Nutpipe as an alternative to GitHub Actions and Fastlane
Nutpipe.com is a mobile DevOps CI/CD platform focused on DX (Developer eXperience) and performance (utilizing Apple Silicon M1 machines by default).
When mobile developers are starting a new project, one of the first problems they face is: how to build and distribute the application automatically.
The very common approach the teams choose is to use GitHub Actions and Fastlane scripts. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of this approach vs. using Nutpipe mobile CI/CD platform and compare it in the following categories:
- Simplicity and speed of setting up the workflow
- Speed of builds and own HW
- Pricing
Setting up the workflow
Custom solution with GitHub Actions
If you choose to build a custom DevOps pipeline, there is a buy-in price you will need to pay — learn how to configure GitHub actions and Fastlane lanes. For a small project, that can be fairly easy. For more complex projects, the effort will grow — imagine having different flavors of apps, different builds for dev, staging, prod, different white labels for different clients, etc.
Creating and testing/fixing the pipeline might take hours or even days, depending on how skilled your engineers are in this area.
Using Nutpipe CI/CD platform
With Nutpipe, the setup could not be easier. The platform will scan the codebase, guess the project type and create recommended build workflow with auto-suggested configuration options.
You can tweak the setup, and add various distribution, testing, and notification channels. Every option is validated, not letting you do a mistake that would fail the build.
Setting the workflow is as fast as you are able to provide signing keys for the build, everything else can be done in a matter of minutes.
Speed of builds and own HW
Custom solution with GitHub Actions
Builds will be only as fast as the hardware they run on. Also, iOS applications can be built only on machines with macOS and XCode. Although GitHub Actions do support Mac machines, they are very slow.
You can also provide your own hardware, but you will need to 1) buy it, 2) set it up, and 3) provision and update it. It is also a single point of failure and the failure usually comes on a release day.
Then there is scalability — imagine you will need to build several builds at a time. It is not possible to have parallel builds on one macOS machine, you will have to virtualize or buy more expensive HW that would be idle most of the time (btw, renting a Mac Mini from Amazon will be around $700 / month).
Using Nutpipe CI/CD platform
At Nutpipe, we provision the fastest possible machines for your iOS and Android builds. By default. For iOS, you will get Apple Silicon M1 chips, where build time is at least 3x faster than on an ordinary Intel i7 setup.
You will pay only for what you will use and the more you will use, the less you will pay for a build minute.
No buy-in costs, no maintenance costs, and no security patching on your side.
Pricing
Custom solution with GitHub Actions
Depending on the size of your team, GitHub Actions will cost you at least ~$50 / per month per seat in the Team package and ~$250 per month per seat in the Enterprise package. This excludes your own hardware (in case you will want faster builds) and maintenance of the workflow, bug-fixing, etc.
Using Nutpipe CI/CD platform
You can invite as many colleagues as you want to the Nutpipe and you will still pay only for the build time you will use. You can start completely for free without a credit card, getting 200 build minutes and one parallel build.
The price then starts at ~$30 for 500 build minutes and one parallel build. In case you need will need more, you can configure the precise amount of build minutes and parallel builds you need. You will be charged only a pro-rated increment to what you have already paid till the end of a subscription period.
All features are included in all the plans (even free ones), and seats are free of charge.
Conclusion
Overall, for most projects it is beneficial to outsource the solution of mobile DevOps to SaaS, saving efforts and costs. The one big downside — some developers just love to create their own solutions and they are righteously proud of the solution and love to maintain it. We know it, that’s how Nutpipe happened to be :)
Check Nutpipe out or request a Demo, where we will walk you through the platform.
