Introduction
This is a brief comparison of Nexus and Artifactory Binary Repository Managers. It is a research only paper, not a hands on comparison based on a very short investigation of internet sources and opinions.
A good, at a glance, overview of the different Binary Repository Managers is available here:
https://binary-repositories-comparison.github.io/
Versions
Nexus Open Source 3.2.1
Nexus Pro 3.2.1
Artifactory Open Source 5.1.3
Artifactory Pro 5.1.3
Artifactory Enterprise 5.1.3
Nexus – Free vs Paid
Pro
Vendor support (1yr)
Integrates with Atlassian Crowd
Integrates with LDAP for SSO
Nexus Procurement Suite – Extra control/enforce standards for external libraries, to ensure that every dependency is evaluated for security or license compliance
Nexus Staging Suite – to support release and quality assurance decisions
Artifactory – Free vs Paid
[https://www.jfrog.com/confluence/display/RTF/Artifactory+Comparison+Matrix]
Paid
Need paid versions to support NuGet, Ruby, Docker, Python, npm (JavaScript packages), Chef, Puppet, Bower, Vagrant, Debian, RPM, PHP
Repository replication
Managing build artifacts
Automatic 3rd party licence detection
REST Api
Annotate and Search artifacts
Gits LFS (Large File Storage)
Aggregate and bulk operations
Email notifications
Jar signing
OAuth
Atlassian Crowd integration
SSO (Pro only)
Enterprise only
Multipush replication
S3 object storage
Google cloud storage
JFrog email support
Availability, clustering
JFrog Mission control (full) – Multiple instance manager
Licensing costs
Nexus
[https://www.sonatype.com/nexus-product-pricing]
$10 per user per month (10 user minimum)
Artifactory
[https://www.jfrog.com/pricing/]
1 license = 1 server
Pro – from $3k per server
Enterprise – $29.5k (3 license pack)
Artifactory vs Nexus
There is a lot of Internet debate on this subject, devolving into flame wars is some darker corners. The two products are very similar, after all they are both trying to solve the same problem. Artifactory is the hip and cool new kid on the block and Nexus is the “old fashioned” been around for ages with the baggage that entails product.
The main difference as far as .Net project is concerned is that Nexus OS supports NuGet whereas only the paid versions of Artifactory support NuGet.
There is an excellent article on the minor differences between the two here:
[https://dzone.com/articles/maven-repository-manager-nexus]
It essentially boils down to:
Artifactory is slightly easier to use with a slightly richer feature set.
Artifactory has tighter integration into CI tools and artifacts can be traced back to build jobs. Nexus can do a similar job with a plug-in but only for the Pro version.
Artifactory supports many more repo types than Nexus. However, Nexus supports more/all the relevant to the Rail Account types in the Nexus OS version.
Recommendations
For a .Net project
the over-riding concern is NuGet integration to support .Net projects. Nexus supports NuGet in the free open Source version whereas Artifactory requires a paid version before support NuGet.
Artifactory supports more repository types but only after the move to a paid version.
The paid version of both products support enterprise features such as multiple repository management, external repo management, repo staging, jar signing, clustering etc.
The move to a paid version of either of these products should only be considered when any of these features become required to support a project. At which point a full evaluation of each products and its feature set should take place. However, the licensing cost model will be a defining factor with Artifactory potentially being cheaper for larger development teams.
In the mean time my recommendation is to use Nexus OS that as it is free and Open Source and to consider Artifactory in the future on feature/cost basis as necessary.
References
www.sonatype.com
http://blog.sonatype.com/2010/01/nexus-open-source-or-professional-which-one-is-right-for-you/
https://www.sonatype.com/repository-pro-3-lp
https://support.sonatype.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002546807-Nexus-Repository-Manager-3-2-1-Release-Notes
www.jfrog.com
https://www.jfrog.com/artifactory/versions/
https://binary-repositories-comparison.github.io/
https://dzone.com/articles/maven-repository-manager-nexus
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/364775/should-we-use-nexus-or-artifactory-for-a-maven-repo
https://dzone.com/articles/why-nexus-and-not-artifactory
IT's Cloudy Here 