Digital.ai Release vs GitLab comparison

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Digital.ai Release

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

Digital.ai Release and GitLab are competing in the agile delivery and DevOps domain. GitLab has the upper hand due to its extensive features and integration capabilities, considered worthy of its pricing.

Features: Digital.ai Release offers effective release management and deployment automation, suitable for enterprise-scale releases. Additionally, it integrates well with different deployment systems and tools like Jira and Bamboo, making it efficient for managing workflows. GitLab stands out with its all-in-one DevOps platform that encompasses code repository management and CI/CD pipelines, along with a user-friendly interface, making it a comprehensive tool for DevOps processes.

Room for Improvement: Digital.ai Release could enhance its adaptability for non-enterprise settings and simplify its learning curve. Improvements in UI and onboarding processes can make it more accessible. GitLab could enhance its advanced features usage and streamline its comprehensive documentation for easier access. It could also focus on expanding its feature set to avoid drop-off in usage complexity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Digital.ai Release is known for its structured deployment procedures and proactive customer support, catering to complex enterprise environments. GitLab offers flexible deployment models combined with extensive documentation and community support, enhancing convenience for various organizations.

Pricing and ROI: Digital.ai Release involves a higher initial setup cost that offers long-term ROI in large enterprises with its customizability. GitLab offers competitive pricing with a lower initial investment, providing a compelling ROI through its efficient, integrated platform, appealing to organizations seeking comprehensive DevOps solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed Digital.ai Release vs. GitLab Report (Updated: May 2025).

Digital.ai Release vs. GitLab

May 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Digital.ai Release

Ranking in Build Automation

15th

Ranking in Release Automation

10th

Ranking in DevSecOps

9th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

GitLab

Ranking in Build Automation

1st

Ranking in Release Automation

2nd

Ranking in DevSecOps

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (9th), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (6th), Rapid Application Development Software (11th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of Digital.ai Release is 0.9%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 15.4%, down from 18.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

Jeanne-Mari Chandran

Software Configuration Specialist at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

Experience seamless project management and integration with robust tools

The features I find most valuable in Digital.ai Release are the integration with MS Teams, because we have MS Teams channels that publish or push notifications to that. When we start deployments, it sends a notification to the people that we are doing a deployment to their environment. It notifies them when the deployment is started, completed, or if attention is required. I also appreciate the fact that it has plugins for Bamboo and I use lots of Gradle and JSON scripts, and we do SQL upgrades as well, triggering Flyway scripts via Bamboo, along with the integration with XLD and Jira; it's all Atlassian software. Regarding environment management capabilities, Digital.ai Release is mostly useful for me, as it is more application related and that is managed via my XLD dictionary. We have one artifact that is environment agnostic, which has placeholders that correspond to my XLD keys and values, and at deployment time, it substitutes the placeholders with those environment specific values. We don't need to make a specific deployment artifact for dev, test, or production; it is all the same artifact using environment variables, ensuring what we take to production is what was tested.

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Rohit Kesharwani

Manager, Engineering at 7-Eleven

Improved agility and time to market with CI/CD enhancements

The CI/CD pipelines in GitLab ( /products/gitlab-reviews ) are highly valuable. Another important feature is the single source of repository, allowing efficient repository management and source code management. GitLab provides manageability by allowing us to manage source code effectively through separate repositories. Additionally, GitLab enables the creation of individual CI/CD pipelines for each repository, making software more agile. By integrating GitLab as a DevOps platform, we have enhanced agility, improved our time to market, and different teams can work collaboratively on various projects.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Digital.ai Release is its ability to communicate with various deployment systems, such as XLD and batch deployments, as well as integrate with tools, such as Flyway and Bamboo. We use Bamboo as our build orchestrator, and Digital.ai Release also integrates with Jira, another Atlassian solution. These capabilities make it a powerful tool for managing workflow, test automation, and other processes."

"The time is also reduced because the manual work has tremendously decreased. We just have to click one button, and it will create everything for us."

"Overall, I would give Digital.ai Release a rating of nine out of ten; there's always room for improvement, but it's really good."

"The solution can apply one template across multiple applications."

"The orchestration, building the release, and then just executing it and managing that pipeline — the orchestration capabilities are great for that."

"As a developer, this solution is useful as a repository holder because most of the POC projects that we have are on GitLab."

"It streamlines our DevOps processes with automated CI/CD pipelines."

"GitLab has better support, and its features are superior compared to Jenkins."

"The dashboard and interface make it easy to use."

"It is scalable."

"The tool helps to integrate CI/CD pipeline deployments. It is very easy to learn. Its security model is good."

"GitLab's best feature is Actions."

"We're only using the basic features of GitLab and haven't used any advanced features. The solution works fine, so that's what we like about GitLab. We're party using GitHub and GitLab. We have a GitHub server, while we use GitLab locally or only within our team, and it works okay. We don't have any significant problems with the solution. We also found the straightforward setup, stability, and scalability of GitLab valuable."

More GitLab pros

Cons

"The solution is a little bit expensive."

"I would like to improve Digital.ai Release by exploring its cloud capabilities as we are currently in the middle of migrating to the cloud, but I actually have no idea what Digital.ai's cloud capabilities are."

