External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
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.
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.
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.
We are not using the community version of GitLab, but we are using it for ticketing and publishing the tool versioning.
The best features of GitLab are versioning and keeping track of the versions.
GitLab helps me save time and provide financial benefits, as keeping track of the updated version and the changes is money and time-saving.
GitLab has CI/CD pipeline capabilities.
I have been working with GitLab for probably six to seven years.
I am satisfied with GitLab's security, and we have not experienced any problems so far.
Regarding scalability, I did not face any issues with GitLab supporting my projects.
I have not contacted GitLab's technical support.
Neutral
I have seen benefits from using GitLab, since my directors and the team are using it, they must be happy with it.
I rate GitLab seven out of ten because nothing is perfect. I think we have to finish the conversation. I have told you what I could tell you.
We were using GitLab as a repository for our project. Whenever we were developing anything, we would commit our codes there.
We used it for creating branches, merging branches, and comparing branches to resolve conflicts during code committing. We configured the CI/CD pipeline to automate our deployment process. We also utilized it in conjunction with tools like Octopus and OpenShift.
GitLab helped us streamline our code-committing and versioning process. It provided better user-friendly solutions for comparing and resolving conflicts when committing code.
The CI/CD pipeline setup was straightforward and required fewer commands, making it simpler to use compared to Tekton. This efficiency in code management and deployment contributed to smoother operations in our projects.
The most valuable aspects of GitLab are the ability to create branches, merge branches, and compare branches to resolve code conflicts.
The documentation provided by GitLab is very comprehensive, which is useful for resolving queries. GitLab's logs are also beneficial for tracking the status of our CI/CD pipeline.
GitLab can improve its user interface to make conflict resolution more user-friendly. Better and more descriptive logs during CI/CD pipeline configuration would also be beneficial to diagnose issues more quickly.
Sometimes, the logs provided are not sufficient to understand the errors, and we needed assistance from our DevOps team.
I have been using GitLab for around four to five years.
I have not experienced any performance or stability issues with GitLab so far.
GitLab is scalable and works well with multiple environments. It integrates well with other tools. It has all the features required for our coding and deployment needs, which makes it scalable to our changing requirements.
I did not have the opportunity to engage with GitLab's technical support as I did not encounter any issues requiring escalation.
Neutral
The initial setup was straightforward. There were no challenges beyond typical configuration, and the documentation was adequate.
Our DevOps team handled most of the configuration work, and we, as developers, made changes only occasionally for personal use scenarios.
I have never paid for using GitLab personally, as it is free for our usage purposes. Even when working in other small organizations, we opted for GitLab as it was cost-efficient.
I would recommend GitLab to others because it is free and user-friendly. It provides all the necessary functionalities we need.
I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.