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Digital.ai Release vs Microsoft Azure DevOps comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

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

Digital.ai Release
Ranking in Release Automation
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (15th), DevSecOps (9th)
Microsoft Azure DevOps
Ranking in Release Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
133
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (2nd), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of Digital.ai Release is 1.0%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure DevOps is 32.3%, down from 40.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Release Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Jeanne-Mari Chandran - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience seamless project management and integration with robust tools
The features I find most valuable in Digital.ai Release are the integration with MS Teams, because we have MS Teams channels that publish or push notifications to that. When we start deployments, it sends a notification to the people that we are doing a deployment to their environment. It notifies them when the deployment is started, completed, or if attention is required. I also appreciate the fact that it has plugins for Bamboo and I use lots of Gradle and JSON scripts, and we do SQL upgrades as well, triggering Flyway scripts via Bamboo, along with the integration with XLD and Jira; it's all Atlassian software. Regarding environment management capabilities, Digital.ai Release is mostly useful for me, as it is more application related and that is managed via my XLD dictionary. We have one artifact that is environment agnostic, which has placeholders that correspond to my XLD keys and values, and at deployment time, it substitutes the placeholders with those environment specific values. We don't need to make a specific deployment artifact for dev, test, or production; it is all the same artifact using environment variables, ensuring what we take to production is what was tested.
Ivan Angelov - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates agile transformation with potential for enhanced intuitiveness
What I liked about the solution is that it offers numerous features that are not available by default unless you are agile. Transitioning from the traditional Waterfall model to an agile methodology was challenging for us. Until 2020, our team predominantly worked with the Waterfall approach, using local tools like ServiceNow. We had a few team members who were familiar with Agile ISO, but none had experience with Azure. Therefore, we pursued Azure certification at the AZ-900 level. Our company organized a training session with a certified Azure expert, which was extremely beneficial for adopting best practices during the initial three months. This preparation helped us get accustomed to the new tool, as transitioning to a new system invariably requires time. Managing a pipeline of deliverables became significantly easier with this solution. We utilized it for stories and integrated change management with Azure DevOps. Eventually, everything related to the environment was organized there, enabling us to follow up and track progress with our technical engineers on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis. Reports were automatically generated and sent to management, offering them insights into our progress concerning the predefined roadmap.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Digital.ai Release is its ability to communicate with various deployment systems, such as XLD and batch deployments, as well as integrate with tools, such as Flyway and Bamboo. We use Bamboo as our build orchestrator, and Digital.ai Release also integrates with Jira, another Atlassian solution. These capabilities make it a powerful tool for managing workflow, test automation, and other processes."
"Overall, I would give Digital.ai Release a rating of nine out of ten; there's always room for improvement, but it's really good."
"The solution can apply one template across multiple applications."
"The orchestration, building the release, and then just executing it and managing that pipeline — the orchestration capabilities are great for that."
"The time is also reduced because the manual work has tremendously decreased. We just have to click one button, and it will create everything for us."
"Before using this solution, we had to deploy our applications, from pre-production to production, manually."
"The features that have a significant impact on us include CI/CD, where we have full integration with the source code repository and Azure Pipelines."
"I like the tracking and that we can monitor our velocity."
"The work items option is incredibly flexible."
"It is stable. I like Azure a lot. All our guys are Microsoft certified."
"The creation of test plans is valuable and I like the reporting features."
"It's a complete solution that has everything you need."
"The solution is easy to implement and easy to use."
 

Cons

"I would like to improve Digital.ai Release by exploring its cloud capabilities as we are currently in the middle of migrating to the cloud, but I actually have no idea what Digital.ai's cloud capabilities are."
"The backfill could be improved, we could automate that. Right now it's subjective — it's up to the lead developer's memory to remember to backfill."
"Digital.ai Release could improve by having a better plugin that works with Guardian that we use for mainframe migrations. If there could be an interface or plugin for Guardian that would be beneficial."
"Currently, we put artifact details manually. What we could improve, in our case, is the deployment instruction base. Developers input all the information, including which artifact and where it needs to be deployed. What Digital.ai could do is automatically go to the deployment instruction page, take those artifact details, and implement them."
"The solution is a little bit expensive."
"Better integration with the Linux operating system would be an improvement for this solution."
"I think Azure DevOps could improve the traceability or business intelligence about the execution of DevOps processes."
"It's too technical sometimes because it's meant for network developers. The CI/CD pipelines are not very easy to manage because it requires a lot of input. So it could be easier to manage."
"Improvements can be made mostly on the team management aspects."
"Microsoft Azure DevOps doesn't have an ITSM tool compared to its competitors."
"We would like some bidirectional synchronization. It's the requirement if you want to analyze it to software requirements, et cetera. That's something that most of the tools aren't that good at."
"Non-functional testing such as security testing, log testing, and performance testing can be improved with a better visualization."
"It is very difficult to integrate the product with third-party tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's license includes all features."
"Overall, the price is just too high; especially considering we're in the middle of a pandemic."
"It is a subscription model and I only pay for what I use."
"Microsoft Azure DevOps is free for up to five users and allows you to track a maximum of three projects."
"The majority of the components are reasonably priced."
"This product could maybe be cheaper. My organization handled licensing, so I'm not aware of which subscription they have."
"Its pricing is reasonable for the number of features that you get and the functionality that you can utilize for the agile delivery, which is what we are using it for. I found it extremely cost-effective."
"The licensing structure is good."
"The reason that customers are going to the cloud is that it provides the ability to reduce the license cost. For example, when purchasing Office 365 it is bundled with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and many other applications. In the past, purchasing a license was approximately $600. Today it's only $35 or $45 per customer, per client, or per user, plus the storage. It's less expensive for companies today, to use something, such as Microsoft Azure DevOps, and provide the software to all the employees needing a license. It's better to go with the cloud than just to buy the licenses by themselves."
"It is relatively inexpensive compared to other solutions that necessitate servers and physical hardware."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Digital.ai Release ?
The time is also reduced because the manual work has tremendously decreased. We just have to click one button, and it will create everything for us.
What needs improvement with Digital.ai Release ?
Based on my experience, I would like to improve Digital.ai Release by exploring its cloud capabilities as we are currently in the middle of migrating to the cloud, but I actually have no idea what ...
What is your primary use case for Digital.ai Release ?
My use case for Digital.ai Release is that I work for an insurance company on a very big project that develops multiple different pieces of software. We use Digital.ai Release to move our software ...
Which is better - Jira or Microsoft Azure DevOps?
Jira is a great centralized tool for just about everything, from local team management to keeping track of products and work logs. It is easy to implement and navigate, and it is stable and scalabl...
Which is better - TFS or Azure DevOps?
TFS and Azure DevOps are different in many ways. TFS was designed for admins, and only offers incremental improvements. In addition, TFS seems complicated to use and I don’t think it has a very fri...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure DevOps?
Valuable features for project management and tracking in Azure DevOps include a portal displaying test results, check-in/check-out activity, and developer/tester productivity.
 

Also Known As

XL Release, XebiaLabs XL Release
Azure DevOps, VSTS, Visual Studio Team Services, MS Azure DevOps
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

3M, GE, John Deere, Deutsche Telekom, Cable & Wireless, Xerox, and Société Générale, Liberty Mutual, EA, Rabobank
Alaska Airlines, Iberia Airlines, Columbia, Skype
Find out what your peers are saying about Digital.ai Release vs. Microsoft Azure DevOps and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.