We performed a comparison between Gitlab and Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle comes out ahead of GitLab. Although both products have valuable features and can be estimated as high-end solutions, our reviewers found that GitLab’s price is higher and has uncertain long-term support.
"Of all available products, it was the easiest to use and easy to install."
"GitLab is very useful for pipelines, continuous integration, and continuous deployment. It is also stable."
"The dashboard and interface make it easy to use."
"Git hosting has an integration with ACD which is why we liked this solution in the first place."
"It is very useful for reviews. We are using branch merging operations and full reset operations. It is also very useful for merging our code and tracking another branch. The graph diagrams of Git are very useful. Its interface is straightforward and not too complex for us."
"CI/CD is very good. The version control system is also good. These are the two features that we use."
"We like that we can create branches and then the branches can be reviewed and you can mesh those branches back. You can independently work with your own branch, you don't need to really control the core of other people."
"The most valuable feature of GitLab is its security."
"Lifecycle lets developers see any vulnerabilities or AGPL license issues associated with code in the early stages of development. The nice thing is that it's built into the ID so that they can see all versions of a specific code."
"The policy engine is really cool. It allows you to set different types of policy violations, things such as the age of the component and the quality: Is it something that's being maintained? Those are all really great in helping get ahead of problems before they arise. You might otherwise end up with a library that's end-of-life and is not going to get any more fixes."
"When I started to install the Nexus products and started to integrate them into our development cycle, it helped us construct or fill out our development process in general. The build stage is a really good template for us and it helped establish a structure that we could build our whole continuous integration and development process around. Now our git repos are tagged for different build stages data, staging, and for release. That aligns with the Nexus Lifecycle build stages."
"The proxy repository is probably the most valuable feature to us because it allows us to be more proactive in our builds. We're no longer tied to saving components to our repository."
"The application onboarding and policy grandfathering features are good and the solution integrates well with our existing DevOps tools."
"What's really nice about that is it shows a graph of all the versions for that particular component, and it marks out the ones that have a vulnerability and the ones that don't have a vulnerability."
"The data quality is really good. They've got some of the best in the industry as far as that is concerned. As a result, it helps us to resolve problems faster. The visibility of the data, as well as their features that allow us to query and search - and even use it in the development IDE - allow us to remediate and find things faster."
"You can really see what's happening after you've developed something."
"GitLab could improve by having more plugins and better user-friendliness."
"GitLab would be improved with the addition of templates for deployment on local PCs."
"We'd always like to see better pricing on the product."
"It is a little complex to set up the pipelines within the solution."
"I've noticed an area for improvement in GitLab, particularly needing to go through many steps to push the code to the repository. Resolving that issue would make the product better. My team quickly fixed it by writing a small script, then double-clicking or enabling the script to take care of the issue. However, that quick fix was from my team and not the GitLab team, so in the next release, if an automatic deployment feature would be available in GitLab, then that would be good because, in Visual Studio, you can do that with just one click of a button."
"GitLab could consider introducing a code-scanning tool. Purchasing such tools from external markets can incur charges, which might not be favorable. Integrating these features into GitLab would streamline the pipeline and make it more convenient for users."
"I would like to have some features to support peer review."
"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."
"As far as the relationship of, and ease of finding the relationships between, libraries and applications across the whole enterprise goes, it still does that. They could make that a little smoother, although right now it's still pretty good."
"The team managing Nexus Lifecycle reported that their internal libraries were not being identified, so they have asked Sonatype's technical team to include that in the upcoming version."
"Another feature they could use is more languages. Sonatype has been mainly a Java shop because they look after Maven Central... But we've slowly been branching out to different languages. They don't cover all of them, and those that they do cover are not as in-depth as we would like them to be."
"Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle can improve the functionality. Some functionalities are missing from the UI that could be accessed using the API but they are not available. For example, seeing more than the 100 first reports or, seeing your comments when you process a waiver for a vulnerability or a violation."
"It's the right kind of tool and going in the right direction, but it really needs to be more code-driven and oriented to be scaled at the developer level."
"The GUI is simple, so it's easy to use. It started as great to use, but for larger scale companies, it also comes with some limitations. This is why we tried to move to more of an API approach. So, the GUI could use some improvements potentially."
"Not all languages are supported in Fortify."
"The generation of false positives should be reduced."
GitLab is ranked 7th in Application Security Tools with 70 reviews while Sonatype Lifecycle is ranked 6th in Application Security Tools with 42 reviews. GitLab is rated 8.6, while Sonatype Lifecycle is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of GitLab writes "Powerful, mature, and easy to set up and manage". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sonatype Lifecycle writes "Seamless to integrate and identify vulnerabilities and frees up staff time". GitLab is most compared with Microsoft Azure DevOps, Bamboo, AWS CodePipeline, SonarQube and Fortify Static Code Analyzer, whereas Sonatype Lifecycle is most compared with SonarQube, Black Duck, Fortify Static Code Analyzer, Checkmarx One and Mend.io. See our GitLab vs. Sonatype Lifecycle report.
See our list of best Application Security Tools vendors and best Software Composition Analysis (SCA) vendors.
We monitor all Application Security Tools reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
