GitLab Reviews

There are two primary functions. The first function is a Git-compliant source code repository, and the second function is a full-fledged CI/CD platform.

The CI/CD functionality as a whole is pretty helpful and nice to have. Their CI/CD engine is very mature. It's very comprehensive and flexible, and compared to other projects, I believe that GitLab is number one right now from that perspective.

They have had a Kubernetes integration built in, but they recently announced that in Version 16 they're going to strip out the legacy Kubernetes integration, and then introduce a new way of doing the integration. I don't really like the new way because it is pretty focused on the on-premise environment, but we're in a hybrid environment. The integration they're offering is not really a good fit for hybrid infrastructure and I was disappointed with that new feature. 

I work for a government-based institution in the US and government-based institutions are very strict about compliance and security. The new model GitLab is offering implies the connectivity will be initiated from the server side to the clients, meaning from Kubernetes back to GitLab, and that's not going to work in our space. We cannot allow traffic back from the cloud to on-prem, so that's going to be a compliance violation. I understand why they want to implement the feature, maybe it's going to be more solid, but it looks like they aren't taking into consideration hybrid environments and the security and compliance aspects. We will find a workaround, but we're still kind of disappointed. It'll generate a lot of additional work.

One feature that has been requested by our development team is a multi-level review of the pool request. When you maintain code and you've got a lot of contributors, a contributor can submit a change in the form of a pool request. There is a feature called merge request in GitLab for when you have a team of people who are supposed to approve a change, but Atlassian BitBucket has a more complete version of the same feature, which includes a multi-approval mechanism. For instance, if you have three people, you can create a rule for how changes should be approved. Maybe they should be approved by you and me and the third guy is not really important, or it could be approved by only you or me, or all three of us together. BitBucket has that flexibility and there is no such flexibility in GitLab.

I've been using GitLab for approximately four years. 

Overall, it's pretty stable. 

Scalability is not directly a feature of GitLab because GitLab is about storing your source code. Your storage can be organized in a way that makes it very scalable. For instance, we use the NetApp Store and we are not limited at all, so whenever we hit a disk space problem, we can simply extend the storage and give it more IOPs. However, the way you organize your storage is not GitLab's responsibility.

There are about 100 people currently involved with this solution at my company. 

Their customer service is very helpful. They're really good. I communicate with tons of different support clients and GitLab's support is one of the best. A lot of people don't like calling support because it's often useless or annoying, but I would rate GitLab's support as a ten out of ten. I haven't had any complications. 

Positive

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. I don't remember having any issues related to the setup. 

There is an open-source edition and a commercial version. I've used both, but mostly I've used the commercial one. However, the open-source version is also very, very good. The commercial version is reasonably priced. It's about 20k annually. 

Checkmarx is a static analysis tool. GitLab offers, in turn, their own solution. They offer static analysis, dynamic analysis, and a lot of integration. They also offer integration with Checkmarx. There are a lot of features, actually, and plenty of tools. For the price, I think it's very comprehensive.

Compared to other products, for instance, Nessus, they're approximately at the same price level. I would put them all on the same level with approximately the same functionality, but GitLab is one of the best.

I would give this solution a ten out of ten. There are a couple of caveats, but compared to other products, GitLab is certainly the leading solution in the market right now. 

GitLab was mostly used for version control. All of the code was uploaded into GitLab and then shared across the company. We also used it for running CICD pipelines and automating those pipelines.

Basically, it was up to the mark. The solution did what it was supposed to do.

We had to write GitLab configuration files, commands and conditions, in a YML format. I would like configuration of a YML file to be done via UI rather than a code file. There should be support for code files, as well, but if there could be a UI for it and a little bit of documentation along with it, that would help.

I used this solution for two years.

The solution is stable. 

This is a scalable solution. We had around 200 users working with it. Two people are required for deployment and maintenance. 

The implementation was handled in-house. It shouldn't take a long time to implement because it's pretty basic stuff. It all depends on how much customization you want to have. 

My advice for others looking into this product is to go for it. GitLab is the future. There are some alternates, like Stash and Bitbucket, that have the same concept, but GitLab is one of the most widely used version control systems. It's easy to use.

I would rate this solution as a nine out of ten.

Our company is a partner and installs the solution for clients who manage their ACD and DevOps pipelines. 

We have 700 developers who use the solution, Microsoft's integration, and SharePoint for uploading. 

The solution's service delivery model is fantastic. 

Integrations connect to the cloud server and are easy to use. 

The solution offers good security and stability. 

The solution should again offer an on-premises deployment option. In the past, an on-premises solution was offered that used to sync with the cloud-based solution. We would like that option to return because many industries are interested in offline uploads and pathways. 

The solution should integrate Web 3.0 and provide better system transactions.

I have been using the solution for three years. 

The solution is very stable. 

The initial setup is simple. 

You can immediately start using the solution as soon as you subscribe. 

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

Many options are available in the database but a few uncommon options that our company actually liked have been phased out. If those options return, the solution will be fantastic. 

Our company subscribes to the premium tier which includes security. It would be nice to offer security as an add-on at lower tiers so more users have access to these advanced features. 

I rate the cost an eight out of ten. 

I recommend the solution and rate it an eight out of ten. 

The most valuable functionality of GitLab, for me, is the DevOps. Besides the normal source control based on Git, I find the Auto DevOps features most important in the solution.

