Unlike other C.I tools that are built in a linux environment, appveyor is built in a windows environment which allows you to test application performance in windows. Appveyor has a very clear documentation which allows you to easily set up your appveyor.yml file of copy a pre-configured file Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AppVeyor?

Unlike Travis.yaml file, the appveyor.yml file requires a lot more commands to configure your project of C.I Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Trevor B.

Senior Scientist

Research

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

6/25/2016

"Simple Windows-based continuous integration server"

4.5/5

What do you like best about AppVeyor?

Unlike other CI services, AppVeyor has Windows-based infrastructure, which allows me to test my software on all major platforms. Setting up projects with appveyor.yml is straightforward and matches with how other similar non-Windows based services do configuration.

Appveyor's Python support is impressive as it offers several different Python versions including both 32 and 64 bit versions of Python, and Miniconda-based Python installations. The documentation associated with the Python environment is also well done and contains the information you need to get your builds running quickly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AppVeyor?

Builds can be slow in the free version that does not allow concurrent jobs. The paid option allowing concurrent jobs is too expensive. While AppVeyor allows your to change what your configuration file is named, it does annoy me that the default is appveyor.yml, rather than a file prepended with a dot to make it hidden. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering AppVeyor:

I would find it difficult to justify the expense of the Premium plan, but for open source projects, AppVeyor is great. If the lack of concurrent jobs is an issue, I would recommend limiting the number of tests that you run with AppVeyor. Do your detailed testing and generate coverage reports with another faster CI and use AppVeyor to ensure that your basic tests run in 32 and 64 bit Windows. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is AppVeyor solving and how is that benefiting you?

Windows is likely the most commonly used platform for our users, yet all of our developers use Mac OS X or Linux. AppVeyor ensures that our products still work in Windows without having to have a dedicated Windows build machine. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Mark W.

Senior Developer

Market Research

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

8/2/2016

"AppVeyor makes it incredibly easy to configure and deploy"

4.5/5

What do you like best about AppVeyor?

The ease of configuration. The fact that it's a hosted service is a massive plus because it means you don't have to manage the underlying infrastructure. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AppVeyor?

It needs more configuration options for parallel builds. I'd like to be able to limit the amount of builds per branch. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering AppVeyor:

There's nothing better in terms of build automation out there in the marketplace. The VMs have everything you need in order build in most environments. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is AppVeyor solving and how is that benefiting you?

We use AppVeyor to build our products. We've quickly seen that AppVeyor's build time is considerably less than our previously TeamCity installation. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Rachith P.

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

2/11/2016

"Pretty good for windows builds and python developers!!"

4/5

What do you like best about AppVeyor?

Well, Firstly, its free for open source projects. A good CI build that includes build, test, and deploy means that you don't have to fear your code. When compared to Travis CI which is expensive for active projects, artifacts here are easily available. However for database CI AppVeyor has the major advantage that it comes with a SQL Server database on the build agents by default. This significantly simplifies the setup and avoids the need to provision, setup and teardown database virtual machines on each build. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AppVeyor?

1. Its slow compared to Travis CI.

2. Platform Development!- Works for only windows! It would be good to have all in one place( for linux users).

3. Free accounts have slow build. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering AppVeyor:

It's quite easy to use. However the documentation isn't good, only source of info is reviews and forums.

Support is really helpful, and often they will implement things that are missing and preventing you from moving forward. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is AppVeyor solving and how is that benefiting you?

1. Windows users do not need to face any problems as the python packages undergo automatic regression testing with AppVeyor.

2. Testing and packaging cross-platform Python Modules for open source projects.

3. AppVeyor let's us continuously build and test our code at a rapid pace. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Mathew S.

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

3/22/2016

"Simple and Powerful"

5/5

What do you like best about AppVeyor?

- NuGet.Support

- Good integration with GitHub pull requests

- Configuration in YAML

- Deployment to custom environments

- best 4 Windows

- Safe with isolated build environments

- good customer support

- outstanding free service for open-source projects Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AppVeyor?

- a bit slow than others

- need to support more operating systems

- No Java support

- No IDE integration Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering AppVeyor:

AppVeyor is Simple, Powerful and Great 4 Windows and GitHub. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is AppVeyor solving and how is that benefiting you?

I work mainly on open-source projects.

AppVeyor conducts all the tests on my code and keeps monitoring its status on every change.

On receiving a pull request, AppVeyor automatically checks for errors and reports if merging a pull request would break my code. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

John V.

Research Data Analyst

Higher Education

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

12/17/2015

"Very useful for Python developers"

4.5/5

What do you like best about AppVeyor?

The best feature of AppVeyor is they allow *any* artefacts to be captured from the build and downloaded easily from Appveyor. This is a big feature over Travis, which has a recipe for using Amazon S3 to store artefacts, but that turns out to be quite expensive for very active projects. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AppVeyor?

