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There’s no sugarcoating it — LaunchDarkly is not for everyone.
Though many companies have found success using this popular feature management platform, the competition is always evolving, and new (better) alternatives have started to emerge.
In this article, we’ll analyze the main LaunchDarkly alternatives to give you a full 360-degree view of the feature management SaaS market and help you find an alternative that works for your specific business needs.
The LaunchDarkly competitors we’ll be putting under the lens:
- Eppo — The overall best LaunchDarkly alternative
- Split — Best for feature flag issue alerting and monitoring
- DevCycle — Best for dev tool integrations
- Optimizely — Best for e-commerce and content/project management
- CloudBees — Best for swift software delivery process
- ConfigCat — Best value-to-cost ratio
- Prefab — Best for single users or small teams
- Unleash — Best open-source library for DIY flagging
Top LaunchDarkly alternatives
#1 Eppo - Best overall
What is it?
Eppo is an experimentation and feature management platform — and the best alternative to LaunchDarkly.
Eppo offers a robust feature flag system that goes beyond basic on/off switches and simple randomization to help development teams prove the business impact of every feature.
They also provide sophisticated tools for personalization, optimization, and experimentation analysis in one unified platform. Their data warehouse-native integrations mean that feature flags can be measured and tracked using metrics from any part of the business.
This enables users to run all kinds of experiments, from simple A/B tests to more complex experiments like multi-arm bandits and improvements to AI/ML models.
Key features
- Warehouse-native integration: Eppo simply connects to your existing warehouse (Big Query and Snowflake — among others) and runs queries directly on top without any special integration or setup.
- Integrated feature flags: Eppo’s feature flags integrate with its broader experimentation platform. They facilitate controlled and insightful tests as well as granular control over feature deployments.
- Loved by engineers: Proactive alerting, industry-leading uptime, user-friendly design, and scaleable architecture make Eppo’s feature flags a popular choice with engineering and experimentation teams alike
- Don’t just ship, prove impact: Eppo helps you build an experimentation culture within your company, providing extra tools like scorecards (metrics dashboards for assessing how experiments are going) and an expansive library of documentation and educational onboarding material.
How does it beat LaunchDarkly?
Eppo beats LaunchDarkly on important considerations like experimentation, uptime/reliability, and user-friendliness. LaunchDarkly does cover all the basics of increasing deployment speed and reducing the risk of deploys, but lacks the focus on measuring and proving the impact that Eppo’s experimentation-centric strategy offers.
Best for:
Any company looking to use experimentation to drive growth, customer retention, and revenue.
#2 Split
What is it?
Split is a feature management platform that combines feature flags with in-depth testing and visibility capabilities to ensure features are deployed effectively and with minimal risk. Its focus is on monitoring and issue prevention.
Key features
- Alert system: Receive automated notifications for any issues linked to specific feature flags.
- Real-time monitoring: Thanks to its integrated attribution engine, it’s possible to track feature impact and identify issues quickly.
- Experimentation capabilities: Asses how different versions influence crucial metrics across various sources.
- Feature flags: Develop, target, and oversee feature flags for phased rollouts and immediate rollbacks when necessary.
How does it beat LaunchDarkly?
The main difference between the two is that Split provides the user with better issue visibility options and an overall better alert system. LaunchDarkly, on the other hand, has smoother workflows and better automation options.
Best for:
Companies whose teams are concerned with possible issues during feature deployment and want to be on top of them with good monitoring and alerting capabilities.
#3 DevCycle
What is it?
DevCycle is a feature flag management platform catered to developers. It stands out for its suite of dev tool integrations and friendly interface.
Key features
- Dev-centric approach: Benefit from a server-less framework and extensive API access to get the most out of DevCycle.
- Feature flags: Leverage DevCycle’s automation features to avoid manual changes. Since the platform is focused on speed, feature rollout and rollback are exceptionally quick.
How does it beat LaunchDarkly?
