20 Best Release Management Tools In 2024

Do you think a software developer's work is finished once the software is open to its users?

No, It is where the real work begins. Making constant required updates to the software, adding new features, debugging bugs, and adding new features encompasses the substantive challenge.

Having all these things in the pipeline while looking at the releases can become challenging. This is where the release management tools come in handy. 

Release management tools help organizations streamline and automate their software release processes.

This article will discuss the 20 best release management tools for every budget. We will include its release features, pricing, and pros, which teams can benefit from.

How Do You Choose the Right Release Management Tool?

Choosing the right release management tool is often tricky, as many factors must be considered.

Here are some tips to help you select the right tool:

Identify your needs. 

• What are the most essential features you need in a release management tool? 
• Do you require a tool that can automate deployments? 
• Do you need a tool that can track release history? 
• Do you need a tool that can integrate with other systems? 

Once you know your needs, you can narrow your options.

• Research different tools. There are many different release management tools on the market, so it’s essential to research and compare different options. Read reviews, compare features, and talk to other users for recommendations.

• Consider your budget. Release management tools can range in price from free to hundreds of dollars per Month. Setting a budget before you start your search is essential so you spend your time wisely.

• Try out different tools. Many release management tools offer free trials or demos. This is a great way to test different tools and see which works best for you.

• Assess ease of use and scalability: Consider the tool’s user interface and how intuitive it is for your team to adopt and use effectively. Ensure the tool can scale with your organization’s growing needs, accommodating increasing project complexity, larger teams, and expanding release requirements. Dependencies and timeline estimates must be visible.

• Get buy-in from stakeholders. Once you’ve chosen a release management tool, getting buy-in from all stakeholders involved in the release process is essential. This will help ensure everyone is on the same page and the tool is used effectively.

Release management is often part of a broader software development and delivery ecosystem. Ensure that your chosen tool can integrate with your organization’s other essential tools, such as version control systems, issue tracking systems, continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, and test automation frameworks. Seamless integration will help streamline your release process and avoid data silos.

Our List Of 20 Best Release Management Tools

1. Chisel– The Ultimate AI-Powered, Unified PM Platform
2. Unleash– Best Open-Source Solution To Automate the Deployment of New Features. 
3. Jira– The Powerful Issue-Tracking Software. 
4. Chef– Automation Features To Scale the Team’s Continuous Product Delivery 
5. Octopus Deploy– Makes Deployment Fast and Reliable
6. Plutora– Helps To Improve Your Software Releases With Overall Visibility 
7. Spinnaker– One-Stop Solution for Releasing Software Changes 
8. Prodly– The Tool for Salesforce and Streamlining Releases. 
9. Azure Pipelines– Building and Deploying Code With Any Platform and Language 
10. Ansible– Flexibility- To Automate Tasks Across Teams 
11. Clickup– Project Management With a Tool With Release Management Features
12. Freshservice– Service Management Tool With Release Management Features
13. Nolio– Release Automation Tool
14. Digital.ai– Ai-Powered DevOps Platform With Release Management Features
15. Jenkins– Open Source Automation Server With Release Management Features
16. AWS DevOps Pipeline– Service Management Tool To Automate Delivery Pipelines 
17. Jama Connect– SAAS Requirements Management Software and Traceability
18. Aqua Alm– The Web-Based Test Management System With Collaboration Features.
19. Gitlab Pipelines– Streamline the Software Delivery Process
20. Pflb Platform– Performance Testing Platform and Services

This article will discuss every budget’s 20 best-release management tools. We will include its release features, pricing, and cons, which teams use regularly.

1. Chisel

The Ultimate AI-Powered, Unified PM Platform

Chisel is your one-stop solution for managing your products effectively. It perfectly balances all three aspects of a product manager’s job: the customer, the roadmap, and the team. 

Since Chisel is the #1 agile product management platform that helps agile teams track releases, gather feedback, and align teams, every organization must have a workspace like Chisel. Whether you’re a software developer, a release manager, or a product manager, Chisel is made for you.

Using Chisel’s many excellent features, you can get all the required details, from timelines to granular details like comments, prioritization scores, dependencies, etc., all in one workspace area.

Features Chisel Offers

• Chisel helps reduce risks by mapping out dependencies and relationships between tasks and features and keeping track of all releases.

• Access integrations such as Jira, Slack, MS Teams, Salesforce, etc.

• Link an idea with the Release. 
• Attach relevant documents and images to the Release. 
• Create a central repository of user feedback and feature requests using the Idea Box. 

• Get feedback from your target audience using the Feedback portal to make data-driven decisions that reflect your customers’ needs. 

