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GitLab pros and cons

Vendor: GitLab

4.2 out of 5

91 reviews
97% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

GitLab is a powerful DevOps platform noted for its CI/CD capabilities, security features, and efficient branching management. It streamlines development with strong integration capabilities but faces challenges with AWS and Kubernetes compatibility. Documentation complexity and high pricing can deter new users. Enhancing integration with tools like Jira and resolving CI/CD deployment issues are crucial for improving functionality and user satisfaction in diverse cloud environments.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

GitLab excels in CI/CD capabilities, enhancing deployment speed and efficiency, which is fundamental to modern development workflows.

The security features of GitLab are highly valued, particularly for maintaining the integrity and reliability of code repositories.

GitLab's integration capabilities with other tools and platforms streamline development processes, which contributes to team efficiency and collaboration.

Its comprehensive nature as a DevOps platform enables seamless code repository management, pipeline execution, and deployment.

GitLab's ability to handle branching and merging operations efficiently is crucial for collaborative development projects, allowing multiple developers to work on the same project without conflicts.

CONS

GitLab lacks integration with AWS and other container environments like DigitalOcean and Kubernetes, affecting its versatility in diverse cloud infrastructures.

The documentation and tutorials are often considered complex, hindering new users from effectively understanding and using GitLab features.

There are significant issues with CI/CD pipeline deployment, particularly concerning compatibility with Jenkins and variable environments, which complicate the process.

GitLab's pricing model and security features are expensive, and support is not considered efficient, posing challenges for users seeking cost-effective solutions.

Improved integration with third-party applications and project management tools like Jira is desired to enhance GitLab's functionality in broader development contexts.

GitLab Pros review quotes

BU

Cloud Engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

Aug 21, 2019

The dashboard and interface make it easy to use.

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RP

System and Storage Engineer at Harsco Corporation

Jul 13, 2020

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.

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reviewer1417221

Head Of Software Engineering at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees

Sep 17, 2020

Everything is easy to configure and easy to work with.

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Free Report: GitLab Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about GitLab. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2026.

885,376 professionals have used our research since 2012.

reviewer1393092

Developer / Team Lead at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Oct 4, 2020

A user friendly solution.

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reviewer1295343

Partenaire, CEO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Oct 7, 2020

It speeds up our development, it's faster, safer, and more convenient.

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Software Engineer at OZ

Dec 30, 2020

The best thing is that as the developers work on separate tasks, all of the code goes there and the other team members don't have to wait on each other to finish.

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reviewer1322850

Technical Lead at a mining and metals company with 51-200 employees

Jan 10, 2021

GitLab offers a good interface for doing code reviews between two colleagues.

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reviewer1500300

UAS Innovation Group Lead at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Feb 24, 2021

This product is always evolving, and they listen to the customers.

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GM

Cloud Architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Apr 8, 2021

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.

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Jagadeeswara Reddy

Senior Solutions Architect at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Apr 5, 2021

I like GitLab from the CI/CD perspective. It is much easier to set up CI/CD and then integrate with other tools.

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GitLab Cons review quotes

BU

Cloud Engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

Aug 21, 2019

GitLab doesn't have AWS integration. It would be better to have integration with other container management environments beyond Kubernetes. It has very good integration with Kubernetes, but it doesn't have good integration with, for example, AWS, ETS, etc.

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RP

System and Storage Engineer at Harsco Corporation

Jul 13, 2020

I would like to see static analysis also embedded in GitLab. That would also help us. If there's something that it does internally by GitLab and then that is already tied up with your pipeline and then it can tell you that you're coding is good or your code is not great. Based on that, it would pass or fail. That should be streamlined. I would think that would help to a greater extent, in terms of having one solution rather than depending on multiple vendors.

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reviewer1417221

Head Of Software Engineering at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees

Sep 17, 2020

The only thing our company is really waiting on in terms of features is the development of metrics.

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Free Report: GitLab Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about GitLab. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2026.

885,376 professionals have used our research since 2012.

reviewer1393092

Developer / Team Lead at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Oct 4, 2020

Reporting could be improved.

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reviewer1295343

Partenaire, CEO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Oct 7, 2020

I would like to see better integration with project management tools such as Jira.

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Software Engineer at OZ

Dec 30, 2020

The documentation could be improved to help newcomers better understand things like creating new branches.

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reviewer1322850

Technical Lead at a mining and metals company with 51-200 employees

Jan 10, 2021

We are having a few problems integrating with Jira at the moment, which is something that our IT department is investigating.

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reviewer1500300

UAS Innovation Group Lead at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Feb 24, 2021

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

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GM

Cloud Architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Apr 8, 2021

It can be free for commercial use.

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Jagadeeswara Reddy

Senior Solutions Architect at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Apr 5, 2021

In the free version, when a merge request is raised, there is no way to enforce certain rules. We can't enforce that this merge request must be reviewed or approved by two or three people in the team before it is pushed to the master branch. That's why we are exploring using some agents.

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