GitLab serves as the backbone of our entire software development lifecycle. Our engineering team uses GitLab for source control, code review, and CI/CD across multiple codebases.
MR-based workflows help enforce code standards and keep our team aligned on shared codebases, spanning multiple stacks.
Pros
Version control
Diff UI
Code review process
Notifications
Ease of use
Cons
MCP server integration is unreliable
Large MRs can cause the UI to lag/timeout
No first-class post-merge pipeline trigger
Likelihood to Recommend
GitLab is well suited to teams that need to adhere to strict, well-defined processes, and manage their complete software development lifecycle efficiently. From simple drafts and proofs of concept, all the way to shipping enterprise quality production ready software, GitLab is capable of managing it all. It's a one stop shop!
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Engineering (Computer Software company, 51-200 employees)
As a budding software developer, I am part of many teams to learn different software flows and delivery parameters. I came across GitLab through one of my colleague, who works with C# plugins and was facing issues with standardizing delivery parameters for executables. He was able to integrate CI/CD pipelines very conveniently using GitLab.
Pros
Security on branches and version control
AI tools for code review
Provides multiple ways to implement CI/CD
Cons
Features are similar in ultimate and premium tier
Support tickets take longer to resolve
UI gets freeze
Likelihood to Recommend
GitLab is best suited for new developers who want to learn scripting and automation using runners it helps in standardizing creation of executables. It also provides different ways for issue tracking and resolving merge conflicts. The code reviewer has a lot of options to provide his insights about the pull requests raised. The free tier has limited features as compared to some other software.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (Computer Software company, 201-500 employees)
We use GitLab to manage our source control and visualize our branches , resolved merges/conflicts , and conduct code reviews. In these functions we find that GitLab provides a robust way to view and manage.
Pros
Visibility
Control
Ease of use
Cons
Merge differences can be confusing
The ui can be a little clunky
Large files tend to take a long time
Likelihood to Recommend
Gitlab has been useful in a number of situations, but we frequently use it to help enforce multiple levels of code checks and approvals before any code is merged into a branch. Some other scenarios would include handling conflicts and pushing code to a different branch.
VU
Verified User
General Manager in Product Management (Computer Software company, 51-200 employees)
It addresses repository and CI/CD pipelines and allows you to use your own agents. Because of all its integrations, it’s very good for managing an organization with different projects. It also has great features for controlling an organization, and it has security features like MFA and a built-in key vault. It can be integrated with other products like Vault and Terraform.
Pros
Repository management.
CI/CD pipelines.
Organization and team management.
Integration with other tools.
Cons
UI can improve.
Likelihood to Recommend
I love the product overall compared to GitHub and Bitbucket. Honestly, it's the best repo and CICD tool in the market. I’ve been using it for quite a few years—actually since 2019—and by far, it's the best and easiest to use, manage teams, and integrate with other software.
In our organization, we use GitLab as an all-encompassing DevOps platform, streamlining our development and deployment processes. GitLab facilitates seamless collaboration among our development teams by providing a unified environment for source code management, continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD), and project management.The primary business problems it addresses include enhancing code quality, reducing deployment times, and improving team collaboration. By using GitLab's CI/CD pipelines, we automate testing and deployments, ensuring that our code is consistently integrated and deployed with minimal manual intervention. This not only speeds up the release cycle but also minimizes errors, resulting in a more reliable product.
Pros
Versioning
CI CD
Tracking issues
Collaboration
Cons
More visibility, more separate tabs
Likelihood to Recommend
GitLab is well suited for entreprise project and project with large feature, for simplier projects, involving less actors I don't think GitLab is well appropriate
VU
Verified User
Technician in Information Technology (Telecommunications company, 1001-5000 employees)
I use GitLab for my differents projects. I use for : versioning, continuous deploiment (cicd), analyzing my code, kanban, and issues management. For me, GitLab is an essential part of my daily life. It allows me to work in a team, to do code reviews, and to optimize the management of our sprints.
