GitLab Reviews

I use the tool for deployment. 

The tool helps to integrate CI/CD pipeline deployments. It is very easy to learn. Its security model is good. 

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 have been working with the product for six years. 

I haven't encountered any bugs in GitLab. 

In our company, I estimate that around 30 people use GitLab, primarily for branching and repository management.

Our organization decided to use GitLab because it's easy to use, and its user interface is more intuitive than other tools.

The tool's deployment is easy. 

I would recommend using GitLab. It provides a repository and API, allowing you to create deployment pipelines. I rate it a ten out of ten. 

We are using this solution for DevOps adoption primarily.

The best part of the solution is it's a single platform, and this platform can help you do your required management, your source code management, your build management, your test management, artifact management, deployment management, et cetera. If this solution was not there, you'd have to put three or four different products together to do all the activities. With this, we are using one single product, including security. Everything is happening on a single platform. It is lean and easy management with no complexities and no integration issues. This one platform is able to do everything for us.

The solution has an established roadmap that lays out its plans for upgrades over the next two to three years. 

The release schedules are quite clear. Even if I'm expecting some improvement, the improvement release cycles are already there in place. So even if I say I want some improvement, they will say it is already planned in the first quarter, second quarter, or third quarter. That said, most everything is quite improved already, and they're improving even further still. 

We have been using the solution for a year. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

We are using an on-premises deployment, and on-prem will always have challenges with scalability. On-premises infrastructure never has elasticity since everything is fixed. If I have 500 servers, I have only 500. I cannot grow them to a thousand in a minute. My storage is going to be limited. 

Our users are not more than 500 users. So for us, the scaling we have fits. 

I myself being a DevOps consultant, have seen deployments for 2000 or even 3000 users also.In that sense, there is an issue of scalability. The infrastructure we have means the solution will be quite scalable for the next three years. 

We have tried out a lot of other products, including Azure DevOps. We have tried a lot of open-source products as well. The major benefit we found in this solution is it's a single platform doing everything. If I go to Azure DevOps, Microsoft would also say it's a single platform, yet it's not a single platform. They have integrated themselves with multiple toolchain vendors, and it's a Microsoft wrapper on the top. When it comes to Microsoft is a resource-hungry solution. You require a lot of resources to run on Microsoft.

The deployment is fairly easy. The people who are doing the deployment should be very clear about the fundamentals, like any adoption, like when you're doing a DevOps adoption and moving towards automation. 

The most important part is you really have to work on education. On the one hand, you have the investment, however, the investment will never show you how to use it. Once the adoption grows in the organization, you'll be able to see the returns and the benefits that are there. 

We are currently in a phase of adoption across the organization. It's going on very well, and deployment is fairly easy. I didn't find much difficulty when doing deployment and getting people to work with it. Anybody who works on DevOps toolchain implementation can even go and implement GitLab also. It's that easy.

We have a new adoption going on and within a year we'll begin to see a return on investment.

GitLab is a paid version, Ultimate GitLab. It has three editions: one is a free edition or a community edition. They have a premium edition, which is a paid version. Then, they have the ultimate edition, which is also a paid edition. 

There are no hidden costs or fees associated with the product. I pay one price and get everything I need. 

We are using GitLab Ultimate.

As a DevOps consultant, I would like to give advice some. From 2008 or 2009, when the global market started adopting DevOps, until the year 2019 or 2020, we always had a problem. If I wanted to have DevOps automation in the organization, we would require four or five tools minimum. Since GitLab in 2020 emerged as a single platform, always advise people who are implementing DevOps to always move towards a single platform. 

The reason is that you save a lot of money on your infrastructure costs. You also save a lot of money on the resources which are required to maintain all infrastructure for a single platform. And if you maintain a single platform, you'll require an optimized resource tool to maintain that.

If you're going to have multiple tools in your infrastructure for DevOps, you require many people to maintain that. In the end, everything boils down to cost. Cost is definitely high if you need to maintain infrastructure with multiple toolchains. So my advice is always, when we talk about agility, to be lean. So when you bring in GitLab, you get a lean infrastructure; you get a simple and non-complex infrastructure. You have minimum compliance issues and minimum regulatory issues. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Our company uses the solution as a repository manager for our best code, to set up CI/CD pipelines, and to build projects and get architects. We build code and generate artifacts that we push to UrbanCode for deployment. 

For one use case, we created an entire CI/CD pipeline that deploys code to the artifact and Target Server. This deployment was our first using the solution and included a lot of scripting. The customer has 250 current users that includes maintenance, owners, and developers.

Eventually, we plan to use the solution for all deployments. 

The user interface is really good so that helps with huge teams who need to collaborate. 

The solution is great for SCM, depository management, building, and CI/CD.

The solution does not have many built-in functions or variables so scripting is required and that is a drawback. For example, it would be nice to have a button on the interface for setting up environments in meta folders. 

