My use case for GitLab Premium involves consolidating multiple tools for different use cases such as performance testing, SAST, DAST, project management, and advanced project management. Initially, the organization was using close to eight or nine different tools. When I joined this organization as a consultant, they were already using the intermediate level of GitLab within the ecosystem. I recommended that rather than using multiple tools while already paying for them, they add some additional budget and move to GitLab Premium. This would help reduce the maintenance and management of multiple tools and eventually reduce the overall licensing cost.
GitLab Premium
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Consolidating multiple dev and security tools has streamlined workflows and reduced maintenance time
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The functions I found most valuable in GitLab Premium start with the core functionality of Git and version controlling, which is quite solid. The integrations and built-in capabilities provided for security, infrastructure management, SAST, DAST, performance testing, and advanced-level project management make it a solid tool to use.
The code review feature in GitLab Premium improves my development process, and it represents the most basic functionality they provide. It is quite effective to use, particularly the merge request feature that they have.
The planning tools in GitLab Premium, such as roadmaps, help my team manage projects and timelines effectively.
The main benefits I received from GitLab Premium are that I save money and streamline my management process of applications. I am able to reduce costs and maintenance time because I do not have to maintain multiple tools, multiple servers for those tools, or multiple licenses. This helps to reduce both costs and man-hours significantly.
What needs improvement?
GitLab Premium is quite solid now, though there is always room for improvement. They provide a feature for integrating it with provisioning tools such as Terraform and others, but if they could provide direct integration and a segregated unit or feature that helps manage files and maintain versioning in a more visualized way, that could significantly improve the capability.
I have not come across anything lacking in functionality within GitLab Premium that I am looking for. In the future, if there is something, I might suggest it. As of now, whatever the demands of the clients I am working for, GitLab Premium is fulfilling that with the version and capabilities they provide, so I am satisfied.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with GitLab Premium for approximately four years now since my client opted for it.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the stability of GitLab Premium as nine out of ten since I never encounter any issues with it, though there might be some minor ones.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of GitLab Premium is quite solid. I can rate it as ten considering we started with twenty users initially for this particular client when we opted for Premium, and we have scaled up to over one thousand two hundred users so far without facing any challenges.
How are customer service and support?
I rate the technical support from GitLab positively based on my experience. I have approached them a couple of times for issues I was unable to understand or implement, and I received solid support and inputs to fix those issues.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup process for GitLab Premium is simple, as we are using their SaaS platform. There is no setup involved; we just need to create an account, and then it is ready to use. It is a plug and play solution.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
The comparison of GitLab Premium with competitors shows that it is not unique. There are other tools available with similar features, such as GitHub and Azure DevOps from Microsoft, which also offer almost the same functionalities.
For me, the main reason to choose GitLab Premium is that it provides all the same functionality for a lower price compared to other platforms. They are almost the same in terms of cost. It all depends on how a sales team approaches the management. I mainly work as an executor and implementer, providing suggestions and conducting POCs, but the final decision is with the client. Clients are approached by different sales representatives to choose their product or others. We provide them inputs, features, and ratings, and then it is up to them which product they proceed with. GitLab Premium does come with a couple of extra features that are not available in other products on the market now, so it has a premium edge.
What other advice do I have?
I require clarification on which feedback about the effectiveness of GitLab Premium for audit events you are asking about.
Overall, I give GitLab Premium a final rating of nine out of ten for the product. I give GitLab Premium a rating of nine out of ten.
I continue to recommend GitLab Premium to different clients where I work.
Have managed internal projects efficiently but face challenges with user interface and navigation
What is our primary use case?
GitLab Premium is being used, but the CI/CD functionality is not utilized. GitLab also provides the entire CI/CD ecosystem, but that is not being used. GitLab Premium is used for version controlling only.
The primary use case for GitLab Premium is version controlling. Version controlling and triggering capabilities are available, and GitLab configuration is good, but not comparable to GitHub.
GitLab Premium is used for internal needs only.
GitHub Actions are used for enterprise clients, as GitHub is widely used across the enterprise client base. Maximum enterprise clients are using GitHub, while some clients are using Azure Repos. For internal purposes, GitLab Premium is used because most proof of concept work has been done with Jenkins, and automation testing is also performed with Jenkins. A dedicated server for GitLab Premium is maintained because there are more than 350 users. If GitHub were implemented instead, it would be costlier. GitLab Premium is less costly, which is the main reason for the choice.
