GitLab Reviews

I am using GitLab primarily as a code repository and for CI/CD tools and deployments.

The feature I appreciate the most about GitLab is its ease of use and compatibility, which allows for straightforward building and deployment processes. 

Continuous integration with deployment is very powerful, which is a significant reason for migrating from TFS to GitLab. Its documentation is extensive, and YAML files are user-friendly, making the deployment process more or less straightforward.

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. 

Creating a YAML file with numerous variables can be challenging without a way to separate them by different environments. It would be beneficial to have a user-friendly interface for setting up these configurations, instead of just writing YAML files.

I have been working with GitLab for a little over a year as I transition from TFS.

The stability of GitLab is impressive. Everything, including runners, functions smoothly without any issues.

Technical support from GitLab has been satisfactory. I have had meetings where they taught me, explained things, and provided guidance for starting from scratch. Overall, my experience has been pretty good.

Neutral

I am transitioning from TFS to GitLab, mainly due to the powerful continuous integration capabilities of GitLab.

Currently, I have two developers partially dedicated to creating the CI/CDs, Firebend, and repositories.

Migrating to GitLab is bringing time-saving benefits, and everything is easier to automate. This transition is crucial for us.

The pricing of GitLab is reasonable, aligning with what I consider to be average compared to competitors.

I am migrating from TFS to GitLab.

I would appreciate some AI-driven helpers, similar to Visual Studio's Copilot, integrated into GitLab. This could enhance the user experience by providing assistance during configuration. I rate GitLab a nine out of ten points.

GitLab is predominantly used for software development and practicing DevOps. GitLab CI/CD is one of the best features, and the solution is used primarily for software development.

GitLab is robust software and easy to use. There is excellent documentation available on their site but it can be overwhelming for early learners. 

They incorporate new features every September, and they have introduced their own code editor and AI features.

The pricing has been substantially increased, which is a major concern. While GitLab has a lot of documentation, the complexity and volume can be overwhelming, especially for new learners. Structuring the documentation more effectively could help alleviate this issue.

GitLab was resold for approximately two years.

The solution is stable, and there have been no noted glitches or latency issues.

The solution is easy to scale.

Customer service and support are good.

Positive

Previously we worked as resellers of other IT software like Snyk and Aqua Cloud Security.

The initial setup is medium in terms of difficulty. It's neither too easy nor too difficult.

Pricing is relatively expensive.

Previously explored solutions like Snyk and Aqua Cloud Security.

GitLab is a very good solution.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We use the solution as a source code manager or version control manager.

In our software development lifecycle, GitLab is used as a component for code repository management. We use GitLab for several projects to handle code repositories. For other software projects, we use Bitbucket, but the use case for both is very similar.

Many global users prefer GitLab for its enhanced pipeline automation for CI/CD features. It stands out among source code managers due to its parent-child pipeline feature. If users want to leverage this feature, they should consider using it. It’s not the only platform with this capability, but GitLab excels in automating many operations and offers integration with other platforms.

The solution supports platforms like Azure, GCP, and AWS. This capability makes it a preferred choice, even though other platforms also offer similar integration features. Additionally, GitLab’s tendency to be independent of ownership by another major company makes it an attractive option for many developers who prefer cloud usage

The tool's UI is good. 

In the next release, I would like to see GitLab expand its integration capabilities to include platforms like DigitalOcean, which developers widely use for cloud infrastructure. Enhancing CI/CD automation features specifically tailored for DigitalOcean would be beneficial. 

I have been working with the product for more than six months. 

The solution is stable. 

The product is scalable. 

The tool's technical support is great. 

The solution is free. 

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten. 

We are using GitLab for source code configuration and for CI/CD processes.

The CI/CD process is very efficient. We are utilizing the pipelines extensively and gaining significant benefits from GitLab.

We are not using the AI process yet, however, I would like to see AI support in GitLab. Maybe it already does. I am not sure how it supports AI processes.

We have been using GitLab for two years.

GitLab supports us very well.

We do not have any direct technical support from GitLab. We ask questions to our IT department, and they may seek external support if needed.

Neutral

We have just tried Jenkins. We are using GitLab. GitLab has better support, and its features are superior compared to Jenkins.

The initial setup was handled by our IT department.

GitLab is a cost-saving tool and is particularly effective for coding processes.

I do not have any recommendations or suggestions. I rate GitLab a ten out of ten.

I'm a product owner. So, I'm not really using the product myself on a day-to-day basis, but I've been managing teams and companies using GitLab for four to five years. Besides that, I've been involved in two or three tool selection experiences where GitLab was one of the candidates, and because of that, I pretty thoroughly investigated GitLab.

It's a great toolbox where the CI/CD pipeline is the fundamental component, but there are so many other features that you can pull from, which makes it a very powerful tool. My current client is using AWS, and they can, of course, use AWS CodePipeline, but GitLab is much more mature than that, and it also gives you the freedom to decide to go to another platform or have a multi-cloud strategy and things like that. That freedom for me is also very valuable.

