10 Best Software Release Management Tools In 2023

Jira Service Management is a powerful IT service management software that enables organizations to streamline and automate their service desk operations.

Jira Service Management can be used for software release management by providing a powerful platform for planning, tracking, and executing release activities. With Jira Service Management, users can create custom workflows and issue types to track release-related tasks, such as creating release notes, performing code reviews, and conducting user acceptance testing. Jira Service Management also supports version control, allowing users to track changes to code and documentation throughout the release process. Teams can collaborate and coordinate release activities using agile boards, sprint planning tools, and collaboration features like commenting and @mentions. Jira Service Management also offers powerful automation features, such as rule-based workflows and automated notifications, that can help streamline the release management process and reduce the administrative burden on teams.

Additional key features include incident management, problem management, change management, and service request management, all of which are fully customizable to fit the unique needs of each organization. Other features include a self-service portal for end-users to submit requests and track their status, SLA tracking and reporting, automation rules for ticket routing and escalation, and integration with other tools and services such as Confluence and Slack. 

Jira Service Management costs from $21/agent/month and comes with a 7-day free trial. 

Freshservice is an ITSM tool that helps with multiple IT services including release management. The main feature is the service desk which allows your IT team to manage tickets and then track and prioritize resolutions.Use automation such as machine learning-powered recommendations to take care of minor tasks while dedicating more resources to high-priority ones.

The release management features allow you to create and test plans before deployment. You can also create announcements to share with your organization to reduce disruption caused by downtime.

Freshservice helps you mitigate risk by mapping out relationships and dependencies between tasks and keeping track of all scheduled releases.The tool has access to integrations via the Freshworks Marketplace. This includes connections to tools such as MS Teams, Slack, Asana, G Suite, and Office 365.

Freshservice starts at $29 per agent per month. You can try the tool for free for 21 days.

Chef is a software release management tool with features to help teams scale continuous delivery.Dev teams can use the tool to deliver applications to almost any environment on any OS or deployment platform. The automation stack helps teams automate key release processes, while the infrastructure management features ensure consistency across all environments.

The tool also has robust compliance features to ensure updates process according to your rules, thus preventing security incidents. You just have to define infrastructure, application, and security policy requirements as code.

Together, these features mean the release process is simplified and more consistent. You’ll release products faster and save potentially thousands of hours depending on the size of your teams.

Chef doesn’t promote pricing. But you can contact the sales team for a quote based on your exact needs.

Jama Connect is requirements management software that helps guarantee releases are compliant and high-quality.Use the tool to create compliance frameworks to ensure design, development, and testing is done in a way that minimizes risk. The tool also increases process efficiency by letting teams create reusable versions of software for testing and validation.Change management features ensure all edits are stored so you get complete live traceability across the development cycle. And you can use the review center to invite relevant stakeholders to manage feedback and the review process.Jama Connect integrates with plenty of tools including task management, design and simulation, DevOps, and risk management. The tool doesn’t promote pricing, but you can sign up for a demo or a free 30-day trial on the website.

Prodly is a release management tool built for Salesforce. Its features include release management process automation, sandbox seeding, regression testing, and source control. This keeps everyone in your team on the same page and enables you to deploy changes faster.

It has several features to streamline releases. For example, you can compare different Salesforce environments to highlight differences and see exactly who made changes and when.

When releasing code, you can choose from specific changes and then deploy only these. Releasing features this way means you can slowly change your product.

There are also automated data deployment tools that allow you to move your new configuration data in just a few clicks.

Prodly doesn’t advertise pricing but you can contact the company for more information.

Plutora is a software release management tool that helps you understand the entire software release process across your organization. It lets you see how different teams perform and ensures that independent teams are aligned with the business.The idea is that it connects with all the technology used by each of your organization’s teams. This gives your organization’s leaders unparalleled insight into the production process of each team.

The tool comes with powerful analytics and visualization features that show information about your entire software delivery process. You can see data on factors like completed items and item throughput. And the tool will visualize trends or potential bottlenecks so you can take action early.

The tool integrates with plenty of other software in many categories, which is essential for organizations where different teams rely on different types of software.

The tool doesn’t advertise pricing but you can contact the team to schedule a consultation.

Darkly is a release management tool with plenty of features to help you deliver releases faster.It uses feature flags to help you decouple software deployment and releases. This allows you to release new features to different segments of users, thus decreasing risk and ensuring release managers stay in control.

It’s easy to test your code in production before releasing it to reduce risk. And if issues occur, instant rollback ensures you can resolve issues as soon as you discover them.

The tool has features for agencies that allow you to develop the software or updates and then hand the release over to business owners. The tool has SDKs for all major platforms including iOS, Android, Salesforce, and more. It also integrates with Microsoft Teams and Slack to keep your team in the loop.

Pricing starts at $10 per seat per month. This provides unlimited feature flags and access to all the tool’s 25 plus SDKs.

You can sign up for a free 14-day trial on the website.

Octopus Deploy is a deployment automation tool that aims to make deploying web apps fast, repeatable, and reliable. The tool works with both on-premises and cloud-based applications.The tool is solely focused on deployment. And you can deploy directly to web services like AWS or Microsoft Azure.

The tool has a step template library that comes with hundreds of official and user-generated workflows for deploying different types of projects. This means you can get up and running by creating scripts yourself.It’s also easy to configure variables such as login data for third-party services or database connection strings. This allows Octopus to automatically update your configuration files as it pushes your file to different environments.

Octopus pricing starts at $50 per month for 5 deployment targets. You can grab a 30-day free trial on the website.

CloudBees is a software delivery platform with features to help your delivery updates at speed.The tool has powerful compliance features and is designed for large organizations that prioritize compliance. For example, the rule designer tool lets teams set enterprise-wide standards for code, data, identities, and cloud environments.

Teams can create pipelines to manage the release process. And they can test code in production-like environments. It also has deployment automation features with multiple out-of-the-box release and rollback strategies. You can also schedule deployments based on resource availability.

The tool has robust analytics to help you optimize performance, remove bottlenecks, and reduce costs. You can see data such as the number of successful deployments in a given period, as well as the ratio of successful deployments to efforts.

CloudBees doesn’t advertise pricing, but you can contact one of the company’s experts to find out more.

Jira is a release and update management software for agile teams. It helps with the entire release process, from planning and prioritizing tasks to reporting on team performance.Start by breaking your project into smaller tasks and then assign them to team members so everyone knows what to work on. Team leaders get an overview of all work and they can see estimated timelines as well as all the task status.

The tool comes with a variety of ready-made templates including those for teams that use Scrum and Kanban methodologies to organize their work. This ensures the tool fits your team’s style of working. There’s also a bug tracking template so you can see issues and assign people to make fixes.

Jira integrates with a ton of tools including Slack, Figma, and Tempo Timesheets via the Atlassian Marketplace.

Jira has a free plan for up to 10 users. Paid plans start at $75 per month and provide advanced features and more file storage.