• It revolutionizes release management by effortlessly classifying vast feedback volumes, automating tag-based organization, and swiftly generating feature descriptions. Its AI-driven efficiency ensures streamlined planning and enhanced security for proprietary data.

Chisel Pricing 

• Get started with the free forever plan
• The premium plan will cost $49/ per maker/mo.
• Contact the Sales team for more information on the Enterprise plan.

2. Unleash

Best Open-Source Solution To Automate the Deployment of New Features.

We have Unleash on the list because of its tagline and what it stands for, “Code freely. Release confidently. Then scale it.”

Unleash is an open-source solution with the best built-in data security features. The best part about Unleash is that it helps its users to roll out features and updates over time. It begins by rolling out the update to the smaller audience and gradually moves to the larger audiences while collecting data on the reaction to the update and features. You can simply turn off the feature releases if something goes wrong. 

Features Unleash Offers

• Feature flagging
• A/B testing
• Performance monitoring
• Interactive dashboard with real-time insights on the updates and new features, performance metrics, and feature adoption rate
• Analytics gives the developers and others in the team a more extensive report on the feature’s performance, helping them make better decisions on the ones to prioritize and those to keep for later.
• Seamless integration with GitHub, GitLab, and Jenkins.

Unleash Pricing

• For developers: Free-open source
• For teams: Pro plan: $80/mo
• Contact for Enterprise plan

3. Jira

The Powerful Issue-Tracking Software.

Jira software, created by Atlassian, is considered one of Agile team members’ most popular release management tools for various reasons. One is that it provides enough visibility on the release process and enhances collaboration between engineering and product teams to track releases. All this, in turn, helps to increase productivity. 

This issue/ticket tracking software helps you run a release report that showcases the total issues in the Release, dividing it by the ones in progress and the completed ones. 

Features Jira Offers

• Mighty, agile boards help break complex projects into manageable work pieces. 
• Timeline view 
• Integrate Jira with the tools you use daily and extend with the 3000+ apps
• Hassle-free deployment options
• Use the powerful Jira Query Language (JQL) to build advanced queries. 

Jira Pricing

• Free plan available
• Standard: $8.15/ per user
• Premium: $16/per user
• Enterprise: Contact Sales

4. Chef

Automation Features To Scale the Team’s Continuous Product Delivery 

Next up on the list is Progress Chef, a tool for release management with great automation features. Chef is a tool that is a package of features that will help you with release management effectively. 

If you’re a product manager or a developer, you can use Progress Chef to deliver apps to any environment on any deployment platform. With the help of their automation stack, you can automate critical key releases. You can prevent security issues by using Chef’s Cloud security. 

When all these features come together, your release process is simplified and consistent. Your product release will happen at a faster pace, too. 

Features Chef Offers

• End-to-end cloud security management tool
• Premium content, such as ready-to-go CIS-certified audit and remediation content, is available for compliance scanning.
• Reduce risk across IT resources using the Chef Desktop
• Apply configurations consistently using the Chef infrastructure management tool
• Chef app delivery and Chef compliance tool

Chef Pricing

Chef doesn’t have a free plan. You will need to visit their page to get further information on pricing by contacting their sales team. 

5. Octopus Deploy

Makes Deployment Fast and Reliable

Octopus Deploy is a cloud-based, on-premise deployment automation and independent vendor app specially designed for DevOps and configuration management purposes. 

This single Platform helps teams manage release timelines, control end-to-end software development, effectively manage deployments, and automate runbooks to keep the release cycle going.

Features Octopus Deploy Offers

• Deploy to AWS or MS Azure
• Step template library for deploying various types of projects
• Integration with your favorite CI server
• Has your team’s entire suite of applications and services running on a variety of infrastructure
• First-class runbook automation tool

Octopus Pricing

• Community: $10/mo
• Professional: $12/per target/mo
• Enterprise: $18/per target/mo

6. Plutora

Helps To Improve Your Software Releases With Overall Visibility

Plutora stays true to its tagline: “Orchestrate, automate, and improve releases from idea to realization to become the hero of software delivery in your organization.”

This software release management tool helps you gain control over your releases. You get to organize your complex releases and manage dependencies, and using the analytics and insights, get to know what’s working and what’s not. 

Plutora has a range of exciting and valuable tools that also help you to continuously improve your feature throughput and deliver more customer value, bringing together your releases across methodologies and tools. 

Features Plutora Offers

• Integration with your existing tools
• The release calendar helps to share centralized Release easily plans
• Piece together release processes from various spreadsheets
• Accelerate complex deployments with automation product

Plutora Pricing

• You must schedule a pricing consultation with Plutora to get a demo.

