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CloudBees vs IBM Rational Build Forge comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 15, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

CloudBees
Ranking in Build Automation
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (11th), Value Stream Management Software (2nd), DevSecOps (5th), AI-Augmented Software-Testing Tools (2nd), Feature Management (1st), AI Software Development (8th)
IBM Rational Build Forge
Ranking in Build Automation
22nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of CloudBees is 2.4%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Rational Build Forge is 2.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CloudBees2.4%
IBM Rational Build Forge2.0%
Other95.6%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

YashBrahmani - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Associate at BNP Paribas CIB
Offers a clear visualization and overview of workflows and helpful in managing CI/CD processes
Improvement in the sense that they can do better in terms of management of logs and stuff like that because the console logs are very extensive, and that causes a lot of storage issues. That is one of the things which is there. Also, with respect to the traditional platform and the modern platform, many things have upgraded, and it has quite improved. But when we talk about the performance of the agents, it’s still very crucial because it’s not up to par. It takes a lot of time to provision the agent and to finish the build because of the SSH connection and the JNLP connection. Due to that, sometimes the agent doesn’t get provisioned. Those are some of the blockers that meet up the time in terms of administering the instance.
it_user1330545 - PeerSpot reviewer
CRM Program Release Manager at Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center
Great reporting features and very functional
The solution could be more user friendly. Trying to train somebody on it can be difficult. If you're in this field, you kind of learn the tools, but trying to show a PM how to find report sheets to pull data was difficult. I had to show them how to write the queries and pull the data that they needed. It's not a layman's solution. If you're working with a programmer or with an architect, you won't have issues trying to relay how to utilize the tool. It was for those who cut the checks where there were problems enabling them to pull the data they required. I guess the answer is DevOps, but it depends on your environment. Just being able to sign into dashboards and get accurate results was my biggest thing with my PMs on my projects. They like charts and pie graphs, the ability to see things at a glance data where they could make decisions on the fly.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Scalability largely depends on how the tool is set up within your infrastructure"
"CloudBees is a user-friendly tool."
"CloudBees updates its features frequently, so if we need something like SSL login, they enable it."
"CloudBees assists by automating tasks, previously done manually, in the pipeline setup."
"The customer support is good. You get good representatives from CloudBees to help you and understand your requirements."
"CloudBees is the Jenkins tool for building and deploying. There's open-source Jenkins, which is free and can be used by any organization, but it offers a different architecture for Jenkins. If your organization is larger, you might choose the architecture. This way, you can have different masters for different applications, and different teams can manage their masters separately. However, a single person can still control all the masters, whoever manages it for the organization."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that its GUI is quite simple."
"I find the automation feature most valuable. CloudBees is highly scalable and supports both small and large teams. The deployment process is also faster when compared to on-premise."
"Very good reporting features."
"All features are useful. Our customer doesn't have any complaints about the tool. It works pretty well for what they want and what they need to do."
 

Cons

"There could be improvements in the ease of use."
"The problem with CloudBees is that when you merge it, the pipelines would randomly fail multiple times."
"I would like to see improved speed and availability."
"A lot of stability issues are there with CloudBees."
"To improve efficiency, they should focus on smoother label deployment."
"One challenge I'd like to highlight is that with CloudBees CI growing bigger and bigger, there are limitations in terms of managing old plugins and services and upgrading them with time."
"The setup is somewhat complicated. You need a cloud architect and engineer to set it up properly. The initial setup will take time, so you need a good engineer and architect to handle it."
"I think a preview of the errors would be good just at the point where the error occurs."
"Its logging can be improved. When something goes wrong, it is not always very easy to find the problem. It is hard to identify whether the problem is because of low memory in the server or some configuration in Rational Build Forge. The error logs are not very detailed, and they should provide more information. It should also have more integration with third-party tools. It would be great to have more integration with third-party tools."
"Not user friendly for the layman."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Legal Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise17
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with CloudBees?
There are connection issues with CloudBees, specifically between Sybase and CloudBees. We often encounter connection problems, and there are issues with the pipelines.
What is your primary use case for CloudBees?
We use CloudBees for deploying the code in higher environments, such as QA, C2, staging, and production.
What advice do you have for others considering CloudBees?
I would recommend CloudBees to others because building jobs is much easier than with other solutions.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

No data available
Rational Build Forge
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Capital One, PEGA, vistaprint, HSBC, BOSCH, Starbucks Coffee
Cars.com
Find out what your peers are saying about CloudBees vs. IBM Rational Build Forge and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,797 professionals have used our research since 2012.