I have been using the solution for two years. 

The solution is stable. Performance comes down slightly when multiple pipelines for a complex project are triggered at once. I rate performance a seven out of ten. 

We use the solution on-premises so do not scale in the way others do on the cloud. 

Technical support is very quick. I raised two tickets and and they followed up regularly which was great. 

Our company currently uses UrbanCode for deployments. Eventually, we want to conduct all deployments in the solution. 

The setup is straightforward so I rate it an eight out of ten. 

Our company includes a four-person deployment team who implements the solution for customers. 

Our internal team handles maintenance of our GitLab server. Every month, we download, install, and publish patches or upgrades to our community. 

The solution is based on a licensing model that includes technical support and is paid annually. Our company currently has between 430 to 480 licenses. 

The solution is newer to the market so other tools with longevity such as Jenkins are more popular. The solution is slowly emerging as its potential as a complete CI/CD setup becomes known. 

UrbanCode is specifically designed as a deployment tool and dominates because of its efficiencies. The user interface has built-in functionality for creating multiple environments, creating approval processes, and downloading artifacts. Conversely, to perform these same functions in the solution you must script the configuration file. 

Java includes Deployment Managers and agent pools for deploying to a Target Server. The solution might not be good for deployments because there isn't enough flexibility to create them quickly. We can script, but it is easier to click buttons for deployment functionality. 

I recommend the solution and rate it a seven out of ten. 

In some of the projects we are involved with, we use GitLab for the purposes of issue management and as a configuration management tool. Along with GitLab, we also use the core Jira software for issue management functionality, as well as GitLab Runner for its CI/CD tools.

Our internet connection runs on a different infrastructure to the greater internet system, so we are using on-premises versions of all these solutions. Because nothing is cloud-based, we don't need much in the way of firewall or security solutions.

The most important features of GitLab for us are issue management and all the CI/CD tools. Another aspect that I love about GitLab is the UI.

For as long as I have used GitLab, I haven't encountered any major limitations. However, I think that perhaps the search functionality could be better.

The main shortcoming is that with some parts of GitLab, things can get quite complex. Especially in the beginning, the learning curve can be a bit steep and it takes some time to learn how to use the tools. That said, once you understand the mentality of it, it becomes easy.

We have been using GitLab for about five years.

We have had no instability issues with GitLab. When it comes to maintenance, we have IT departments that deal with that, and I am not directly involved in the maintenance of the tools themselves so I don't know if it's difficult to maintain or not.

We haven't yet tried to scale it past the 100 or so users in my organization.

We haven't used any other similar solution before GitLab.

In some areas, the initial stages of using GitLab can be complex and presents a steep learning curve. It takes some time to learn and use all the tools properly, but once you understand the mentality behind it, it is not that difficult.

We didn't implement GitLab ourselves as we have IT departments that take care of that process. I am unsure as to whether they used any external consultants or deployed it themselves, however.

In total, I believe we have more than 300 licenses spread over about 100 users, though I can't comment on the costs involved.

GitLab is a wholly complete solution and it is for this reason that I can recommend it to other users.

I would rate GitLab 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. 

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 have our CI/CD pipelines set up in GitLab. It is our code base. 

The solution makes the CI/CD pipelines easy to execute. 

The tool should include a feature that helps to edit the code directly. 

I have been using the product for two years. 

The solution is stable. 

I haven't reached out to them yet. 

GitLab's deployment is easy. 

GitLab is cheap. 

I use GitLab to manage repository code sources, scanning code sources, and CI/CD. We have around 100 users.

GitLab helps us integrate with many types of software. You can deploy and integrate source code, various tools, webhooks, etc. 

I like GitLab's security and SAS tools.

GitLab could add a plugin to integrate with Kubernetes stuff.

I have been using GitLab for four years now.

GitLab is stable.

GitLab is scalable. You can deploy it in a Kubernetes cluster or on VMs.

We don't contact support. GitLab has such a huge community that you can easily find a solution in the forums. 

I have used Bitbucket and GitHub for personal use. We adopted GitLab because it's a good enterprise solution.

GitLab is easy to install and takes you less than a day. You download the GitLab package, configure it, and push the repos. If you want to integrate Sonar Cube or Jenkins, you can use webhooks or the Jenkins file.

GitLab has a good ROI because it can accommodate many users, and it increases your DevOps score.

GitLab has three plans: starter, professional, and LTMH. The LTMH is $99 for user permits, but some integrators in Morocco bundle GitLab into a package. It's reasonable, but they could lower the price now that we have a huge community and many users.

I rate GitLab eight out of 10. It's a good solution for DevOps and managing Ripple. It's possibly the most complete DevOps and DevSecOps platform. You can help users to make wonderful stuff with their source code and applications. GitLab supports many types of source code like Python, Ruby, etc. It's great software.