7. Spinnaker 

One-Stop Solution for Releasing Software Changes 

Spinnaker, a free, multi-cloud, open-source continuous delivery platform, offers application management and deployment, which helps teams release software updates with high velocity and confidence. 

The tool helps teams to standardize the release processes with its flexible pipeline management system. The best part about Spinnaker is that it’s been battle-tested by many teams over many deployments. 

Their application management and application deployment tools help lift the burden of the development teams. 

Features Spinnaker Offers 

• Restrict access to specific projects and accounts using the internal authentication system with GitHub teams, OAuth, etc.
• Chaos monkey integration
• With CI integrations, you can listen to events, trigger pipelines, and collect artifacts.
• You can install, update, and configure a Spinnaker instance using the halyard, Spinnaker’s CLI tool.
• Various deployment strategies are available.
• Event notifications, restrict execution windows and monitor integrations.

Spinnaker Pricing 

Free to use 

8. Prodly

The Tool for Salesforce and Streamlining Releases.

Prodly is a release management tool specially built for Salesforce. You can easily streamline releases where you can compare your salesforce environments to understand who made changes and at what time. You can choose and deploy the changes when you decide to release the code. 

Prodly also offers automated data deployment tools that help you move your new configuration data quickly.

Features Prodly Offers

• Release management process automation
• Sandbox seeding
• Regression testing
• Source control
• CI/CD for Salesforce deployments

Prodly Pricing 

Prodly has different pricing plans, for which you can contact them and visit their page for more information.

9. Azure Pipelines 

Building and Deploying Code With Any Platform and Language 

You can build and deploy code from any language using the Azure Pipelines tool. Start by creating a new project using the software’s organization and source code stored in the version control system. From there, you can start a CI and CD release pipeline.

Features Azure Pipelines Offers

• With the Containers and Kubernetes, you can push images to registries such as Azure container registry.
• Complete the build, test, and deployment tasks with hundreds of extensions
• Deploy to any cloud you choose, such as AWS 
• Get support for test integration reporting and release gates.

Azure Pipelines Pricing 

• Free for public projects
• For self-hosted and Microsoft-hosted CI/CD contact sales team. 

10. Ansible

To Automate Tasks Across Teams

The Red Hat Ansible Automation platform is a cloud-based IT automation tool. Regardless of your role in the team, this tool is for everyone irrespective of your automation goals. 

Ansible helps you to connect teams, demonstrate value, and deliver efficiencies for your organization. Built on open source, Ansible helps you with smooth software deployment, rolling out updates, cloud provisioning, and system configuration.

Features Ansible Offers

• Ansible lightspeed
• Event-driven tools
• Automation hub
• Integration with various third-party apps
• Rectify automaton behaviors using various tools like automation controller, mesh, etc.

Ansible Pricing

• Pricing will vary depending on the individual and organization’s sizing and subscription choices. Contact the Ansible team for a customized quote. 

11. ClickUp

Project Management With a Tool With Release Management Features

ClickUp is a unified workspace designed to take the mess out of managing releases from start to finish. The tool combines task management, collaboration, and work tracking to streamline every step of the release process.

By centralizing all release coordination and communication, ClickUp gives teams the confidence to ship better products faster.

Features ClickUp Offers 

• Planning releases is simplified with Roadmaps that break work down into named versions or milestones with target release dates. 
• As work items are completed, changing their status to “Released” archives them from the active backlog while keeping them searchable for future reference. 
• Release burndown charts under Dashboards to track progress toward completing criteria for a given version. 
• The flexible repeating release feature enables establishing regular cadences like monthly, quarterly, or annual update cycles in an organized, predictable flow.
• Using Release Tracking, all content linked to a particular launch aggregate in one place for easy reference by QA, support, success teams, and more
• Detailed release notes can be generated on demand or scheduled based on configured release workflows.

ClickUp Pricing

• FREE: Free forever
• Unlimited: $7 billed per user per Month
• Business: $12 billed per user per Month
• Enterprise: Get a custom demo and see how ClickUp aligns with your goals.

12. Freshservice

Service Management Tool With Release Management Features

Freshservice brings together an intuitive project and ticket management with powerful automation. Teams can efficiently plan releases using customizable Kanban boards, assign tasks across sprints, and track progress in real-time. Dependencies are apparent from a single source of truth, so nothing slips through the cracks. Comprehensive change tracking gives stakeholders complete visibility to identify issues early.

