GitLab Reviews

GitLab is a major help for DevOps automation, primarily for version controlling and deployment purposes. I use GitLab for DevOps automation and version control in my daily work by creating many branches for each environment through which deployments can be controlled and version control can be maintained. When we need to make a change only for the dev environment, we simply make the code change for the dev branch, and only the servers connected to the dev branch receive those changes applied while the rest remains the same. In a similar way, we can particularly target a group of servers, which prevents other issues from occurring. GitLab helps tremendously in this purpose.

GitLab has role-based access control, so when a team member needs to make a code change, they cannot directly apply it to the environment but must put in a merge request. Once a senior reviews the code and approves it, then it is implemented across the environment, making it safer and allowing everyone to experience the process.

The best features GitLab offers are version control and automation, which are the major things that stand out to me. When it comes to access, the login is very smooth, with just one login integrated with our Okta, allowing everyone to log in easily. Deployments become much easier, and that is how GitLab helps.

The automation features make my work easier because we use a tool called AWX, which is connected to GitLab. Whenever we run a job on AWX, it directly checks the code and uses it. Since the code is not preserved locally but kept in the cloud, it is safe and nobody can tamper with it. When it comes to safety, that is a major thing. Automation features allow the code to be accessed from any tools we use, so the jobs we run are helping tremendously and doing their work perfectly.

For pipeline tasks, we have created a significant amount of pipelines, which are all hosted in GitLab. Running the pipelines has become much easier, and they are doing a perfect job, helping tremendously in our day-to-day activities.

GitLab has positively impacted my organization because previously we stored code locally on servers, leading to many risks. Since GitLab came into our environment, our integration and deployments became much easier, helping our work become much smoother.

Improvements from GitLab have led to better team collaboration because when several people are working, they can all edit the code and submit it as a merge request, and once approved, it reflects directly to the main branch. Many can work at the same time. When it comes to deployments, deploying has become much faster since we started using GitLab, and even if errors occur, we can spot them easily and troubleshoot, which has helped tremendously.

I believe GitLab can be improved by making integration with other platforms a little easier. I understand it is a matter of security, but it would be much more helpful if it could integrate with other tools more seamlessly.

When it comes to speed, if multiple users are committing their codes, it takes a bit longer, which I think can be improved. Fine-tuning resources might help, but apart from that, I have not felt many improvements, as everything is going smoothly.

I have been using GitLab for the last five years.

GitLab has been very scalable in my experience. Even as our count of servers and applications grows, we can still support our needs with GitLab, which is why I find it very scalable.

I have had experiences with GitLab's customer support, and they have been very supportive. I have not faced any issues from their side till today.

Negative

I have not used a different solution before GitLab. From the day I started working in my organization, I have been using GitLab. While I heard they were storing all the codes locally on servers previously, I have not experienced that.

Before choosing GitLab, my organization evaluated other options such as Jira and Atlassian, but the major advantage of GitLab led us to choose it.

I would rate GitLab a 10 on a scale of one to ten because it is perfect in all ways. I choose 10 because the offerings provided by GitLab are very useful in aspects like deployment, team collaboration, and deployment speed, all of which GitLab helps with tremendously.

If you are looking for faster deployment, team collaboration, version control, and better use of CI/CD pipelines, my advice is that GitLab is the best option for you, so go and try it out. I give GitLab an overall rating of 10.

To store the data.

Git merging allows us to track the details of how and who has done what. This is the best feature which is useful for all companies.

As we are using it in Kubernetes clusters, we don't have any issues.

GitLab needs to improve the CI/CD functionality because it is not compatible with Jenkins and other tools, as it is not that efficient. Security-wise, we have security features enabled in GitLab for code vulnerability and other aspects, but it is not up to market standards.

Approximately four to five years.

Recently we had an issue where an employee left the company and their commits were erased. We raised a request with GitLab support, but they were unable to help because they could not find the root cause of what went wrong. We restored the data from previous backups.

GitLab is suitable for small and mid-size organizations, but not for enterprise use.

We raised a request with GitLab support when an employee's commits were erased, but they were unable to help because they could not find the root cause of what went wrong.

Positive

I worked with GitLab Enterprise at a previous company. GitLab Enterprise is far better than the free version. For enterprise-level customers, we can recommend GitLab Enterprise. Regarding competitors, we have explored GitHub, Bitbucket, and CircleCI. However, GitLab Enterprise has more features than any of these tools.

I am working with Kyndryl, which is part of IBM. They have their own decision-making team who manages these aspects.

We are currently using general GitLab, not GitLab Premium.

We are using Jira and Confluence, but not Bitbucket.

We are currently using GitLab integrated with Sonar for code vulnerability checks, Jenkins, Camunda, and XL Deploy. We use Camunda to deploy folders and XL Deploy for server deployment.