As GitLab is not perfect, what needs improvement in the solution is the Wiki feature of the groups or the repertories because currently, it's not searchable by default. You'll need an indexing service such as Elasticsearch to make it searchable, and that requires too much work, so for me, it's the main feature that should be improved in GitLab.

In the next version of the solution, from the top of my head, the documentation could be improved. Besides the Wiki, it would be good if there's documentation that would be automatically generated based on the code repository. In other words, there should be some tutorials from GitLab for developers in the next release.

I've been using GitLab for almost three years.

GitLab is a pretty stable solution, and on a scale of one to ten, with one being the worst and ten being the best, I'm rating its stability a ten. My team just learned some details about the configuration of GitLab, so it's now tuned up, and right now, there's no problem with the stability of the platform.

In terms of GitLab scalability, based on its features, it's supposed to scale easily enough geographically, but my company hasn't tried scaling it yet. It shouldn't be a big problem to scale the solution.

In terms of the technical support for GitLab, I mainly use the forums and support sites of the solution. I don't use the direct technical support line of GitLab.

The initial setup for GitLab is simple mainly because of all its features that allow you to make a startup instance of the solution simpler and quicker, and that's very good.

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.

We evaluated Azure DevOps, but we liked the style of how things are built up inside GitLab for the end-user and the developer more compared to Azure DevOps, though Azure DevOps is also a very good choice.

I'm using the latest version of GitLab.

My company has a small team and only has six users of GitLab.

On a scale of one to ten, where one is the worst and ten is the best, my rating for GitLab, in general, is nine. My company likes the solution very much, especially over Azure DevOps.

I would recommend GitLab for others to use.

My company is a customer of GitLab.

I primarily use it for verifying some things. We're using it as a repository. It's used for software code. 

I didn't have an option when coming to this solution. It was imposed on me. That said, I've had no problems so far. 

The solution is stable.

The scalability is good.

My understanding is that the setup is straightforward. 

I'm not sure of the complete capabilities of the tool as I don't use it that much. Perhaps the integration could be better. 

I've used the solution for one year, however, not so regularly.

I have not heard of any stability complaints. My understanding is that the product is reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It won't crash or freeze. 

We have about 100 people using the solution in our organization. 

For our purposes, we find the solution scales well. It's okay. We've never had any issues. 

We previously used IBM CLM and RTC.

I did not directly handle the initial setup. There is an IT team, which is responsible for all the installation and setup tasks. I'm not sure how many people were involved in the deployment and maintenance of the solution. 

Our IT team set the solution up.

I haven't looked into if we have noticed an ROI or not. 

I can't speak to the exact cost or licensing structure. I don't deal with this aspect of the product. 

I'd recommend the solution to others. I'd rate it eight out of ten. 

We use it for version control and CI/CD.

CI/CD is very good. The version control system is also good. These are the two features that we use.

Its security features are very expensive. The Ultimate version is very expensive.

I would like more Agile features in the Premium version. The Premium version should have all Agile features that exist in the Ultimate version. IBM AOM has a complete Agile implementation, but in GitLab, you only have these features if you buy the Ultimate version. It would be good if we can use these in the Premium version.

I have been using GitLab for five years.

It is very stable. In five years, we had to fix it only once.

It is very scalable. We have about 2,000 users, but as per the reference architecture documentation, it can be scaled up to 50,000 users.

We are using the open-source free version. So, we don't have support. We are looking to buy the intermediate version or Premium version. 

It was very easy to set up. 

We set it up by ourselves. We also update it, and we don't have to turn it off.

We are using its free version, and we are evaluating its Premium version. Its Ultimate version is very expensive.

We are evaluating its Premium version, and we are also evaluating other products like GitHub.

I would rate it a nine out of 10.

The solution's most valuable features are pipelines. GitLab allows you to automate things and show them diagrammatically.

The solution is much harder to get around and organize extra features. It has fewer options, and its UI is not so user-friendly.

I have been using GitLab for one year.

GitLab is a very stable solution.

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

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

Although the solution's documentation is publicly available, you have to invest much more time to read everything and understand how to get around.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is very easy and ten is difficult, I rate the solution's initial setup a six to seven out of ten.

The solution's pricing is acceptable.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten.

I got familiar with the CI part of the tool. If you want to use all the features for testing and packaging, you have to use the paid version.

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

My company's programmers use GitLab for everyday development purposes.

The solution's most valuable feature is that it is compatible with GitHub. The product's integration capabilities are sufficient for our small company of 35 people.

Some of the programmers in my company have had complaints about the product.

We do face issues in our company when we run out of disk space. We had to do some low-level system interventions to recover the server from GitLab in our company. It would be good if GitLab implemented some diagnostic features so that the server prevents functioning when it detects insufficient disk space. It is important to prevent cache to avoid running out of disk space. Considering the aforementioned details, making a recovery wasn’t simple.

I have experience with GitLab.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Owing to the small size of my company, we do not need to utilize the scalability feature of the product.

My company has around 20 users of the product.

The initial setup of GitLab was okay.

The setup phase was completed in a day.

Our company has DevOps and CI/CD to help us with the deployment process of the product.

Though I am unsure, I feel that the solution is deployed on-premises.

The deployment phase was carried out with the in-house members of our company.

Speaking about the pricing of the solution, my company uses GitLab Community Edition.

Before choosing GitLab, my company had considered Microsoft TFS during the evaluation phase.

GitLab is a product managed by the department of programmers in our company, and I am not much involved in it.

I recommend the solution to those planning to use it.

I rate the overall product a ten out of ten.