By centralizing the entire release workflow, Freshservice gives teams the confidence to innovate at velocity while maintaining high standards of quality and stability.

Features Freshservice Offers

• Roadmaps that break down work into named versions or milestones with target dates.
• Assign issues and tasks to specific releases so everyone knows what goes into each product version.
• Archive the features out of the active backlog as “released” while still maintaining searchability for the future.
• The release burndown chart shows progress toward completing each planned Release.
• Regular release cycles like monthly/quarterly can be set up with recurring release configurations.
• The software’s release tracking pulls together all linked content.
• Auto-generated release notes based on closed items.

Freshservice Pricing

• Starter: $19.00
• Growth: $49.00
• Pro: $95.00
• Enterprise: $119.00

13. Nolio

Release Automation Tool

Nolio can automate everything, from planning releases to integrating with the version control and CI/CD pipelines to managing approvals and deployments across test and production.

The tool also catches human errors.

Features Nolio Offers 

• Aligns your whole approval workflow directly in the UI. 
• The real-time dashboards help in seeing the health of any release in progress. Any stuck stages light up, so issues get addressed.
• Rollbacks are accessible with one click.

Pricing

Enterprise: Custom

14. Digital.ai

Ai-Powered DevOps Platform With Release Management Features

Digital.ai’s Release helps standardize the rollout processes through guided workflows while allowing flexibility as needed.

Compliance and security are also front and center. Digital.ai knows that for larger companies, it’s not just about shipping code – it’s about mitigating risks. The Release enables thorough testing and approvals at each stage to help ensure everything stays on the right side of industry regulations.

The tool takes a holistic view across the entire software development lifecycle to help you deliver quality software, predict issues early, and optimize processes over time.

Features Digital.ai Offers

• Release orchestration helps to coordinate releases across all your environments from one place. 
• Define release workflows, automate approval gates, and track the status of deployments.
• The tool integrates with leading tools to let you consistently deploy from dev to production.
• Approval gates ensure quality by adding approval steps to your release pipelines. 
• Automated testing helps to validate every change. 
• Model all your infrastructures – from test and UAT to production – in a single pane of glass.

Digital.ai Pricing

• Free
• Basic Tower: $5,000 per year
• Cloud: Starting at $12.00 Per Month

15. Jenkins

Open Source Automation Server With Release Management Features

Jenkins have developed the release plugin to bring release management capabilities directly into the Pipelines. Rather than scrambling manually each time, you can intelligently orchestrate releases across your entire development lifecycle. The release step triggers full or incremental builds on any job.

Templates ensure a consistent release process without hindering customizability. Things like automatic versioning, artifact promotion, and transitioning through test environments are all supported out of the box. Yet you can also tweak individual releases as needed. Compliance and governance are built-in, too, through features like approval rules and audit trails.

Features Jenkins Offers

• The release step allows you to trigger a release from one job for another configured with release management.
• You can define different parameters to capture info for your Release. 
• The plugin integrates with Jenkins pipelines to automatically deploy your Release to each one – dev, test, staging, production, etc. 
• If there are issues downstream, their rollback option can be helpful. 
• Restricted access to releases based on credentials and roles is also available. The release job results are viewable only by specific users. 

Jenkins Pricing

• Free
• Basic Tower: $5,000 per year
• Enterprise: Custom

16. AWS DevOps Pipeline

Service Management Tool To Automate Delivery Pipelines 

AWS offers CodePipeline to help teams reliably and efficiently ship code. It acts as a fully managed continuous delivery service within your AWS infrastructure. Which overall helps in the Release management.

With CodePipeline, your teams maintain autonomy while achieving visibility and consistency. The intuitive graphical interface makes release orchestration simple.

Features AWS DevOps Pipeline Offers

• The process is broken down into discrete stages like ‘Build,’ ‘Test,’ and ‘Deploy’ in the CodePipeline console. 
• The system handles provisioning the servers for each stage and orchestrating between them.
• When deployments fail downstream, The tool helps to trace issues to the Git commit that caused it.

AWS DevOps Pipeline Pricing

• For V1 type pipelines: You pay $1.00 per active pipeline per Month. 
• For V2 type pipelines: You pay $0.002 per action execution minute. 

17. Jama Connect

SAAS Requirements Management Software and Traceability

Jama gives product teams total visibility and control over their release workflow. Users can define requirements, plan testing, track issues, and carefully coordinate releases through an intuitive interface. Additionally, the various stages all flow seamlessly within a single platform.

Features Jama Connect Offers 

• The linear approach lets you take a sequential route through your releases. You can use the release field to label each item for a single release. 
• The software allows you to duplicate projects and sync items between them easily. 
• Whichever approach you choose, the traceability makes reviews easy. Stakeholders can see how requirements flow through to testing.

