# Octopus Deploy Alternative Source: https://www.jawsdeploy.net/solutions/octopus-deploy-alternative Octopus got a lot right - the project model, the environment scoping, the release-then-promote shape. They also got more expensive, more complicated, and slower to evolve than many teams can stomach. Jaws Deploy is the alternative built by people who agreed with the model and disagreed with everything else. ## Let's be direct about why you're here If you are reading this page, one of three things is happening. Your renewal quote arrived and it was higher than the last one. Your team is spending hours per week on platform-side maintenance you did not sign up for. Or your CIO asked 'what else is out there?' and you are doing due diligence. All three are legitimate. We will not waste your time pretending otherwise. This page is the case for switching, written by people who like the Octopus model and built a smaller version of it on purpose. > **// The 'why now' moment - Most teams switch when one of three lines in the budget tips over.** > > There is no shame in being on Octopus. There are real reasons many teams are now looking around: the per-target pricing math stops working past a certain footprint, the platform itself takes increasing care and feeding, and the product roadmap has been - charitably - cautious. If none of those have hit your team, you may not need to switch yet. ## What we kept from the model We want to be specific about what carries over directly. If you came from Octopus, you should recognize most of this immediately - the labels are the same on purpose. ## The mental model, intact - **Projects**: Same concept. One project per deployable thing. The deployment process lives on the project, scoped to environments. No surprises here. - **Environments**: Logical stages of the release lifecycle, just like you're used to. Variables scope to them. Lifecycles enforce the order they're touched in. - **Deployment processes**: An ordered list of steps with built-in templates, custom templates, and PowerShell. If you can describe an Octopus process, you can describe a Jaws Deploy one. - **Releases & promotion**: Immutable release snapshots. Promote through environments. Same shape, same audit benefits, same 'deploy the previous release' rollback story. ## What we left behind This is the more interesting list. The things we deliberately did *not* port over - because they were where most of the pain came from. ## Things we decided not to do - **Per-target pricing as the primary axis.** It punishes the teams that succeed. Our pricing is flat-with-a-machine-allowance, then linear, then enterprise. No magic step functions. - **Tenant-per-customer as a major product concept.** Multi-tenant is real, but it became its own product surface in Octopus and accidentally complicated the simple case. We handle it through workspaces and tags - simpler, almost as flexible. - **The runbooks feature as a competing first-class concept.** Runbooks at Octopus's scale started to overlap with deployment processes confusingly. We let the deployment process be the deployment process; if you need ad-hoc ops automation, it's a script. - **Manual intervention as a step type with its own UI.** It exists, but it's deliberately understated. Most teams who used it discovered they needed an approval workflow elsewhere anyway. - **The kitchen sink of step templates we don't actually maintain.** We ship the well-loved ones, well-supported. Community step templates are an integration, not a Marketplace promise. > **// Where we differ on philosophy - Fewer features, owned more carefully.** > > The biggest single difference is product surface. Octopus accumulated capability over a long time. We have a smaller surface, on purpose. Some teams will hit a feature we don't have - and the honest answer is, yes, that is the trade-off. The deal is: less to learn, less to maintain, faster fixes, lower price. If you needed that one specific feature and we don't have it, we are probably not the right fit. If you needed the core 80% and were paying for the rest - that's the sweet spot. ## The pricing comparison, with our cards on the table We will not put a competitor's pricing on our marketing page - that ages badly and goes wrong in ways we don't want to manage. What we *will* tell you is the shape of our pricing and where the typical Octopus customer lands when they switch. **Per-target scaling** Pricing tied to the number of deployment targets and (historically) tenants. Predictable until it isn't - the bill jumps when you add a cluster of small machines, even if each one is doing very little work. **Flat plans, linear after a threshold** A free tier for proving the workflow. A flat Professional plan that covers most teams. Linear scaling after that, with no per-target tax. The bill correlates with team size, not infrastructure shape. ## Migration: the actual mechanics The migration question is where most evaluators get stuck, so let's be specific about what it looks like. Migrating from Octopus to Jaws Deploy is not zero work. It is also not a full project rewrite. ## From the teams who have done it - **Export the project structure** - Octopus exposes its model via REST API. Project names, environments, variable sets, and deployment process definitions are all readable. - **Recreate the projects in Jaws Deploy** - mostly mechanical. We have a migration helper for the common cases; the long tail is manual. - **Re-author custom step templates** - if you have custom step templates in Octopus, you'll rebuild them in Jaws Deploy. Same shape, different syntax for the body in some cases. - **Rewire the CI integration** - the call from your CI changes from 'create Octopus release' to 'create Jaws Deploy release'. Usually three lines. - **Cut over one project at a time** - we *strongly* recommend not big-banging this. Pick a non-critical project, migrate it end-to-end, run both platforms in parallel for a sprint. > **// Realistic timeline - Most teams complete the migration in 4-8 weeks of part-time work.** > > That number assumes a team with 10-30 projects, a few dozen environments, and the usual Octopus complexity. Less than 10 projects? Often two weeks. More than 100? It's a quarter. We have helped teams do all three. ## From Octopus to Jaws Deploy, side-by-side If you trigger Octopus releases from CI today, this is the part of your build script that changes. That's it. ``` # BEFORE - Octopus octo create-release ` --project "Checkout.Web" ` --version "2026.5.16.$buildNumber" ` --server "https://octopus.acme.example" ` --apiKey $env:OCTO_API_KEY ` --deployTo "Staging" # AFTER - Jaws Deploy New-JawsDeployRelease ` -Project "Checkout.Web" ` -Version "2026.5.16.$buildNumber" ` -Url "https://app.jawsdeploy.net" ` -ApiKey $env:JAWS_API_KEY ` -DeployTo "Staging" ``` ## The teams who don't switch Not every Octopus customer should move. To respect your time, here's who probably shouldn't. ## Honest reasons not to migrate - You are deeply invested in Octopus runbooks and ad-hoc automation, and your team uses them more than deployment processes. Different product fit. - You depend on a long tail of community step templates that we don't replicate. The 80% case is well-covered; the long tail is by design. - Your team has internal tooling built on top of the Octopus REST API that would need to be rewritten. Jaws Deploy has its own API - the data model is similar but the endpoints differ. - You're already on a healthy renewal cycle, the team is happy, the bill is fine. There's no virtue in switching for its own sake. ## How to actually evaluate this Spin up a free Jaws Deploy workspace. Pick *one* Octopus project and rebuild it - just the deployment process and the variables, not the entire history. Time how long it takes. If it took less than a day and the resulting workflow feels familiar - that's your migration test passed. If you want, [we will do that migration with you on a call](https://www.jawsdeploy.net/contact). One project, one hour, no commitment. That conversation is usually more useful than reading another comparison page.