DevCycle is pretty similar to LaunchDarkly. Its key differentiator is its focus on developer tools. However, beyond that, it’s rather inferior to LaunchDarkly.
- Best for: Developers who need surface-level feature flags and experimentation tools.
#4 Optimizely
What is it?
Optimizely is a suite of marketing tools designed to assist companies in crafting superior digital experiences. It achieves this by integrating solutions for content management, marketing, web, and feature experimentation, along with tools for optimizing e-commerce operations.
Within its offering, its feature experimentation tools stand out by allowing non-technical users to create personalized digital journeys for users across various touch points.
Key features
- Feature flagging: Optimizely offers feature flagging capabilities that allow for granular control over feature deployment and the user experience. This includes targeted rollouts, A/B testing, and safe experimentation within production environments
- Website experimentation (add-on product): As a separate cost/license but in a similar UI, marketers can also quickly craft frontend tests with Optimizely's visual editing tools and live previews.
- E-commerce specialization: Optimizely tailors the checkout process using a combination of CMS, experimentation tools, and customization options to enhance the shopping experience.
- Content and project management: Manage projects from ideation to deployment and centralize the delivery and optimization of content.
How does it beat LaunchDarkly?
Optimizely is better than LaunchDarkly in terms of features aimed at marketers, like project and content management for e-commerce. LaunchDarkly edges out Optimizely when it comes to depth on feature flagging specifically since feature flags aren’t Optimizely’s main focus.
Best for:
Companies and teams that specialize in e-commerce and aren’t interested in more advanced feature flags capabilities.
#5 CloudBees
What is it?
CloudBees is an enterprise software delivery company that provides a platform to streamline and automate the software development lifecycle.
One of their core products, CloudBees Feature Management, enables development teams to build and deploy apps quickly through its advanced feature flagging capabilities, fostering a more dynamic and flexible development environment.
Key features
- Robust feature flagging: Central to CloudBees Feature Management, this system allows for the controlled rollout and testing of new features, improving implementation and risk management without needing code redeployment.
- Targeted rollouts and experimentation: This facilitates granular control over who sees what features and when, enabling A/B testing and incremental rollouts directly tied to user feedback and behavior.
- Integration ecosystem: CloudBees Feature Management integrates with popular DevOps tools, including Jenkins for continuous integration and Slack for real-time notifications, enhancing collaboration and streamlining workflows.
How does it beat LaunchDarkly?
CloudBees caters more to enterprise-level needs with a focus on developers and the deployment process. LaunchDarkly offers a simpler and faster setup, making it a good choice for smaller teams or those prioritizing rapid development cycles.
Best for:
Large organizations and enterprises looking for a secure, scalable, and feature-rich platform to manage their software delivery process.
#6 ConfigCat
What is it?
ConfigCat is a cloud-based feature flag and configuration management service that lets developers simplify how they release and manage features within their applications.
Its user-friendly dashboard makes it easy to control feature visibility, target specific user groups, and conduct A/B testing — all without the need to constantly redeploy code.
Key features
- Easy feature control: Toggle features on/off for individuals or groups using their intuitive dashboard.
- User targeting: Deliver features to specific user segments based on location, email, subscription, or custom criteria.
- Flexible integrations: Easily integrates with popular programming languages, frameworks, and tools.
How does it beat LaunchDarkly?
ConfigCat’s main differentiator is that its free plan offers all core features from the get-go. While LaunchDarkly is quite affordable when compared to other alternatives, it can’t compete with ConfigCat’s cost to value ratio.
Best for:
Teams or developers looking for a feature flag and configuration management solution that doesn’t require a pricey upfront investment.
#7 Prefab
What is it?
Prefab is a developer-focused feature flagging platform that aims to replace several standalone tools traditionally used in application development. It offers a unified solution to manage feature flags, dynamic configurations, and logging levels.
Prefab's emphasis is on developer experience, providing seamless integration with code editors and a powerful CLI to keep developers in their flow without the need to constantly switch context.
