As of June 2022, 47% of web developers reported using either a continuous deployment or continuous integration tool. However, that same report found that only one in five developers use both, leaving plenty of room for improvement.
Continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) are far from ubiquitous terms, and today, we explore what the latter concept is all about. Continuous deployment is a key feature that sets Netlify apart from other platforms, as other hosting services expect you to install or build your own.
Continuous deployment is the idea that you can push new code updates from your Git to a live production environment automatically. It saves time, effort, and money over traditional deployment and allows you to provide a better user experience with frequent updates.
What is continuous deployment?
Continuous deployment is part of the CI/CD evolution, which includes continuous integration and continuous delivery concepts. It represents a significant shift in how we deliver and maintain software, with a particular emphasis on speed, reliability, and automation.
In simple terms, when you push changes to your Git repository—whether it’s self-hosted, on GitLab, Bitbucket, or GitHub—Netlify automatically builds, configures, and deploys your site. By doing so, you don’t have to worry about manual intervention, which ties into the CD focus of automation.
While often mentioned side-by-side, the continuous deployment process is a separate process from Continuous Integration. Continuous Integration focuses on merging code changes into your centralized Git repository. Merging source code changes helps detect and resolve integration issues before they become devastating, but this process terminates before verifying the build.
Continuous Deployment builds on the CI automation concept by automating the entire software release process. It automatically deploys your code changes to the production environment after passing all critical tests, eliminating manual processes between developer changes and production.
Benefits of continuous deployment
We mentioned that continuous deployment represented a significant change in coding practices, and it did so to make developers’ lives easier. By programming with continuous deployment in mind, you take advantage of the many benefits, including:
- Faster time-to-market: CD reduces the time between completion and deployment, enabling rapid software delivery of new features and bug fixes that improve user experiences.
- Fewer deployment errors: Eliminating manual processes eliminates human error. The automation also ensures a consistent deployment across all environments and early detection of code-breaking issues.
- Improved product quality: Smaller, more manageable changes facilitate cleaner code, easier bug detection, and streamlined error detection, resulting in better software, websites, or web apps.
- Enhanced user satisfaction: Rapid delivery of new features, improvements, and bug fixes means happier end users.
- More productive developers: Auto deployment saves time on manual processes, freeing developers to focus on writing code and solving complex problems. Plus, developers can get instant feedback on code changes, enabling more rapid interaction responses.
- Better disaster recovery: Version control and serverless infrastructure make it easy for developers to roll back changes and replicate conditions in recovery environments. Frequent updates and application deployments also ensure recent backup and recovery points.
- Enhanced team collaboration: CD breaks down software development silos, leading to shared responsibility for development lifecycles.
Leveraging these benefits ultimately means higher user satisfaction ratings, longer customer lifecycles, more bottom-line profit, and, possibly most importantly, satisfied developers. And this collection of benefits is far from exhaustive, and you may experience several additional perks we didn’t mention above!
How continuous deployment works
To understand how continuous deployment works, we need to break it down into its corresponding steps. These steps make the process possible while ensuring the stability and security of your projects.
Step 1: Code commits trigger automated builds
When a developer pushes code changes, the connected Git repository receives and stores those changes. Netlify then detects the new commit and initiates the build process. From there, Netlify pulls the latest code from the repository.
Step 2: Netlify tests and verifies builds
After pulling the latest code from the repository, Netlify runs the specified build command, which includes installing dependencies, compiling code, and running automated tests. If any part of this process is unsuccessful, Netlify notifies your team.
Step 3: Successful builds get deployed to production
After Netlify successfully builds and tests the code updates, we proceed to the deployment stage. Netlify deploys built files to our Global CDN, and the new version of your site or web app becomes available to your users in real time.
You can set up continuous deployment in just a few seconds via Netlify’s web UI or CLI tool. Pick the repository you want Netlify to deploy, and set your build command and the directory you want to deploy after the build is done. In most cases, Netlify will guess your configuration once you select the repository.
Netlify will then install all your dependencies, run your build command of choice, and deploy the result. From then on, Netlify builds and deploys your site every time you push to Git.
