Azure Automation vs Shuffle

Azure Automation is a cloud service for process automation, configuration management, patch management, and remediation automation on Windows and Linux. Process automation is divided into job run time and watchers: the job run time plan includes 500 minutes per month, while the watchers plan is listed at free with 744 hours included monthly. Configuration management has separate Azure-node and non-Azure-node plans. The Azure-node option includes a configuration pull service and change tracking; the non-Azure-node option includes five nodes per month. An Update management plan lists update visibility and update deployment. These options cover automating processes, managing configuration, and handling updates across both supported operating systems. Azure Automation uses a cloud deployment model. The pricing model is listed as freemium, although the facts also state there is no free plan.

Shuffle is an open-source automation platform for security teams to build and run workflows. Its visual designer works with a no-code app creator that can generate integrations from Swagger or OpenAPI specifications and API documentation URLs. The public catalog contains more than 2,500 apps, including Slack, Gmail, MISP, Wazuh, Splunk, and Jira. Workflows can start through webhooks, schedules, subflows, or user input; extension triggers include AWS Lambda, AWS S3, Kafka, and Pub/Sub.

Deployment choices include self-hosted open source, self-hosted licensed software, Shuffle Cloud, and hybrid setups. Documented runtime architectures include Docker Compose, Docker Swarm, a cloud-hybrid local Orborus runner, and Kubernetes with Helm charts. Shuffle documents bcrypt password hashing, AES-256 encryption, tenant-controlled SAML/SSO and MFA, and a Bearer-token API. The free Scale plan is free and includes 2,000 app runs per month, with a hard limit, three tenants, and one location. Custom Python apps are not yet easy to create for Shuffle Cloud, though on-premises instances support local app hotloading.