What is our primary use case?
Initially, the main use case for Harness was to manage CI/CD and automate software delivery workflows across the engineering infrastructure, as we had challenges across fragmented tools such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and deployment scripts across multiple systems that led to failed pipelines as the engineering team was scaling. We switched to Harness to consolidate that CI/CD deployment automation part and rollback capabilities into a single platform, which allowed us to centralize software delivery while improving deployment safety.
Our main use case is managing CI/CD pipelines and automating software delivery, and Harness has actually helped us reduce deployment time and improve release reliability, which I would say is one of the most valuable features that we have been considerably inclined to. Despite the initial complexity we faced, it is a very powerful platform that has simplified software delivery and accelerated debugging and deployments for our team. It has provided an end-to-end DevOps platform with AI-assisted automation tools, significantly reducing the complexity of deployment, and the release confidence has increased by ten fold.
What is most valuable?
Harness has provided a unified DevOps workflow that has significantly reduced the manual deployment effort, and the visual pipeline management, combined with the AI automation that Harness provides, has allowed our engineering team to build and deploy applications much faster. One of the largest advantages is the ability to roll back if a release is bad, which helps us greatly to reduce production risk and improve overall developer confidence. The AI-powered assistant helps us identify pipeline failures, provides debugging insights, and simplifies troubleshooting to help engineers identify issues much faster. Additionally, Harness has also improved our onboarding of new DevOps engineers, as the centralized CI/CD workflows and tools allow new members to easily understand the architecture instead of going through multiple tools as it used to be.
Feature flagging and verification tools are a major part of Harness. The unified platform through Harness is extremely valuable because it has reduced our tool sprawl; instead of maintaining separate CI/CD, feature flagging, and verification tools, we can now manage everything effectively. This has greatly influenced our decision-making and simplified operational management significantly. Harness scales very effectively, and as deployment frequency increases and the infrastructure grows larger, the platform continues to automate releases, detect slight anomalies, and devise workflows without any performance issues, making automation become even more influential, especially as manual deployment becomes increasingly difficult for a larger team.
The AI-assisted automation is one of the major benefits of Harness, which is our main reason for utilizing the platform as it offers an all-in-one interface of CI/CD and everything. The AI-powered assistant helps us identify pipeline failures and provides debugging insights that have made troubleshooting way easier than it used to be. Before, we had to skim through all the lines of code to find a resolution, but now, we have simplified that troubleshooting process by about four to five fold, allowing engineers to identify issues much faster instead of manually analyzing logs across different systems. Beyond deployment automation, AI has become a major part of our day-to-day processes, saving time for our engineers in development rather than manually finding logs.
Harness excels in scalability, particularly during the scaling process where it continues to automate releases and effectively manage the growing infrastructure. The elimination of bottlenecks in workflows is an additional benefit that Harness provides, and as our workflows and team sizes increase, manual management becomes increasingly challenging. Harness has made that easier for us.
What needs improvement?
Harness is a very feature-rich platform, but the large number of modules can feel overwhelming for beginners as it requires a certain learning curve to understand module configurations and deployment pipelines. The interface is powerful but is not as beginner-friendly for teams without mature DevOps practices or experience. Due to the complexity of its initial use and the steep pricing for smaller companies, Harness may not feel accessible for new-age startups with simpler CI/CD needs.
One key area for improvement is simplifying the onboarding of new users; the reduction of platform complexity will help new users understand how all components interact, which feels initially very difficult. Being a powerful platform, Harness might seem excessive for early-stage startups or smaller teams that cannot utilize its full capabilities. If onboarding and pricing could be more accessible, Harness could be a game-changer for anyone using CI/CD.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been in my current field for one year and seven months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Harness has been very stable; we have not faced major issues with it. Deployment pipelines, rollback systems, and performance reliability have been excellent even during high deployment activity.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Harness is very well scalable; as my organization grows and workflows and engineering teams expand, I have not seen any scaling issues at all. It handles increasing complexity in deployment pipelines and maintains high release frequency without any issues.
How are customer service and support?
I have not required extensive customer support involvement, as the documentation is well-structured. The initial setup does require exploration, but we have not faced major issues that required support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before Harness, we were using Jenkins, GitHub Actions, AWS CI/CD, and Argo CD, each of which handled part of the DevOps cycle. We switched to Harness because it combined CI/CD deployment, verification, rollback automation, and AI-assisted workflows into a single platform, reducing our overload and the need to evaluate multiple tools.
What was our ROI?
We have seen a strong return on investment from Harness, primarily through deployment automation that has reduced our engineering overhead. Deployment times have improved significantly, and the need for manual intervention during releases has reduced considerably, which has also led to about a fifteen to twenty percent improvement in deployment efficiency and a seven to ten percent reduction in debugging and release coordination time as well. The biggest ROI comes from faster software delivery and improved engineering productivity. The time to resolve issues has been cut by about thirty to thirty-five percent, while the time to deploy has actually been cut in half.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Initially, the pricing was relatively expensive compared to open-source CI/CD solutions, which made us hesitant. However, once Harness was fully integrated into our workflow, the operational benefits became clear, justifying the investment for our use case, despite the slightly higher cost for smaller teams.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I evaluated Jenkins, GitHub Actions, AWS CI/CD, and Argo CD before choosing Harness, but Harness stood out as a single combined interface for CI/CD deployment verification.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for organizations considering Harness is to evaluate the complexity of their workflows. For smaller teams with simple deployment needs, lightweight tools may suffice, but larger teams with multi-environment releases would benefit greatly from Harness's operational capabilities.
I would rate Harness an eight overall. I chose eight because it is a very good tool, although it might not fit every organization's needs perfectly. My advice for organizations considering Harness is to evaluate the complexity of their deployment workflows and engineering operations first. For teams with simple deployment needs, lightweight CI/CD tools may suffice, while companies with large engineering teams and complex deployment processes could experience at least one point five times improvement in operational efficiency with Harness. The platform is very valuable for deployment automation and centralized DevOps, but its complexity during the initial learning phase and steep pricing make it an eight instead of a ten.
Harness is a great tool, but the initial complexity and cost can be challenging for those with minimal CI/CD needs, while it can be a game-changer for larger engineering teams requiring heavy deployment operations.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)