DevOps is a set of practices and tools as well as a cultural philosophy that focuses on automating and integrating the processes between software development and IT teams. The DevOps movement began out of concerns regarding the traditional software development model, where Developers who wrote code worked independent of the teams who deployed and supported the code. 

As you can imagine, DevOps greatly improved development processes by creating communication channels between those who wrote code and those who tested and deployed it. This benefitted Salesforce development processes as well. Here are some of the reasons why DevOps is important in Salesforce development.

Why is DevOps important in Salesforce Development?

DevOps increases the ability of teams to deliver new features to their user base and solve issues quickly. Just like with development of other software, DevOps has increased the ability of Salesforce development teams to deliver new features to Salesforce users and solve any issues that arise quickly and effectively. It also enables shorter lead times for making changes and developing new features. DevOps in Salesforce development ensures that there will be fewer service disruptions, making sure that everything is always running smoothly. 

DevOps is also important to Salesforce development because of its emphasis on deploying software more often in a secure way through the use of automation. By automating processes, Salesforce development teams can release new features more often and release new versions of Salesforce products that provide improvements to the previously existing versions. Automating processes enables development teams to save time as well. 

Salesforce DevOps focuses on ensuring that Salesforce Admins and Developers can deploy changes in the most efficient way possible.

What do Salesforce DevOps tools do?

Salesforce DevOps tools help development teams navigate Salesforce development challenges and deliver lasting value to their customers and Salesforce users. Here are some specific benefits to combining DevOps and Salesforce development.

Version Control 

Version control allows teams to track all of the changes made. It also enables them to check contributions made by individual developers, so that all developers working on the software can see who contributed what to the end product.

CI/CD

CI/CD automates the process of testing and validating changes, making it easier for changes to be deployed on a regular basis. When changes and upgrades are made often, it becomes important to be able to easily keep track them and test and validate efficiently so these changes can be deployed effectively. 

Automated Testing

Automated testing helps development teams test changes before they are deployed. It also improves the quality of Salesforce development by reducing the occurrence of bugs in the code. 

Backup

DevOps tools in Salesforce allow teams to easily deploy backup data for testing as well as restore data and metadata. 

Code Scanning

Code scanning tools help development teams automate the manual process of reviewing Salesforce code and how that code is configured. This allows teams to make sure that every team member follows the same code standards, keeping everything uniform.

Salesforce Dev Ops Tools Comparison

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7 Best Salesforce DevOps Tools

There are a number of different Salesforce DevOps tools you can choose from, so to help you choose the Salesforce DevOps tool that is best for your project, we’ve put together a list of the best ones.

Copado
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Copado is an end-to-end DevOps solution for Salesforce customers. It starts at $250 per user per month and has a 5 star rating from 84 reviews on AppExchange. The latest release of Copado was on June 3rd 2022. It offers faster, error-free releases with continuous integration and deployment technologies. 
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With its comprehensive suite of tools, Copado offers end-to-end DevOps solutions specifically designed for Salesforce environments. Its seamless integration with Salesforce allows for efficient release management, continuous integration, and automated deployment processes. Copado's version control system ensures better collaboration and enables teams to work in parallel, increasing productivity.
Its sophisticated testing capabilities enable robust quality assurance, while its deployment tracking and rollback features ensure seamless and reliable deployments. Additionally, Copado provides comprehensive compliance and governance features, making it an ideal choice for organizations with stringent security requirements.

Copado pricing: Starts at $250 per user per month
AppExchange rating: 5

Gearset
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Gearset is a complete Salesforce DevOps solution, offering unparalleled deployment success and continuous delivery. Designed to make Salesforce DevOps easy, Gearset is another great option for development teams. 

With its intuitive interface and user-friendly design, Gearset enables seamless collaboration and streamlines the entire DevOps process for Salesforce environments. It covers every aspect of the DevOps lifecycle, including version control, automated deployments, and release management. Gearset's robust change monitoring and comparison capabilities allow for efficient tracking of changes and easy identification of conflicts. The tool's powerful deployment automation and rollback features ensure smooth and reliable deployments, reducing downtime and minimizing risks. Additionally, Gearset's advanced data migration capabilities simplify the process of moving data between Salesforce orgs, enhancing productivity and efficiency.