We are not using the security features on the GitLab side, as we use different tools for that purpose. My team is not using the GitLab merge request process, but we work on providing GitLab access for admin activities, as developers are in different teams handling development and merge requests.

We are using basic features currently, so I cannot comment on detailed functionality comparisons. Every versioning control tool provides similar basic features, and we are not utilizing the full functionality of GitLab.

The system is easy to use.

On a scale of 1-10, this solution rates a 7.

My main use case for GitLab is as a version control system that we are using. Currently, I am working on an end-to-end AI pipeline, and I have deployed my whole code using GitLab so that all things are utilized for version control for my back-end AI and front-end team. We merge all the Git codes into GitLab, and my CI/CD, issue tracking, security, and monitoring is maintained inside GitLab.

We try to collaborate with all the teams together on different features. Within GitLab, we are not utilizing Jenkins or any product management tools because it perfectly renders all the information. It maintains the version control system, which is very helpful to containerize and deploy all services, allowing us to have everything together in production.

CI/CD is the most important feature that I am utilizing with version control and security as well, and all things are very useful inside GitLab.

CI/CD helps my workflow by allowing me to integrate any new changes or any new version that I want to deploy in the whole ML lifecycle, which I implement through new integration phases and identify updates in the deployment scripts. We generate YAML manifest files, add dependencies, and deploy them utilizing GitLab's versioning system, identifying any security patches that need to be added or incidents that need to be managed, triggering the workflow. We try to manage the perfect scenarios.

GitLab has impacted my organization positively in terms of version control systems, providing many smart features and reducing the sharing of dependencies compared to what we used to do previously. It has helped the organization merge and collaborate within the team on the level of code accesses and identify how actionable insights can be inputted within the whole pipelining mechanisms, allowing us to easily perform actions on CI/CD. My organization has adapted this and resulted in more productive work.

There are many improvements that GitLab can implement, such as addressing the issue of caching. Currently, when I have multiple tasks to merge or attempt multiple merges, the CI/CD and overall GitLab processes get slower. Implementing caching to allow parallel jobs to execute together would optimize the solution and enhance efficiency.

The UI is not user-friendly compared to how GitHub Actions operates. If we could customize the UI interface or have options for plugin-based mechanisms, that would be more suitable and increase DevOps in enterprises.

I have been using GitLab for around three years.

GitLab is stable.

GitLab's scalability is good, allowing multiple employees to work together, change code collectively, and perform all kinds of CI/CD regardless of impacts from bug fixes.

I have not reached out to customer support currently, but email support is very good, although I have not interacted with any call-based mechanisms or voice call systems.

I was using GitHub and GitHub Actions prior to this. While GitHub Actions provided good CI/CD operations, GitLab has added smart features, such as a graphical view of branches in version control mechanisms and tracking changes made by authors at specified times. Everything is maintained perfectly in my codebase, and I can easily track buggy code, identifying issues with excellent visibility. This visibility compared to GitHub and GitHub Actions is what led me to switch to GitLab.

The setup cost for GitLab is minimal since the team has its own minimal resource balancing. The costing falls into an intermediate stage and is impactful across all results within the team. It allows for CI/CD stages and addition of security patches smoothly, with only a slight charge that is not significant. Everything related to scripting, processing, management, and deployment works fine.

I have seen a return on investment with increased collaboration within the team resulting in more productive work and a reduction in time based on prior experiences, which emphasizes GitLab's usefulness.

The setup cost for GitLab is minimal since the team has its own minimal resource balancing. The costing falls into an intermediate stage and is impactful across all results within the team. It allows for CI/CD stages and addition of security patches smoothly, with only a slight charge that is not significant. Everything related to scripting, processing, management, and deployment works fine.

Before choosing GitLab, I evaluated options like GitLens and Bitbucket. I have tried those tools prior to this project, but ultimately, I chose GitLab as the foremost solution for version control mechanisms.

Since using GitLab, we have experienced fewer errors in identification, and any incidents coming out at the production level can be maintained to facilitate complete results, ensuring that collaboration works fine and deployment scripts remain easily executable, maintaining all services perfectly. Any impactful scripts work fine, whether making minor or major version updates.

I recommend GitLab if you are looking for a good graph-based solution or any impeccable solution for version mechanisms. I would rate this product a 9 out of 10.

My main use case for GitLab is utilizing it in three main ways: one is using the Issues and Epics tracking for tasks, the second way is using the Wiki, which is the documentation feature, and then the third way is for code management.

Out of those three, I find myself using the Issues and Epics tracking feature the most often. I really quite like it because I find it clear and clean to use, and it works well when using it with numerous people.

