Capistrano vs Deployer: What are the differences?

Capistrano: A remote server automation and deployment tool written in Ruby. Capistrano is a remote server automation tool. It supports the scripting and execution of arbitrary tasks, and includes a set of sane-default deployment workflows; Deployer: Deployment Tool for PHP. A deployment tool written in PHP with support for popular frameworks out of the box.

Capistrano can be classified as a tool in the "Server Configuration and Automation" category, while Deployer is grouped under "Continuous Deployment".

Some of the features offered by Capistrano are:

• Reliably deploy web application to any number of machines simultaneously, in sequence or as a rolling set
• Automate audits of any number of machines (checking login logs, enumerating uptimes, and/or applying security patches)
• Script arbitrary workflows over SSH

On the other hand, Deployer provides the following key features:

• Simple setup process and a minimal learning curve
• Ready to use recipes for most frameworks
• Parallel execution without extensions

"Automated deployment with several custom recipes" is the primary reason why developers consider Capistrano over the competitors, whereas "Simply to use" was stated as the key factor in picking Deployer.

Capistrano and Deployer are both open source tools. It seems that Capistrano with 11.1K GitHub stars and 1.72K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Deployer with 6.9K GitHub stars and 982 GitHub forks.

New Relic, Movielala, and Repro are some of the popular companies that use Capistrano, whereas Deployer is used by Prombox, Playa, and Pharma4u GmbH. Capistrano has a broader approval, being mentioned in 295 company stacks & 81 developers stacks; compared to Deployer, which is listed in 7 company stacks and 5 developer stacks.