Gearset pricing: Starts at $200 per user per month
G2 rating: 4.7

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AutoRABIT
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AutoRABIT is a complete Salesforce DevOps platform. It offers best-in-class Salesforce DevOps solutions on one easy-to-use platform. With faster deployments, stronger code, and reliable security, you may want to consider scheduling a demo of this platform.

With its end-to-end automation capabilities, AutoRABIT empowers organizations to accelerate their Salesforce development and deployment processes. Autorabit's advanced testing capabilities enable thorough quality assurance, while its seamless deployment automation ensures reliable and error-free deployments. Additionally, Autorabit provides powerful data migration and backup features.

AutoRABIT pricing: Custom pricing
G2 rating: 4.3

Flosum
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Flosum is a 100% native DevOps platform for Salesforce. It starts at $300 per user per month and has a 5 star rating from 238 reviews on AppExchange. Flosum allows users to seamlessly manage changes across their entire development ecosystem. It’s most recent release was on October 13th 2022.

Flosum's version control system enables seamless tracking and management of changes, ensuring full visibility and control over the development lifecycle. With automated deployment capabilities and advanced rollback features, Flosum ensures reliable and error-free deployments. Furthermore, Flosum's robust testing and validation tools provide comprehensive quality assurance, minimizing risks and enhancing the overall performance of Salesforce applications. Its compliance and security features ensure that organizations can maintain data integrity and adhere to regulatory requirements.

Flosum pricing: Starts at $300 per user per month
AppExchange rating: 4.9

Prodly

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Prodly offers next-generation DevOps and Sandbox Seeding for Salesforce. Pricing starts at $15,000 USD per company per year. It has a five star rating from 52 reviews on AppExchange and its latest release was on September 21st 2022. It lets you manage and track Salesforce work easily without disrupting users.

Prodly enables Salesforce teams to increase productivity by 80 percent while reducing risk up to 30 percent by putting next-gen DevOps into the hands of admins and citizen developers. By reimagining the change management experience, Prodly delivers greater business agility, governance, and compliance without straining IT. Prodly's DevOps offering has rapidly expanded from a CPQ data deployment tool to include solutions for modern Salesforce DevOps, data migration, sandbox seeding, and SOX compliance.

Prodly pricing: $15,000 per company per year
AppExchange rating: 5

Blue Canvas
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Blue Canvas offers Git based DevOps for Salesforce starting at $150 per user per month. It has a five star rating from 15 reviews on AppExchange. It increases the speed and safety of your releases and can help your team replace change sets with Git-based DevOps in just one day!

Blue Canvas makes Salesforce deployments fast and safe. It brings source control and continuous delivery tooling to Salesforce developers.With Blue Canvas you can deploy to sandboxes, staging orgs and production in a number of seconds using our push-to-deploy technology. Blue Canvas also gives developers and admins full version control on their Salesforce instances insuring higher code quality and safer deployments.

Blue Canvas pricing: Starts at $150 per user per month
AppExchange rating: 4.9
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Salto.io

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Salto allows users to quickly analyze metadata, compare orgs, and deploy any changes. It starts at $125 USD per user per month and has a five star rating from eight reviews on AppExchange. Salto is a metadata management tool designed to help Salesforce admins provide the best quality changes.

Salto's versatility enables seamless integration with a wide range of popular DevOps tools, facilitating enhanced collaboration and efficiency across teams. Salto translates your business applications' configuration into text, allowing you to easily search, compare, test, deploy, and track changes across your environments. It's a single tool where both admins and developers can explore metadata, identify dependencies, compare orgs, deploy changes, and use Git to document changes and roll back to previous versions.

Salto pricing: Starts at $125 per user per month
AppExchange rating: 5

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Ready to implement your chosen Salesforce DevOps tool?

If you have chosen one of the DevOps tools we listed in this article and are ready to implement it, but you want help to ensure you get it set up correctly, feel free to reach out to FoundHQ! We can suggest a few Salesforce Developers and Dev Ops Consultants who can help you!

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