GitHub is used widely for enterprise clients, while GitLab Premium is used as a customer and user solution.
How has it helped my organization?
Advanced scheduling capability for pipelines does not impact build and deployment speed. This is not felt because integration has been done with a Jenkins project. More than 100 projects are integrated with the Jenkins CI/CD pipeline, and all those repositories are in GitLab Premium only. No lag or slowness is experienced because webhooks have been integrated with all pipelines for auto build triggers. Builds are triggered within seconds.
What is most valuable?
The biggest benefit from GitLab Premium is that both repository management systems are good, as both GitHub and GitLab are valuable. The main advantage is that GitLab Premium has community support. For small organizations, GitLab Premium is good in all aspects. However, for enterprise use, GitLab Premium is also chargeable, though not to the same extent as GitHub.
What needs improvement?
When discussing improvements for GitLab Premium, the main area is the GUI. GitHub's GUI is very good, offering many collaboration options and the ability to customize dashboards. GitHub's look and feel is superior, but GitLab Premium's dashboard is very simple.
Regarding capabilities lacking in GitLab Premium, the main concern is the GUI. For example, in GitHub, there is a right side profile where settings can be directly accessed, and there is a direct section for developer mode with clear segregation. In GitLab Premium, when accessing users, confusion sometimes arises between root user and main user. There is an option for groups, but it is not direct. When clicking on groups, it goes to another section where groups must be found. This hierarchy could be more straightforward and direct.
The biggest drawbacks of GitLab Premium are GUI and configuration. GUI is the primary concern, but other aspects are good.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
A stability rating of eight points is given for GitLab Premium.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
GitLab Premium's scalability is rated at 8.5.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support is felt to be good, but not comparable to GitHub. There is some additional response time, which sometimes feels like a delay. Fast response is needed, but not to the level provided by Microsoft.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
Regarding installation and deployment, GitLab Premium is quite easy to deploy. This is confirmed by the fact that more than 100 projects are managed by GitLab Premium and integrated with Jenkins CI/CD. Build and deployment are quite seamless.
What was our ROI?
Regarding ROI with GitLab Premium, in terms of price, GitLab Premium is better because it is less expensive. GitHub is much more costly.
Regarding whether GitLab Premium is rentable, much clarity cannot be provided because all of these matters are handled by the network management team. Return on investment cannot be provided with much clarity because when working for enterprise clients, they pay hourly for IT systems. These things may be affordable or if they are costlier, they are managed when clients pay the company. GitLab Premium is manageable, and there is no additional complexity regarding ROI.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
GitLab Premium is affordable in terms of pricing, while GitHub is a bit pricier. If working with a much more complex and vast organization at the enterprise level, GitHub would be the choice. If operating a small organization or startup company without much complex scenarios, GitLab Premium is good.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Regarding code review enhancements, GitLab Premium is being used for code-based implementation. For new enterprise clients, GitHub is preferred, but for startup companies that are new to development and operations, GitLab Premium is good because it does not charge much more than GitHub. For small organizations, small teams, and small companies, GitLab Premium is good. For the enterprise level, if working with much complex operations, much greater security, and much more usability and accessibility regarding user access and parameters, GitHub is preferred.
What other advice do I have?
The company relationship with Microsoft and GitHub is as a service provider, while with GitLab Premium, the relationship is as a customer and user.
If operating a startup company, GitLab Premium should be used, as GitLab Premium also provides a community edition with which many things can be done that are available on GitHub.
Regarding scheduling for pipelines, advanced scheduling capability does not impact build and deployment speed. This is not felt because integration has been done with a Jenkins project. All repositories are in GitLab Premium only. No lag or slowness is experienced because webhooks have been integrated with all pipelines for auto build triggers. Whenever any developer pushes any commit or code to the GitLab Premium repository, it automatically triggers within seconds.
The biggest benefit from GitLab Premium is that both repository management systems are good, as both GitHub and GitLab are valuable. The main advantage is that GitLab Premium has community support. For small organizations, GitLab Premium is good in all aspects. However, for enterprise use, GitLab Premium is also chargeable, though not to the same extent as GitHub.
This review has been rated with an overall rating of eight out of ten.
Very Efficient and Structured Solution for the whole Workflow from Management to Deployment
What do you like best about the product?