"The backfill could be improved, we could automate that. Right now it's subjective — it's up to the lead developer's memory to remember to backfill."

"Currently, we put artifact details manually. What we could improve, in our case, is the deployment instruction base. Developers input all the information, including which artifact and where it needs to be deployed. What Digital.ai could do is automatically go to the deployment instruction page, take those artifact details, and implement them."

"Digital.ai Release could improve by having a better plugin that works with Guardian that we use for mainframe migrations. If there could be an interface or plugin for Guardian that would be beneficial."

"It would be really good if they integrated more features in application security."

"Based on what I know so far, its integration with Kubernetes is not so good. We have to develop many things to make it work. We have to acquire third-party components to work with Kubernetes."

"The solution should be more cloud-native and have more cloud-native capabilities and features."

"For as long as I have used GitLab, I haven't encountered any major limitations. However, I think that perhaps the search functionality could be better."

"There are missing search features, particularly when searching repositories or applying filters. Additionally, I have encountered issues with the deployment of CI/CD pipelines, especially dealing with variable environments."

"It could have more security integrations and the ability to check the vulnerability of the code. I don't think it is a responsibility of Gitlab, but it would be nice to have more options to integrate with."

"GitLab could add a plugin to integrate with Kubernetes stuff."

"The solution should again offer an on-premises deployment option."

More GitLab cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's license includes all features."

"Overall, the price is just too high; especially considering we're in the middle of a pandemic."

"I'm not sure if they have some kind of discount. I've been negotiating with them on prices before, and I believe they weren't too happy to give discounts, but list prices are $19 per user, per month for Premium and $99 per user, per month for Ultimate. So, the difference between Premium and Ultimate is a bit bigger, and in most companies, you need to build some type of business case."

"My company uses the free version of GitLab, which is GitLab Community Edition. There is a licensed version also available for GitLab."

"In terms of the pricing for GitLab, on a scale of one to five, with one being expensive and five being cheap, I'm rating pricing for the solution a four. It could still be cheaper because right now, my company has a small team, and sometimes it's difficult to use a paid product for a small team. You'd hope the team will grow and scale, but currently, you're paying a high license fee for a small team. I'm referring to the GitLab license that has premium features and will give you all features. This can be a problem for management to approve the high price of the license for a team this small."

"The solution is based on a subscription model and is reasonably priced."

"It seems reasonable. Our IT team manages the licenses."

"As I work in a vast enterprise, I'm unsure about the licensing cost for GitLab. It's the management team that takes care of that."

"GitLab is comparatively expensive, but it provides value because it's feature-rich."

"There are different licensing options available, including a free limited-user license."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

34%

Financial Services Firm

27%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Educational Organization

16%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Digital.ai Release ?

The time is also reduced because the manual work has tremendously decreased. We just have to click one button, and it will create everything for us.

What needs improvement with Digital.ai Release ?

Based on my experience, I would like to improve Digital.ai Release by exploring its cloud capabilities as we are currently in the middle of migrating to the cloud, but I actually have no idea what ...

What is your primary use case for Digital.ai Release ?

My use case for Digital.ai Release is that I work for an insurance company on a very big project that develops multiple different pieces of software. We use Digital.ai Release to move our software ...

What do you like most about GitLab?

I find the features and version control history to be most valuable for our development workflow. These aspects provide us with a clear view of changes and help us manage requests efficiently.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitLab?

The pricing and cost are on par with other tools and are neither too expensive nor cheap.

What needs improvement with GitLab?

One significant feature we lack is the configuration that enforces code reviews, which simplifies the development life cycle. Unfortunately, this is available only at a higher license level than we...

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Product Reports

Download Digital.ai Release product report

Digital.ai Release

June 2025

Download GitLab product report

June 2025

Also Known As

XL Release, XebiaLabs XL Release

Fuzzit

Overview

Automate, orchestrate, and gain visibility into your release pipelines at scale using Digital.ai Release, a release management tool that is designed for enterprises. Control and track releases, standardize processes, and bake compliance and security into your software release pipelines.

Digital.ai

GitLab is a complete DevOps platform that enables teams to collaborate and deliver software faster.

It provides a single application for the entire DevOps lifecycle, from planning and development to testing, deployment, and monitoring.

With GitLab, teams can streamline their workflows, automate processes, and improve productivity.

Sample Customers

3M, GE, John Deere, Deutsche Telekom, Cable & Wireless, Xerox, and Société Générale, Liberty Mutual, EA, Rabobank

1. NASA 2. IBM 3. Sony 4. Alibaba 5. CERN 6. Siemens 7. Volkswagen 8. ING 9. Ticketmaster 10. SpaceX 11. Adobe 12. Intuit 13. Autodesk 14. Rakuten 15. Unity Technologies 16. Pandora 17. Electronic Arts 18. Nordstrom 19. Verizon 20. Comcast 21. Philips 22. Deutsche Telekom 23. Orange 24. Fujitsu 25. Ericsson 26. Nokia 27. General Electric 28. Cisco 29. Accenture 30. Deloitte 31. PwC 32. KPMG