.
FM
Fredrik August M.Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
5.0 out of 5
"Painless, intuitive, fast and cheap CI"
It's cheap, it's easy to understand and the suppport team is quick to assist if you need help. We've previously used CircleCI which we found to be ...
Trevor R.
TR
Trevor R.Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
4.0 out of 5
"Affordable, good support, limited machines types/sizes"
Semaphore was easy to get started with and is one of the lower priced CI/CD platforms. When I need access to beta features or my usage triggered ab...
FW
Felix W.Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
4.0 out of 5
"Reliable with awesome support"
The product integrates well into our CI/CD setup. The web UI stays out of your way and you can resort to CLI for everything you might need (besides...
Security Badge
This seller hasn't added their security information yet. Let them know that you'd like them to add it.
1 person requested security information

Semaphore Media

Semaphore Demo - Your pipelines look terrific!
Semaphore 2.0 can visualize code delivery for the whole engineering organization.
Semaphore Demo - Automate any continuous delivery pipeline.
Get complete control with customizable stages, parallel execution, control flow switches, secrets and dependency management.
Semaphore Demo - CLI as a first class citizen.
Use Semaphore as a natural extension to your usual workflow. Start builds, inspect logs, SSH directly into jobs or create custom dashboards — all from the comfort of your terminal.
Semaphore Demo - Visualize the right metrics.
Get key numbers in front of you with custom dashboards. It can be insights about deploys to production or average build duration. Or resource spending. Or… you get the idea.
Answer a few questions to help the Semaphore community
Have you used Semaphore before?
Yes

180 out of 181 Total Reviews for Semaphore

4.7 out of 5
The next elements are filters and will change the displayed results once they are selected.
Search reviews
Popular Mentions
The next elements are radio elements and sort the displayed results by the item selected and will update the results displayed.
Hide FiltersMore Filters
The next elements are filters and will change the displayed results once they are selected.
The next elements are filters and will change the displayed results once they are selected.
180 out of 181 Total Reviews for Semaphore
4.7 out of 5
180 out of 181 Total Reviews for Semaphore
4.7 out of 5

Semaphore Pros and Cons

How are these determined?Information
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Pros
Cons

Overall Review Sentiment for SemaphoreQuestion

Time to Implement
<1 day
>12 months
Return on Investment
<6 months
48+ months
Ease of Setup
0 (Difficult)
10 (Easy)
Log In
Want to see more insights from verified reviewers?
Log in to view review sentiment.
G2 reviews are authentic and verified.
Fredrik August M.
FM
Head of DevOps
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about Semaphore?

It's cheap, it's easy to understand and the suppport team is quick to assist if you need help. We've previously used CircleCI which we found to be the opposite of all these. The UI is also modern and you easily get to what you want. The deployments feature is something I've been searching long and hard for, but haven't found anything else without severely impacting simplicity/ease-of-use. We use Semaphore CI every day, and perform 10+ releases a day to our environments and we have not had any problems yet. It was also very easy to get started as we just connected our GitHub Org, imported the relevant users and got to work on the pipeline files. That step was also a lot easier thanks to the graphical interface which guides you a little bit while you're getting used to the format. Honestly after trying GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Octopus, Jenkins, and more, this clearly stands out to me as the better option. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Semaphore?

I wish the UI would be a little bit faster at times. And that the dynamic template resolution step when you use deployment parameters was a little faster. We're trying to squeeze every bit of performance out of our CI and losing 10 seconds to this is a little frustrating. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Semaphore solving and how is that benefiting you?

It allows us to write reuseable, easy and fast CI and CD pipelines to help us deliver on DevOps metrics. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

FW
Lead Backend Developer
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about Semaphore?

The product integrates well into our CI/CD setup. The web UI stays out of your way and you can resort to CLI for everything you might need (besides analytics, I think). The ability to spin up the environments and ssh into it to debug potential issues makes it easy to spot issues. The documentation is fine, and above all - their support is human, swift and reliable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Semaphore?