Key features
- Dynamic configuration as code: Treat configuration like code, allowing you to change values on the fly across environments and avoiding unnecessary deployments.
- Targeted and cost-effective logging: Adjust logging levels for specific users, services, or even code sections. Save on logging costs by only enabling in-depth logging when you need it.
- Focus on developer efficiency: Prefab streamlines the development process through its code editor integrations, powerful CLI, and intuitive dashboard.
How does it beat LaunchDarkly?
Prefab is more affordable than LaunchDarkly. It offers live chat support (which LaunchDarkly doesn’t) and it is entirely usage-based, which most users find fairer than LaunchDarkly’s seat-based pricing.
Best for:
Individual users or small teams looking for an affordable feature flagging solution without tacked-on A/B testing features.
#8 Unleash
What is it?
Unleash is an open-source library for feature management. It simplifies your development workflow, accelerates software delivery, and empowers teams to control how and when they roll out new features to end users. With Unleash, you can deploy code to production in smaller, more manageable releases - just like the larger SaaS tools for feature flagging.
Key features
- Optimized development workflow: Unleash enables trunk-based development, allowing teams to continuously merge code into the main branch while controlling feature exposure to users.
- Easy rollback and risk mitigation: Quickly disable a newly released feature that causes issues without redeploying the application.
- Access controls and change requests: Full control over who can turn feature flags on and off in production. All changes are subject to approval by one or more approvers and are logged to make passing security and compliance audits easy.
How does it beat LaunchDarkly?
Unleash’s sheer number of customization options are incomparable to LaunchDarkly’s. While working with open-source software does bring its own set of challenges, experienced developers will likely prefer Unleash over LaunchDarkly
Best for:
Fans of open-source software who want a highly customizable feature flagging alternative to LaunchDarkly.
Which LaunchDarkly alternative should you choose?
With so many options available, choosing the right LaunchDarkly alternative for your needs can be tricky. Here are some recommendations based on common use cases:
- For small engineering teams on a budget: ConfigCat or Prefab are good options here. They both offer core feature flagging functionalities - without the steep learning curve or price tag of other options. Unleash is an open-source option, if you’d rather not pay a provider at all.
- For robust A/B testing: You’ll definitely want to go with Eppo, which comes with a visual experiment editor, multivariate testing, and robust support for large sample sizes. Plus, Eppo’s A/B testing capabilities go beyond web-centric testing, allowing users to even run tests on things like LLMs or customer support workflows.
- For enterprise-level scale and a larger product ecosystem: CloudBees excels in this field. It can handle high data volumes, complex permissions and it integrates nicely with enterprise systems. The tradeoff is that CloudBees can get very expensive as you scale up, and feature flagging is only a small part of their overall company foucs.
- To replace LaunchDarkly entirely: That’s going to be Eppo. It’s one of the only alternatives with a comparable set of feature flag functionalities, A/B testing capabilities, and deep analytics.
Next steps with Eppo
After reading our list, you should be ready to make an informed decision and go with the LaunchDarkly alternative that fits your business needs.
Eppo stands out as the clear winner, and it’s all because of its unique experimentation philosophy.
Eppo’s offering is focused on helping you use experiments to impact your revenue and retention metrics like no other platform in the market.
With Eppo you’re getting a full suite of ready-made features:
- Designing and overseeing variations: Eppo’s end-to-end experimentation platform merges top-tier feature flagging with sophisticated testing capabilities for creating advanced test designs — from different environments and waterfall allocations to mutually-exclusive layers and holdouts.
- Launching tests: Diagnostics and real-time metrics features confirm your tests launch correctly, spotting any potential issues early on before time and effort is wasted.
- Analyzing results: Eppo’s best-in-class statistical engine offers you trustworthy, rigorous, and easily understood results, turning complex data into actionable insights.
- You can also create slice-and-dice explorations to dive deeper into results on the fly for even more insights.
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