It's more related to the supporting layer of features, such as issue management and issue tracking. We tend to always use, for example, Jira next to it. That doesn't mean that GitLab should build something similar to Jira because that will always have its place, but they could grow a bit in those kinds of supporting features. I see some, for example, covering ITSM on a DevOps team level, and that's one of the things that I and my current client would find really helpful. It's understandably not going to be their main focus and their core, and whenever you are with a company that needs a bit more advanced features on that specific topic, you're probably still going to integrate with another tool like Jira Service Management, for example. However, some basic features on things like that could be really helpful.

In terms of additional features, nothing comes to mind. One of the potential pitfalls is to keep adding new features and functionalities. They can just improve some of the existing features to make it high-end, top-quality. I don't have any substantial experience with agile planning. I don't know the industries GitLab is in, and I don't know why they make decisions like this, but as a customer, I would rather see them invest in improving the basic agile planning functionalities rather than adding, for example, portfolio planning features. That's because if I'm going to do portfolio planning, I probably will also need a lot of business users. I'm not sure if I want them in GitLab, I'd rather have them in Jira collaborating with me on portfolio planning. That's way better fitted for that type of work.

I don't have a strong opinion on that or much experience with that because, in the two companies, we used a self-hosted instance of GitLab where the user base was pretty small with 40 or 50 users. My current client has 300 users, which still is not huge, and we're using a managed hosted server. Its performance is fine. It is not stunning, but fine. I just don't have an insight on how much effort that costs from the hosting party.

It is a scalable product. For my current client, we're looking at doing exactly that. We have been using the basic features, and we're looking into making more use of the security features and static testing unit. We're in the middle of doing that. I wouldn't be doing that if I wasn't convinced about its scalability.

My current experience is with the hosted instance of GitLab. So, there's a company in between.

Before that, I've been having contact with them in the tool selection phase as well as the implementation phase, and I was very happy and impressed with their knowledge and responsiveness. I would be curious to see how it is if you're three years into using the tool and run into an issue. That's because in the phase of being one of the tools you want to consider for CI/CD, obviously, they're very willing and eager to get you on board, and thus are on top of your support request, but if you're a running customer, with three or four years in, I'm curious how their responsiveness and expertise would be. I don't have that experience.

Based on my experience, I would rate them a four out of five. They were very good. If I have a question or we aren't getting support quite quickly enough, I would still feel free to call the account manager I was in contact with back then.

Positive

I haven't done it myself yet, but I have been working with the teams who have, and I would rate it a four out of five in terms of the ease of setup. It's pretty straightforward. That's also one of the strengths of GitLab. For example, for my current client, setting up a default GitLab runner that suits most of the teams was the biggest challenge, which is a compliment to the setup procedure of GitLab because that was easy enough.

It's always difficult to compare prices fairly because features between competitors always differ pretty strongly. 

There are three tiers. The Premium version of GitLab is a no-brainer. If I look at the difference between Free and Premium, I would always go for Premium. For me, that's a no-brainer. In terms of competitiveness, they're doing a great job with Premium. The step between Premium and Ultimate might need a business case in most companies. You get a lot more features, but there is also a pretty steep difference in price.

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. If I look at the security testing features that you get, such as compliance and value streaming portfolio mapping, I'm not sure if a lot of companies are directly looking for that in GitLab. I myself would rather, for example, use Jira for that than GitLab, but still, security and compliance for me would be the biggest benefits of going to Ultimate. My current client is in the financial industry, and business cases are built up rather easily. So, in terms of competitiveness of features, they're doing pretty well.

In the last tool selection I was involved in, the main competitors were GitHub and Atlassian. CircleCI was another one, but it wasn't a strong competitor. We were not sure about CircleCI.

The difference between GitLab and GitHub is minimal. They're pretty similar. The difference between GitHub and Atlassian is a bit bigger because Atlassian has several applications. If you were to set up a CI/CD pipeline, you would need Jira, BitBucket, and then bigger pipelines, or Bamboo as a build too. You would also need a couple of tools for user management. You need to set up a tool stack. Atlassian's flexibility is perfect, but if you were to score that on ease of setup, that's probably going to score worse than GitHub. That's a clear difference for me between Atlassian tooling and GitLab.

For me, CircleCI, Jenkins, CloudBees, Concourse, and Travis are doing the same in a way. There's some overlap, but the target audience is completely different. As a big enterprise, you wouldn't be looking at a tool like that very soon. Those are tools that would fit in a pipeline for a smaller company that really values flexibility and a customizable developer experience. In an enterprise environment, you just want one tool that's easy to set up and easy to manage, and GitLab and GitHub are perfect for that.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. I am very satisfied with it.