Choosing the right CD tool
While implementing continuous deployment can bring significant benefits and is relatively easy to set up, the wrong tool can cause your team to waste time and money. The right tool positively impacts the efficiency and effectiveness of development workflows, so make some considerations before selecting an option, such as:
- Project requirements: Evaluate project scope and complexity, the tech stack and programming languages you plan to use, and deployment targets.
- Team size and experience: Consider the experience level and size of your team. More simple and streamlined tools may be ideal for smaller teams, while collaboration functionality and access control are better for larger, more experienced groups.
- Budget: Consider up-front and long-term budget expenses and calculate ROI on saved time and improved developer efficiency.
- Platform familiarity: Leverage existing team member knowledge to reduce learning curves. Also, consider integrating software with current tech stacks and workflows.
Of course, you’ll want to think about big-picture factors that could impact development teams in the short and long term. These are aspects you should also weigh in your decision:
- Ease of use and setup: Evaluate the controls and dashboards of all providers. Ensure you have a clear visualization of deployment pipelines and statuses. The platform should also have comprehensive guides, tutorials, and an active troubleshooting community.
- Feature set and integration: Comprehensive CD platforms will have version control system (VCS) integration from Git to SVN. They also offer continuous testing capabilities, monitoring and logging, notification systems, and support for infrastructure provisioning.
- Scalability and performance: Look for features related to concurrent builds, global CDN support for rapid content delivery, and compute resource optimization. Don’t let provider downtime deteriorate your user access.
- Pricing and support options: Your tech stack shouldn’t break the bank, so look for various tiered pricing models, free version or trial availability, enterprise support (for large-scale operations), and training and onboarding support. Evaluate customer support, just in case you encounter challenges after onboarding
Popular continuous deployment tools
Now that you know what to look for in a continuous deployment provider, here are some popular solutions developers use to support their workflows:
- Netlify: When it comes to features, Netlify’s CD checks all the boxes—easy to use, extensible, has plenty of support, global CDN, and even offers support for free users. Netlify supports static site hosting deployment for simpler projects and dynamic options for enterprise-grade websites and apps, making it the perfect companion for most users.
- Jenkins: An open-source automation server with an extensive plugin ecosystem and software deployment flexibility and customizability. However, it comes with larger setup and maintenance requirements, which could become costly in the long term.
- CircleCI: Cloud-based builds and ease of use, making it ideal for teams using GitHub or Bitbucket and for mobile use cases. It offers SaaS and self-hosted options, as well as a large API microservice list.
- Travis CI: Popular for its open-source frameworks and integration with GitHub. One of the original players, but often gets overshadowed by larger providers with more significant footprints.
- AWS CodeDeploy: Provides tight integration with other AWS Lambda services, and its scalability is perfect for large teams that are heavily invested in the Amazon ecosystem.
- Azure DevOps: Comprehensive CI/CD pipeline features within the Azure ecosystem and integration with the broader set of Microsoft Windows technologies. Offers both cloud platforms and on-premises solutions.
While popular continuous deployment tools like Jenkins, CircleCI, and Travis CI each offer valuable features, many of these point solutions can leave developers managing multiple services and integrations to cover all their deployment needs. This fragmented approach often adds complexity and limits scalability.
Netlify, on the other hand, provides a comprehensive, all-in-one platform that seamlessly integrates continuous deployment with powerful features like automatic build optimization, serverless functions, and an image CDN.
By consolidating these services into one streamlined solution, Netlify eliminates the need for multiple tools and empowers developers to focus on what matters most—building and deploying high-quality web applications efficiently.
Deploy with Netlify: Experience the power of CD
What else can we tell you? Whether you need to trigger a build and deploy through a webhook or receive notifications on new deployments, Netlify has you covered. With Netlify, we automatically install dependencies (rubygems, npm, etc.) and cache them between builds to keep deployment time down.
We also value secure environments. We never store any GitHub tokens on our servers, and your builds run in completely locked-down environments. All of our agency clients and heavy-weight web developers use continuous deployment, which regulates and eases the workflow without sacrificing quality. Sign up for Netlify and start developing web projects with continuous deployment today!