It started out with a very minimalistic approach, but over time, they have consistently enhanced their features and addressed bugs with better support for customer satisfaction. The platform is now easier to use and less complicated. It also integrates with all the popular mailing, communication, collaboration, and alerting applications. We use it for all our work tracking and releasing. Very easy to implement and build upon.
What do you dislike about the product?
Still has less features compared to peers. But it has everything we really need.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It can be integrated seamlessly with all the popular apps for coding, releasing, testing and alerting logs and all the management workflows too.
All in one platform for code and project management.
What do you like best about the product?
GitLab brings everything into one platform. I can manage code, track issues, create pipelines, and review merge requests without switching tools. The built-in CI-CD is a big advantage as it saves time and makes the whole process smoother.
What do you dislike about the product?
I believe it has a bit of a learning curve. The interface has a lot of features, so it takes time to get used to where everything is.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Helps me keep code, issues, and pipelines all in one place. It makes it easier to review code with teammates, track bugs, and move features from start to finish without losing context. This saves time and makes teamwork more organized.
GitLab: A Complete DevOps Platform
What do you like best about the product?
I like that GitLab brings everything into one platform—version control, CI/CD pipelines, issue tracking, and code review. It makes collaboration between developers, QA, and project managers very smooth.
What do you dislike about the product?
Some of the advanced features can feel overwhelming at first, and the learning curve is a bit steep for new users.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
managing the entire software development lifecycle in one platform, repository hosting and code reviews to automated testing, deployment, and project management.
Efficient Code Version and DevOps platform with powerful CI/CD
What do you like best about the product?
The seamless integration of version controll, CI/CD pipilines and project management in a single platform.
What do you dislike about the product?
Some features feel heavy on resources and the UI can be slow at times.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
it streamlines code collaboratino, automates deployments, and improves team productivity by keeping everything in one place.
Complete DevOps Platform with Powerful CI/CD
What do you like best about the product?
Built-in container registry stores our test Docker images versioned alongside code.
Code review tools with inline test coverage indicators show exactly which paths lack testing.
The GitLab Runner autoscaling on Kubernetes spins up hundreds of test executors during regression runs, then scales down to save costs.
The unified DevOps platform eliminates tool sprawl such as version control, CI/CD, test reporting, and deployment all in one interface.
Code review tools with inline test coverage indicators show exactly which paths lack testing.
The GitLab Runner autoscaling on Kubernetes spins up hundreds of test executors during regression runs, then scales down to save costs.
The unified DevOps platform eliminates tool sprawl such as version control, CI/CD, test reporting, and deployment all in one interface.
What do you dislike about the product?
The pipeline YAML syntax is unnecessarily complex; simple parallel test configurations require nested includes and anchors that break mysteriously.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
GitLab unified our fragmented toolchain - replacing Jenkins, GitHub, Docker Hub, and Artifactory with one platform reduced context switching and eliminated integration maintenance. Built-in security scanning in CI/CD identified critical vulnerabilities our separate tools missed. Auto DevOps provisions ephemeral test environments per branch, enabling true parallel testing without environment conflicts.
Freedom and collaboration without the mess
What do you like best about the product?
Gitlab starts of as feeling like a clone of github. But that misses the point. Gitlab gives you way more freedom to work as you please, to install and run on-premise or work with SaaS in the hosted gitlab.
I'm a bit OCD maybe but "merge request" is more accurate than "pull request" as github calls it. So it feels more 'technically correct'. All the usual integrations exists, very easily links to IntelliJ products, as command line of course still remains there for the die hards. I use gitlab every day, multiple times a day. It's part of my software engineering workflow.
To get started, there's some clicking around to find your way, but it becomes natural to understand when youknow the basics. Especially good are the features to resolve merge conflicts by editing online and running interactive merge tools online, as well as the interactive CI configuration editor.
I'm a bit OCD maybe but "merge request" is more accurate than "pull request" as github calls it. So it feels more 'technically correct'. All the usual integrations exists, very easily links to IntelliJ products, as command line of course still remains there for the die hards. I use gitlab every day, multiple times a day. It's part of my software engineering workflow.
To get started, there's some clicking around to find your way, but it becomes natural to understand when youknow the basics. Especially good are the features to resolve merge conflicts by editing online and running interactive merge tools online, as well as the interactive CI configuration editor.
What do you dislike about the product?
Gitlab is not a slick and "fun" as Github. But it's way better to use than running a "pure git" repository over ssh connection or shared filesystem with your colleagues.