We use the Issues feature to record our tasks and assign those out, as well as recording the description of what the task requires. Then we use the Epics feature to group the issues into categories, which makes it easier to track the tasks at a higher level.

In my opinion, the best features GitLab offers are the Issues and Epics feature, which I find very clean and clear to use, and it is very quick and responsive. I also quite value the Wiki feature because both of those are built into the same platform, making it very easy to bounce between the two and create links between the boards and the Wiki.

The ability to link between the boards and the Wiki helps my workflow and collaboration with my team by ensuring that if we have any tasks that need to be carried out, we have them on the Issues board, and we write runbooks in the Wiki on how to carry out the task. We copy the link of the Wiki and put it into the description of the tickets so that when someone is working on the ticket, they can very quickly go over to the Wiki and know how to carry out their task, which saves us time.

GitLab has positively impacted our organization by making our code very secure because GitLab prides itself on security. Storing code in GitLab is a very secure way to do it, and from an operational efficiency and time-saving perspective, the Issues and Epics board is definitely helpful, offering a few benefits operationally.

The only feature I have used in GitLab that I thought could be improved is their code generation feature. When I previously used it, some of my questions were met with responses saying that it did not know the answer, and some responses were incorrect as well. I understand this is something new for them, so they are still developing it, but I do not feel that it is in a position where I would use it regularly just because it is not very reliable right now.

I have been working in my current field between five to ten years.

GitLab is very stable. I have not seen any instability issues.

GitLab is highly scalable and could very easily scale to thousands of code repos, which is necessary for any organizational size.

The customer support for GitLab is very good, and I have no complaints because they have always been quite helpful. I would rate the customer support a ten out of ten because I have never had any issues with them before, and they are very knowledgeable.

Positive

Personally, I have previously used GitHub and Bitbucket as well. I find that GitLab has the cleanest and clearest UI out of all of them, and it has numerous features, such as the Issues and Epics tracking feature, as well as the Wiki feature, which sets it apart.

I have seen a return on investment. Any company that generates its own code and develops applications needs a code base, so it is more of a necessity rather than choosing something because it results in a measurable benefit. However, in terms of operational efficiency, a ten to twenty percent increase in speed could quite easily be seen from using the Issues and Epics tracking feature.

Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, to my understanding, GitLab offers competitive rates. There are a few big competitors within this space, such as GitHub and Bitbucket, so GitLab prices themselves competitively.

Before choosing GitLab, I did evaluate other options, and the main competitors I considered were GitHub and Bitbucket. They are great as well, and all three are brilliant, but GitLab, in my opinion, has the cleanest UI, which sets it apart.

I would recommend others to use GitLab because it is a great tool and there are not any real major drawbacks, just a minor one related to the AI code generation. I have given this review an overall rating of nine out of ten.

My most common use cases for GitLab are development and managing repositories, primarily focused on code development work.

The features that are really useful for my use case generally include pulling, merging, and ensuring the pipeline is upright, which are very intuitive.

It helped me personally and my team to save time and money.

In terms of impact from using GitLab as an all-in-one DevOps platform, it helped with my project development life cycle.

Regarding improvements, making task management is something that GitLab can potentially make easier, similar to what DevOps or Jira does.

I have been working with GitLab for about two years.

The deployment and initial setup were not difficult for me to complete. The pipeline management was easy.

The setup process took less than an hour.

In terms of project management overall, I haven't faced any issues such as downtimes or losing the repository.

I haven't contacted technical support of GitLab.

When comparing GitLab with GitHub, I haven't really seen any noticeable difference.

I have worked with Azure DevOps before and found it really intuitive to use.

I have used GitHub and GitLab as well, and I find that they've been fairly intuitive to use.

Regarding GitLab, I purchased an enterprise license, though I'm not aware whether I or my company bought this license from AWS Marketplace or elsewhere.

I'm not aware of any integration with other tools or third-party applications.

I haven't faced any difficulties with user interface or deployment.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate GitLab an 8.

Neutral

GitLab serves as my main DevOps platform for managing our repository and code base, as well as for pipeline integration of our system.

We maintain all our projects in GitLab with separate folders for project files, and we use GitLab to manage our projects. We also use GitLab pipeline to deploy in our dev environment, QA environment, and production, as well as for creating patches.

GitLab has positively impacted my organization by being faster than other platforms and providing the best user interface and features. Creating merge requests is easy, and it makes it simple to use for new joiners.

GitLab's best features are its built-in CI/CD and pipeline integration, which can be easily connected to AWS or other deployment platforms. The CI/CD pipeline integration is the most valuable aspect for me, and it also provides an easy user interface to create merge requests, merge, and create branches.

