Gitlab, the best on-premise Git hosting you can get
Updated September 27, 2020
Gitlab, the best on-premise Git hosting you can get
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Gitlab
Gitlab was used by the entire engineering team (developers and operations) to hold all the code for all our projects. It was installed on-premise since we had 1000 projects to hold. All teams throughout the company used it on a daily basis to share code and discuss merge requests and issues.
- Great interface for merge requests and issues.
- Great community. It's easy to interact with and propose new stuff.
- Used Gitlab community edition for years and it solved all my complaints during these years.
- We were using Gitorious a long time ago and Gitlab helped us to get rid of it. Gitorious was really old and unmaintained, so we gave a new life to our developers.
- We had to do our own packaging for the first versions because their Debian package was really bad at the time. Our package still remains to this time, but theirs are really better now.
I only use the free version, tried the paid version but did not need it after all. For this reason, I don't have much to comment on the paid version of Gitlab.
Continuous integration is probably the best feature of Gitlab. The main Git hosting is great, but the way they do CI is awesome. Gitlab was one of the first to introduce CI and it was available for their own installation and also the open source version. I used both and they work great. I have nothing but positive things to say about it.
Do you think GitLab delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with GitLab's feature set?
Yes
Did GitLab live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of GitLab go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy GitLab again?
Yes
Collaboration and Performance
Yes, it certainly makes. Currently, I'm using Gitlab to host the source code for one of my clients and it certainly makes the code easy to collaborate. We use the full feature set: code hosting, CI, pull requests, etc. The interface is very clean and makes everything obvious for all developers. The fact that we can configure the CI via yml file in the source code is another plus.
I had the chance to use Gitlab when working on-premise and now working remotely for more than 3 years. In both cases, Gitlab enabled a great collaboration setup for my team. We used the open-source version installed locally at the time and now I'm using their own SaaS version. Both work seamlessly.
When using the open-source version, it prevented us to have a very expensive Github account to hold all of our repositories. Gitlab also helped us to not have a dedicated tool for review (like Gerrit) because we were able to rely entirely on their CI + Pull Request management infrastructure.
Using Gitlab
3 - They are all developers. We use Gitlab as a way to sync our code and review each others' work.
1 - Currently, it's a one-man's work. We are using the SaaS version of Gitlab. The free version is enough for our usage. It's current my role to make sure everything works as expected and buy the paid version if something else is needed. In general, there's not much to do, it just works. All the work we have to do is to improve our own process.
- Code sharing
- Easy review via Merge Requests
- Easy CI to test our code on every change request
- We use the CI to check our HTTPS certificate. On every build, we check DNSimple and upload the certificate to Heroku. It guarantees we always have the HTTPs certificate updated
- We have the whole boad of directors on Gitlab so they can create issues and interact with developers there
- All of our product tracking is done via Gitlab boards.
- We want to use Gitlab CI to deploy a new app every time we create a new merge request so people can validate the app before merging
Evaluating Gitlab and Competitors
Yes - Long ago, when I first used Gitlab, we changed from Gitorious. Gitlab was still new, but way better than its competitor. Github was not an option for us at the time because it was too expensive. Gitlab proved to be a good choice with time.
- Price
- Product Features
Github was too expensive and we wanted to deploy something in our infrastructure. The open-source version of Gitlab was exactly what we wanted. It had less features but became feature-complete for us quickly.
I wouldn't change anything. We evaluated other competitors and Gitlab was clearly the winner.
Gitlab Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Support understands my problem Quick Initial Response | Difficult to get immediate help |
No - We were using the open-source version, but even when using the free version, I didn't need support. When I faced a problem, I provided a Merge Request to the community version or opened an issue to the code directly. Their response was usually very good.
Yes - Yes, I did via Gitlab issues. The development team was very responsive. I was able to fix the problem myself and provide the code for the open-source version, which was promptly accepted.
I found a problem after installing a new version. I was able to reproduce myself and fixed in my local environment. I proposed a change via Merge Request and their response came in a few hours asking for more tests. I implemented them and my change was accepted some minutes after my push. The experience was great.
Using Gitlab
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using | Requires technical support Lots to learn |
- CI configuration via yaml file is great. You can just use a default and do your changes via version control
- I like the way their Merge Requests work. They had many features implemented before Github.
- If you use the open-source version, you have to do the updates yourself. They have a good changelog, but it's up to you to manage the whole infrastructure. It's not a problem with Gitlab itself, but it takes time to get used to it.
Yes - I don't use it very much but their website is responsive. It seems to work well.