Self-hosted, while that brings it's benefits, can be slow, and combined with the clicking around to figure stuff out, makes it feel a bit clunky. SaaS cloud hosted is much better and faster, but of course you pay for that.
As an "end user" it's easy to get going with gitlab, and there's endless community support as well as customer support. Though you can see some feature requests do lag for a long time until getting resolved.
As an admin, integrating Gitlab could be worse than it is, but it's way better to maintain and operate than doing without it.
Self-hosted, while that brings it's benefits, can be slow, and combined with the clicking around to figure stuff out, makes it feel a bit clunky. SaaS cloud hosted is much better and faster, but of course you pay for that.
As an "end user" it's easy to get going with gitlab, and there's endless community support as well as customer support. Though you can see some feature requests do lag for a long time until getting resolved.
As an admin, integrating Gitlab could be worse than it is, but it's way better to maintain and operate than doing without it.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Gitlab ticks many boxes. Managed software development and version control of course. QA and test automation incuding peer review. This is a really strong point including inline code suggestions to reduce the burden of change and re-review. The CI and CD elements of Gitlab are newer to me, but are super powerful, and once I established a pattern that worked in my company, re-implementing it over multiple projects was then a very quick job.
I am now very happy that my pipeline, after merging can build, release and the deploy new services in one click - fire and forget. And as a bonus optional one-click to deploy a merge request into a dev environment for testing. Really sweet.
I am now very happy that my pipeline, after merging can build, release and the deploy new services in one click - fire and forget. And as a bonus optional one-click to deploy a merge request into a dev environment for testing. Really sweet.
All-in-One DevOps Platform That Simplifies CI/CD and Collaboration
What do you like best about the product?
GitLab combines source code management, CI/CD pipelines, issue tracking, and DevOps automation into a single, unified platform. I love how seamless the Merge Request workflow is, and the pipeline configuration using .gitlab-ci.yml gives us full control. Its self-hosting option is a big plus for privacy-focused teams.
What do you dislike about the product?
The UI can feel heavy at times, and pipeline debugging isn’t always straightforward for beginners. Also, compared to GitHub, the community plugins and marketplace are more limited. Occasionally, documentation for advanced features could be more detailed.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
GitLab helps us streamline our development process, manage code securely, run automated tests, and handle feature releases without needing multiple tools. It reduces our toolchain complexity significantly.
Advanced automation streamlines development and enhances code integration
How has it helped my organization?
The merge request features in GitLab Premium impact development processes significantly because it's a collaboration tool. Different developers can work on their portion and then request a merge. The person can merge all the codes together into a main branch, and when deployed, everything would be deployed together.
What is most valuable?
The features in GitLab Premium that are the most useful include CI/CD capabilities and code check-ins.
The main benefits from advanced CI/CD capabilities in GitLab Premium include automation to pull and merge the codes together, and it's all done automatically. Users can set this up, making it quite straightforward. From coding to deployment, if the whole process is automated properly, it's a matter of seconds.
The security management functionality in GitLab Premium provides some application security testing, which is adequate. However, for a full security suite, upgrading to Ultimate is necessary.
What needs improvement?
In terms of improvement for GitLab Premium, not necessarily GitLab Premium specifically but GitLab as a whole could enhance features on the project management side. They could look at their sprints based on effort rather than by weightage or by the number of issues. Additionally, it's important to ensure that deployed code is authentic and hasn't been modified by unauthorized parties.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not faced any issues with stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
GitLab Premium is a scalable solution that can be easily scaled by adding licenses.
How are customer service and support?
I have had the opportunity to talk with technical support for some issues, and they were quick to respond.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
The setup experience for GitLab Premium is easy.
On a scale from one to ten, where ten means very easy setup, I would rate it an eight.
Deploying GitLab Premium for the first time takes about a day to set things up properly. Once it has been set up, the deployment from code to production runs in minutes.
What other advice do I have?
GitLab has their own AI chatbot, GitLab Duo, but when they introduced it to us, it was still very new. I have not had a chance to explore it yet.
Regarding the cost of GitLab Premium, they recently revised their price, but we received the earlier price, and they maintained it, making it reasonable.
For those planning to use GitLab Premium, it's beneficial for code repository management and automates many tasks. Setup is required once, and multiple deployments can be performed afterward.
I would give GitLab Premium a total rating of eight out of ten.
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