Pros
CICD
Merge Requests System
Artifact Registry
Cons
UI recently change and i'm not really confortable with these changes
I think some documentation about Pipelines/CICD. I really appreciate the use of cicd, but sometime i've encountered some difficulties to fins some informations like : embeded template vs forward variables
Likelihood to Recommend
I really appreciate my experiences with GitLab. I use it since 2015 in my company. It allows us to regularly monitor our projects, to facilitate sharing between several developers, and this with great simplicity. I recently test the IA functionalities, Duo. It is very promising, it is the future of our job.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Research & Development (Telecommunications company, 10,001+ employees)
I use GitLab daily for my development-related activities, including CI/CD pipelines. We maintain all internal projects on GitLab, and it helps multiple developers collaborate on the same project. As a developer, I appreciate the user-friendly Pull Request feature on GitLab.
Pros
GitLab helps developers collaborate including planning, source code management and compliance
GitLab helps projects to build continuous integration and maintain a continuous delivery pipeline.
Gitlab help developers to store artifacts
Cons
Gitlab can provide GenAI code review feature
Gitlab can provide security mitigation using GenAI
Gitlab can provide recent changes feed like github
Likelihood to Recommend
For me, I'm utilizing GitLab for internal project development and collaboration
within my organization, while primarily utilizing GitHub for public or
open-source projects.
We use GitLab to store and manage the codebase of our organization. We have multiple projects in there but they are all part of the same platform. We do the code review in GitLab.
We also have integrated CI/CD and debugging tools, like Argo Workflows, and Grafana. We also use the integration with Jira and Slack.
Pros
CI/CD integration
Customizable approver privilege
Merge Request dependencies
Auto-merge when pipelines pass and code is approved
Cons
GitLab Code Suggestions is very poor compared to GitHub Copilot. The company decided to use Copilot instead because the GitLab one is slow and the recommendations are very basic.
Some merge requests display changes in code that has not been touched because there is a merge commit even if the changes are already in the target branch.
Sometimes it requires approval when it is not needed, but this is likely caused by the same issue of the merge commit.
When pasting a piece of text that was copied from a suggestion in the GitLab comments during code review, the text is also formatted in a code suggestion, despite there is already a suggestion in the comment.
Likelihood to Recommend
The DevOps people in the company have configured our GitLab account very well, so it is well integrated with other tools and help us with our CI/CD process. It validates that the code is already merged in the lower branches and requires approval according to some configurations. Some things are customized but GitLab allows you to do it.
we use it for version control and ci/cd based docker deployment via AWS deployments
Pros
free private repositories always (unlike GitHub which started it recently)
friendly and intuitive UI
enterprise first feature prioritization (B2B) unlike GitHub which first offers features for personal accounts (B2C)
Cons
While GitLab offers role-based access control, more granular permissions at the project and group levels could provide better security and flexibility. For instance, the ability to restrict specific actions (e.g., merge, push) on a more granular level would be useful.
github has a more extensive marketplace for apps and integrations compared to GitLab
GitLab's mobile app needs a lot of improvements. The coverage of features in the app is weak
Likelihood to Recommend
GitLab has a more security-first and open-source second focus. If the other way is a bigger priority for you, go for GitHub.
VU
Verified User
C-Level Executive in Corporate (Computer Software company, 1-10 employees)
We are using GitLab for maintaining repositories. GitLab provides features where multiple users when working on a single feature, can collaborate their work without hampering each other’s work. It also lets you undo the changes by navigating to previous version of code file as it maintains version history as well. one can also track down the changes made to particular segment in due course of time.
Pros
Repository creation
Code merger
Code maintenance
Version history
Code review
Pull request creation
Cons
Integration with some more tools
More user friendly UI
Responsiveness and quick actions
Integration with BARD
Likelihood to Recommend
It is good for enterprise solutions where large number of files and changes are made. It is also useful when there are multiple users working on a single piece of application. It passes most of our manual work and provide platform to directly integrate within the IDE and manage the changes directly