A feature that is in the pipeline (afaik) is to rerun indivdual steps instead of a whole workflow. This is obviously tricky (need to reset artifacts and cache etc) but would save some time on long flaky ci runs (that you should not have, but ... probably have). Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Semaphore solving and how is that benefiting you?

We need to ensure our code is passing a number of criteria (e.g .automated tests) and that external environments are prepared to deploy different states of different products. We also want to trigger deployments and other actions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Trevor R.
TR
Software Developer
Computer Software
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about Semaphore?

Semaphore was easy to get started with and is one of the lower priced CI/CD platforms. When I need access to beta features or my usage triggered abuse detection, support was quick to respond and helpful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Semaphore?

Semaphore doesn't offer large machine types currently, and Linux ARM (which I needed) was in closed beta. They let me into the beta, but it took several days because their support is on European business hours and I'm in the US. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Semaphore solving and how is that benefiting you?

Semaphore seems (at least initially) focused on self-hosted runners. I was looking for cross-platform cloud runners, which meant I was relying on their latest beta features. For anyone looking for self-hosted runners though, Semaphore may be the most affordable option. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Lorenzo Z.
LZ
Backend Engineer
Leisure, Travel & Tourism
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Organic
(Original )Information
What do you like best about Semaphore?

Semaphore is an incredibly easy to use CI/CD platform. Integrating my Ruby on Rails applications to use it is always very easy to do.

Their platform has an incredibly good looking UI, and documentation is also very well written.

What makes Semaphore stand out from the crowd however is their customer support.

At one point at my current company we had some issue with our organization management; we contacted their customer care and they literally answered our email in 2 minutes and the problem was fixed in less than 1 5 minutes.

It can't get any better than this! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Semaphore?

Sometimes they are slow to update the programming language versions in their OS images.

At one point the bump of a minor Ruby version took almost a week in their Ubuntu image and we couldn't upgrade our app without having the CI with the exact same Ruby version.

Also, lately they had some sort of bug in their platform that caused you to log out from Semaphore every day, and you thus you needed to log in back every morning. That was frustrating. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Semaphore solving and how is that benefiting you?

Every sreious engineer needs a CI/CD platform nowadays, you just can't live without one. Shipping code continuosly and getting feedback from the CI every time is incredibly valuable for us developers.

I would choose Semaphore for:

- it's ease of use

- it's good looking UI

- it's amazing customer care support Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Consulting
AC
Enterprise(> 1000 emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Organic
(Original )Information
What do you like best about Semaphore?

I think SemaphoreCI is a great way to supervise CI/CD workflows. What is very useful for me is the SSH debugging feature helping with troubleshooting pipelines.

As well, the parameterized promotions make it easy to customize deployments, especially when working with multiple environments.

A good tool is also the test result reporting because it makes it easier to identify and address issues quickly which help a lot. In addition, I appreciate how fast are the pipelines and how the YAML configuration is useful to strikes a good balance between simplicity and flexibility! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Semaphore?

Semaphore depends a lot on shell commands, which, I think might feel uncomfortable or intimidating to those new to scripting. Thus, I would say Semaphore is way more geared toward users who are already comfortable with the command line.

Also, I miss native integration with tools like Terraform or Pulumi. I believe they would be a nice addition for the one who are a lot invested in infrastructure-as-code. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Semaphore solving and how is that benefiting you?

The whole process of building, testing and deploying code to production is taken care of by Semaphore. Moreover, it really benefits me as it speeds up our CI/CD pipeline, minimize manual work and make sure things run smoothly. Besides, issues are catches early and at every stage thanks to automated testing as the parameterized promotions make deployments across environments much easier. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

SJ
Lead Software Engineer
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about Semaphore?

Easy to use and integrate with our workflow. They have a good technical support team who are always ready to help. We had a few occations where we got stuck with some pipeline issues and the support team was always ready to help.

