TDS(Team Development for Sitecore) is very effective in moving Sitecore items from one environment(dev) to another(QA)/among the developers. You can directly deploy to Sitecore instance or generate .update package and install it using instance/sitecore/admin/UpdateInstallationWizard.aspx
You can go with Packaging or Serialization if you don’t have a TDS license key.
Alternate:http://programminghero.com/2016/11/tired-with-sitecore-packages-dont-you-have-tds-license/
Packageing:
- Package creation size limits to 2GB, so you need to create multiple packages instead of creating one package if your deployment exceeds 2 GB size.
- After installing package, if you have changed few items and now you want to revert these items back to original version then there is no way to achieve it.
For example: If your package contains 50 new items, then you will have 50 new items in your sitecore instance after installing this package. Now let say you have changed 10 of these 50 items and you want to revert these 10 items back to previous version (same version when you installed package), then there is no such mechanism in package installation which will help you to revert these specific 10 items.
Serialization:
- No size limit of serialization items.
- You have option to revert your installation using revert options (e.g. revert tree, revert items) in serialization.