No support for Github organisation authorisation.

Slow builds for free accounts.

Protection of environment variables is sub-optimal. Several times a command has failed and Appveyor has dumped out all variables, including passwords, to the log. As the log is on the net, the log then needs to be deleted. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering AppVeyor:

Be *very* careful with putting passwords in environment variables. Appveyor likes dumping them to the log if there is a problem with a command.

Avoid cmd scripts like the plague.

Create build logic as .ps1 scripts.

For Python, use the demo project's appveyor.yml: https://github.com/ogrisel/python-appveyor-demo

For coverage, use https://codecov.io/ instead of https://coveralls.io/ , works very well with Appveyor, but also integrated with Travis - it merges coverage data from Appveyor and Travis together, allowing cross-platform coverage data. coveralls.io fails badly in this scenario. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is AppVeyor solving and how is that benefiting you?

I primarily work on Pywikibot, a framework for automated maintenance of wikis.

Automatic regression testing of Python packages using Appveyor ensures Windows users do not suffer regressions caused by our primarily Linux/OSX development team. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Cameron T.

Software Engineer

Computer Software

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

12/17/2015

"Great for any Windows Builds"

5/5

What do you like best about AppVeyor?

We've been using AppVeyor for over a year. We recently jumped up to 5 concurrent jobs, which really helps speed up our matrix builds. Pricing is simple. Support is superb. I really like that they have an integrated NuGet feed. We use it for build dependences and Chocolatey software installs. Setting up environments to deploy web app builds to Azure App Service is simple. Many developers at our company use AppVeyor for their open source projects too, so they are familiar with it, and some build scripts can be shared. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AppVeyor?

The updates have caused our builds to break a couple of times, but switching back to the previous image was just a single line change in appveyor.yml. At times, it would be useful to control the build image, or at least a layer on top of their's. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering AppVeyor:

Definitely try it out. Take a look at many of the open source projects are currently using it. Just search for appveyor.yml in GitHub. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is AppVeyor solving and how is that benefiting you?

We use it for building all our software, automated testing (unit and some integration), continuous deployment, and all other deployments. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Tauseef R.

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

12/14/2015

"CI system for windows based builds"

4/5

What do you like best about AppVeyor?

Language and framework support. Every problem that I have with travis, appveyor solves it. I tried a c++ project and setting it up to use a proper compiler was a breeze as appveyor comes with standard msvc and mingw compiler suites, ruby, python and most common languages are well supported. Builds started almost right away and showed up in the console whenever I pushed to github and the builds were very fast too. The web-ui is pretty slick and barebones, but it works for most of the cases. It mails your registered email address with latest build results. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AppVeyor?

Obviously, platform support. It works only well for windows. As it is right now, you have to use travis for linux/osx AND appveyor for windows. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering AppVeyor:

As with any CI systems, try it with a sample project first. It is easier than travis, as the same project took me a lot less to setup in appveyor so there is that. If you need to have cross-platform/windows build support, currently appveyor seems the only way. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is AppVeyor solving and how is that benefiting you?

I just need to push to github and appveyor will start the build/test procedure right away, informing me the results via mail. This also negates the need to state current build status in readme as it can be seen directly form the ci badge. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Michael Ira K.

Senior Software Engineer

Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

6/23/2016

"appveyor - essential for cross platform application development"

4.5/5

What do you like best about AppVeyor?

ability to build my linux applications under windows using cygwin or msys Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AppVeyor?

not clear if / how to set up concurrent builds Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Abhas B.

Trainee Decision Scientist

Information Technology and Services

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

12/11/2015

"Only free hosted CI server for Windows, very customizable"

4.5/5

What do you like best about AppVeyor?

1. Builds on Windows, essential for cross-platform applications

2. Free for open-source projects

3. Allows downloading compiled files, ready for distribution - called "Artifacts"

4. Very good integration with everything Windows - Nuget, Visual Studio, Azure and well documented. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about AppVeyor?

1. Windows-only - A really cross-platform free CI server is very necessary to stop writing similar but different config files for separate Windows and linux severs.

2. Much slower compared to Travis CI, which runs multiple test setups in parallel by default. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering AppVeyor:

Quite easy to use, but a bit overwhelming when getting started - Start with a basic appveyor config and start adding build steps one-by-one to get acquainted. Use Nuget to install things, it works just like apt-get for linux. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is AppVeyor solving and how is that benefiting you?

Testing and packaging cross-platform Python Modules for open source projects

Benefits -

Before I joined the project, it used to be developed by a linux-only person and so, it was marked as "Not ready for windows" because he couldn't test it on Windows machines. Considering that python itself is so cross-platform, it is sad to see such status alerts on some projects.

After doing some minor Windows fixes, it was very important to do continuous testing on Windows, so that the admin can easily catch if it will fail on Windows, without maintaining such a setup. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.