It supports multiple integrations and is easy to implement the CI/CD pipelines. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Semaphore?

- Cost. For teams which has mutiple development and deployment environments with a higher frequency of commit/deployments the cost will be a little high. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Semaphore solving and how is that benefiting you?

We use Semaphore as for the CI/CD pipeline. It helps to identify if any commit or merge might cause any issue in workflow by running all test cases before merge or deploy. We use the auto promotion feature to deploy the code updates after the successful tests. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Terry S.
TS
Managing Director
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about Semaphore?

My company has been using Semaphore for a few years now. In that time, we've aksed a few difficult questions, as we've had unusual requirements for our tech stack. The customer service team have been outstanding in coming back to us quickly and proactively with assistance and suggestions. The Semaphore service is solid and reasonably priced, and the setup is straightfoward. We use it pretty much all day every day. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Semaphore?

For anyone who has an unusual requirement, the docs don't always cover every situation. This is usually easy to fix with a single email to the excellent customer service Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Semaphore solving and how is that benefiting you?

Every push to our code goes through Semaphore and only 100% green code goes live. It keeps us honest and reduces our team's anxiety levels! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Michał M.
MM
Staff Software Developer
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about Semaphore?

The pricing model is pretty good which makes it competitive with the alternatives, the configuration for the pipelines is pretty powerful and there are rarely any outages or major problems.

The support is very polite and responds quickly and they treat reported bugs seriously.

The additional tooling for monitoring tests stability is quite nice and test reports make it easy to find which specs has failed, especially when running them in parallel.

It's clear that Semaphore continues investing in improving their product and adding new features, something that is often not the case with other CIs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Semaphore?

The API is still in v1alpha and is a often cumbersome to use and requires tricks and polling to get right.

The Semaphore Classic had a concept of a "server", now there are only promotions so coordinating deployments of multiple projects to the same place can be tricky.

The UI design could use some work, requires lots of getting used to and important information is sometimes hidden in the clutter. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Semaphore solving and how is that benefiting you?

Semaphore allows us to run our automated tests for multiple applications easily and integrate nicely with GitHub to complete our code review and pull request flow. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Computer Software
UC
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about Semaphore?

The support team is exceptional. They respond quickly, are incredibly knowledgeable, and clearly take the time to understand my issue in depth. Their advice is always practical and helpful, making the whole experience with Semaphore smooth and efficient. This level of support is rare and truly sets Semaphore apart. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Semaphore?

Not much to dislike! It can sometimes be a bit tricky to navigate, especially if you're used to other CI tools. However, the documentation is thorough and helpful, and the excellent support team is always there to assist, which makes it easy to overcome any challenges. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Semaphore solving and how is that benefiting you?

Semaphore provides CI and is integrated with GitHub. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

ML
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about Semaphore?

Been using Sema 2.0 since their beta as CI/CD for all of our internal projects. I was dreading the YAML switch as commit push is required for any config change, but the upside is that every change is now tracked on revision control.

Uptime been great and their support team responds within 24 hours (because different TZ). Every issues that I created ticket for been resolved in timely manner. Support team is very knowledgeable about their product. More often than not they are able to recommend alternative ways of doing things once they understand my issues, and with minimal back and forth.

SSH Debug is a nice feature that allows you to recreate the pipeline and try to reproduce an issue or work out a fix from there. And the UI which appeals to Devs since it's simple and clean and it never looks broken after we added more pipelines or workflows. It's also designed such that accidental click wouldn't happen which is important for a production deploy pipeline. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Semaphore?

Dropdown. YAML means no dropdown of options. To support multiple environments, you would have to create dedicated pipeline for each of them so UI might look redundant and clunky. But upside is that it avoids accidental mistake since selecting dropdown option is prone to human error. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Semaphore solving and how is that benefiting you?

It's the one tool for all our CI/CD needs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.