The CI/CD pipeline integration has helped my workflow by allowing us to use the .gitlab-ci.yml file to integrate and write our pipeline codes, where we include build jobs, test jobs, and deploy jobs directly with our AWS for S3 using CI/CD variables for push.

In GitLab pipelines, both manual and automatic integration are offered for the pipeline runner, and pipeline logs are provided, which are very useful for DevOps engineers and developers for debugging.

GitLab can be improved by being more responsive in the UI and offering better pricing for premium features, which would be useful for small startups. While GitLab's CI/CD is powerful, it is somewhat complex in certain aspects.

It would be better if the GitLab and Jira integration were more flexible and easier to integrate with Jira for task management in the future.

Since I joined my company, we have been using GitLab for our repo maintenance, so I have been using it for more than two years.

In my experience, GitLab is stable; however, sometimes it takes much time to start the runner and gets stuck in a pending situation, possibly due to traffic issues.

GitLab handles growing workloads and users well, and its scalability is good, but the downtime issue is a concern because it sometimes takes too long to start the runner.

Earlier, I did my personal projects using GitHub before I joined my current organization, which uses GitLab, and that is the reason for switching. I personally prefer GitLab over GitHub because it is user-friendly and easy to work with.

My current organization started with GitLab.

I would advise others looking into using GitLab that it is a perfect platform for organization-level repository management and pipeline CI/CD features are very useful and easy to use.

I have shared everything I feel and noted the pros and cons of GitLab as a user. Overall, I rate GitLab positively, giving it a seven out of ten because I have been using GitLab for more than two and a half years and have not faced many difficulties. However, in some cases, I got stuck with runners getting delayed to run, which can be annoying.

Positive

The broad use of GitLab is for code check-ins, but I also use it for issue management and backlog management. It has integration with testing tools as well, and I utilize those features. GitLab supports code collaboration alongside issue and backlog management. Everyone within my team or pod, as we call it, can see each other's issues. The scrum master can look at the velocity and the burn-down charts.

I find all the CICD pipelines valuable, along with the simplicity it offers developers. When comparing it, certain features available in Jira are not present. Specifically, the ability to have weights at the milestone and epic levels does not exist. However, the security features are good and restrictive.

Certain features in Jira are not available in GitLab, such as the functionality to have weights at the milestone and epic levels. Hopefully, these features will be resolved with work items in GitLab. Also, if the child items are open in GitLab, closing the parent should not be allowed. While GitLab is a great tool for developers, it lacks project planner features. Roadmaps and Gantt charts in GitLab are not as advanced as in Jira, and changing start and end dates is more laborious in GitLab. Bridging the gap for project planners would make GitLab a more complete tool.

I have been using it for about a year.

I have not really encountered stability issues. I would rate it probably an eight.

I would say the solution is easy to scale.

I do not have direct contact with customer service. We have relationship managers who deal with GitLab directly.

Neutral

The initial setup was relatively easy.

In my company, the number of users is around ten thousand. If we are talking about my project, the figure is probably more around the three hundred mark, but it will grow to about six hundred users. In my company, that figure would be anything between five and ten thousand people.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. Also, maybe, if GitLab is supporting any AI-driven projects or if it has any automation elements, it supports them. We have AI-driven projects where the code is stored in GitLab. GitLab Copilot is something we are looking to introduce soon. If you want to maintain your issues in GitLab and raise your book of work and features, then GitLab is a great tool for collaboration and integration with code deployment and CICD pipelines.

We use CI/CD for producing a Docker image. Afterward, we use Argo CD with Helm for deployment on OpenShift. Initially, we had the open-source version, however, we upgraded to the Ultimate version for security scanning and other features.

The CI/CD pipeline with Helm has significantly improved deployment speed and efficiency. Before using this solution, our deployments took four to five hours. Now, we can deploy applications in ten minutes. The Ultimate version offers enhanced features for security scanning through DAST and SAST analysis, which have greatly benefitted our project workflow.

The licensing model could be improved to be more accommodating in terms of user numbers and costs. This would serve more users better.

I have been working with GitLab for three years.

We use a partner, and they are very competent. We have not had the need to open a support ticket directly with GitLab.

Neutral

Before GitLab, we used Jenkins. We used GitLab as a Git repository and Jenkins for pipelines. With Jenkins, we produce Docker images and conduct tests and compile Java projects.

We have saved time significantly, reducing deployment time from four hours to five minutes per deployment.

The price is high, and it limits user accessibility. When we shifted from the open-source to the Ultimate version, we had to reduce the number of users due to the licensing model.

We did not evaluate other options as we are currently satisfied with GitLab.

I recommend GitLab for security features and rate it eight out of ten. 

However, the licensing model could be more flexible to accommodate a broader user base. I especially recommend it for public companies and government-related entities.