We primarily use GitLab for code migration and version management. It helps us maintain metadata, manage versions, and facilitate continuous integration when working in teams. When working on a feature, we create a feature branch, which allows us to work on the feature independently. Once the feature is complete, it must be merged into the main branch. This streamlines the process of deploying the application to the production environment.

We use some orchestration tools to do it. We have our own built packet manager, and that package manager interacts with the excellent migration and everything internally.

The important feature is the entire process of versioning source code maintenance and easy deployment. It is a necessity for the CI/CD pipeline.

There is a need to improve or adopt AI into the ecosystem like a co-pilot, which Microsoft has done with GitHub.

I have been using GitLab for nine years. I have worked across version management for continuous integration and deployment.

The product sometimes crashes.

I rate the solution’s stability a seven out of ten.

The solution’s scalability is good.

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

I have used GitHub before. GitHub now comes with an AI Assistant, similar to a copilot, its most significant advantage. With this copilot, it assists you in writing code. It provides examples and helps you rectify errors, especially during migration processes. Additionally, it offers previews of how migration can be performed. These enhancements are attributed to Microsoft’s support and involvement in OpenAI.

The initial setup is easy and depends on the target enrollment; it typically takes just a few minutes to complete. Migration is also handled efficiently, typically in less than a few minutes or between three to five minutes, depending on the data size you want to migrate. The only drawback or consequence is that you need a private Git repository, which GitLab should provide by default.

For small-scale usage, GitLab offers a free tier. For enterprise pricing, GitLab is more expensive than GitHub, as it's not as widely adopted. GitLab is the preferred choice for many developers despite its higher monthly pricing plan, which is around $126.

GitLab has improved our CI/CD processes in software dependency management. It handles conflicts between versions seamlessly, such as when merging different features into the main branch. With GitLab, there are no conflicts in the code itself. Versioning is also efficiently managed within GitLab, allowing us to easily track the latest main branches, previous branches, and releases. For example, if a software depends on specific versions, it's easily traceable using GitLab. One of the most significant advantages is the built-in DTS, which supports ample file storage. This capability allows us to store 30-40 gigabytes of repository sizes.

The code diffs available in GitLab show the differences between the older version and the current one, indicating what has been added, deleted, or modified across the codebase. This helps you understand which portions of the code have changed within a particular file, such as a Python script, aiding in traceability and version management.

The merge request feature is standard and available even in GitHub, making it accessible on most Git platforms. It is one of the fundamental features of GitLab, a free product.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We use the solution for on-premises repository management

CI/CD is valuable for me. The product also has a monitoring feature connected to Grafana. It helps with alerts. We are using the free GitLab Community Edition. It has a lot of great features.

The documentation is confusing. Sometimes, it is incomplete or has incorrect information. I have informed the vendor about it. Some features in the GitLab Community Edition are not available to us.

I have been using the solution for nine months. My organization has been using it for around two years. We are using the latest version of the solution.

I rate the tool’s stability a ten out of ten. We never faced any downtime.

I rate the scalability of GitLab Community Edition a seven or eight out of ten. The product could improve the scalability of GitLab Community Edition. Around 60 people are using the product in our organization.

Their support is good. 

The initial setup is easier for someone who knows Linux and has been working as a system administrator. We need to have experience to deploy the solution. It takes around three to four hours to deploy the solution.

We are using the open-source version, anyone can download it.

I am my company’s GitLab administrator. Many features we need are available in Enterprise Edition. If we say that we do not have enough features in GitLab Community Edition, GitLab might just ask us to upgrade to Enterprise Edition. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

I use GitLab for some of my CyberArk scripting work.

GitLab's scoop is like a lifesaver. It's very crucial for us in our company to use some of those scripts from GitLab, either for health checks or building new connectors is very important for us, and at times, with GitLab, you don't even need to build the connectors.

Some of the scripts that we encountered in GitLab were not fully functional and threw up errors. The aforementioned area of the solution needs improvement.

In the future, I would like to see GitLab providing more oversight over the coding part.

I have been using GitLab for a couple of years. I use the solution's latest version.

It is a stable solution and seems to be a well-tested product with no issues. I rate the stability a nine out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. There are a lot of users on GitLab, so it is a highly scalable product. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten.

GitLab has only two users, including myself, in our company.

We don't have plans in our company to increase the number of users in future.

The solution's technical support is pretty good. If you go on Stack Overflow platform, you can find technical support there. The product's technical team is knowledgeable, responds quickly, and is customer friendly.

I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup of GitLab is pretty simple, with no complications.

The deployment process took less than an hour, which means it can be done in around 45 minutes.

The solution can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises version by installing the EXE file.

Only one junior engineer is required for deployment and maintenance.

The deployment phase can be done by yourself, in-house.

The ROI has been good since we have had no issues so far.

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

I would tell those planning to use the solution to try developing their own scripts in GitLab and then try to download them from the repository there. You build your knowledge while helping others as well.

I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.