Jama Connect Pricing

• Request pricing (Custom)

18. Aqua ALM

The Web-Based Test Management System With Collaboration Features.

Aqua was designed as an ALM platform to bring order to the chaos. Through an easy-to-use interface, it connects all aspects of the testing lifecycle. Aqua streamlines all release workflows, so your team can focus on building excellence.

The software eliminates bottlenecks between QA, developers, and other groups. Everything is transparent and accessible in one place, preventing finger-pointing headaches down the road. 

Features Aqua ALM Offers 

• The system breaks each Release into “epics” and “stories”. It automatically traces everything to tests and defects, too. 
• The boards and Kanban view can help to map out each sprint. It syncs with the Jira workflow seamlessly. 
• It tracks the story points automatically, which is epic for reporting.
• Version control can be done through branching projects so releases can evolve independently.
• The defect tracking is tidy, as bugs are linked to the tests that catch them and the stories they affect. 

Pricing

• ??Free Trial
• Subscription Based

19. Gitlab Pipelines

Streamline the Software Delivery Process

GitLab Pipelines allow you to set up a structured workflow for building, testing, and deploying your code. You can define the steps needed at each stage – whether compiling assets, running tests, or deploying to different environments. The software then executes these steps properly for each merge request or push.

The best part is it provides complete visibility into the process. You get a dashboard overview to monitor the status of current and past pipelines. 

Features Gitlab Pipelines Offers 

• Every code change automatically triggers a new Pipeline. 
• Pipelines run your existing test suite, catching bugs or broken features early before they make it to users. 
• If tests pass, the code is automatically deployed to your test/review environments. 
• You can merge your code to the main branch. Pipelines will build, test, and deploy everything.
• See the entire history of changes and outputs for every pipeline run. 
• Integrate with chat tools to notify teams when deploys finish or tests fail. 

Gitlab Pipelines Pricing

• Free: $0 per user/month
• Premium: $29 per user/month
• Ultimate: For enterprises looking to deliver software faster

20. PFLB Platform

Performance Testing Platform and Services

PFLB is a release management tool founded by a group of engineers who got tired of seeing projects fail due to poor performance. 

With the Platform, you can simulate thousands of simultaneous users on your website or app anywhere in the world. This lets you uncover issues like slow pages, database bottlenecks, or server overloads before real users encounter them. It has features like browser and device emulation, too, so you know your product performs well on mobile.

Features PFLB Platform Offers 

• Easy-to-use cloud-based tool for load and stress testing before Release for Product managers and developers
• You can simulate thousands of simultaneous users on your website or app from anywhere globally. This lets you uncover issues like slow pages, database bottlenecks, or server overloads.
• It also has features like browser and device emulation for mobile.
• It is very flexible as you sign up, configure virtual users and testing scenarios, and then kick off tests from your laptop or phone. 
• Results are available right away in easy-to-understand dashboards and reports. 

Pricing

• Demo: Free Up to 50 load tests
• Developer (monthly): $59 1200 tests per year
• Pro (monthly): $119 2400 tests per year

Comparison Table Of Best Release Management Tools

Conclusion

With all the above tools, you can choose the best fit for your requirements and budget. Choose the free trial options carefully and select suitable ones for your teams. 

We hope you find the best release management tools!

FAQs

Q: Is there a difference between open-source and commercial-release management tools?

A: The main differences are cost and support. Open-source tools like Jenkin are free to download but offer less out-of-box features and vendor support. Commercial tools from companies like Chisel, Azure DevOps etc. cost money but provide more robust capabilities and premium customer service. It depends on your budget and needs.

Q: Which tool is better suited for small teams vs. large enterprises?

A: Small teams do well with lighter open-source tools that are easy to set up with limited resources. As codebases and deployments grow larger, the additional scalability, access controls and reporting of commercial enterprise-grade solutions like Chisel are preferable for bigger organizations.

Q: Are there any free or open-source release management tools available?

A: Yes, some popular free and open-source options are Chisel Jenkins, GitLab and Travis CI. These provide core CI/CD functionality at no cost. Commercial tools offer more advanced quality-of-life features, but open-source gets the job done for many small to mid-sized teams.

Q: What are some tips for successfully implementing a release management tool?

A: Make sure product managers & developers are trained, appoint administrators, start simple then expand functionality, integrate with other tooling already in use, get stakeholder buy-in, monitor metrics to ensure value over time. With the right planning and team adoption, release management tools streamline processes.