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
GitLabExternal reviews
885 reviews
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External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
A great enterprise repository solution
What do you like best about the product?
The user interface is excellent. It makes tasks like viewing and searching code, opening and reviewing merge requests, as well as creating tags and managing pipelines, all very straightforward and accessible.
What do you dislike about the product?
There are some useful features, but for instance, the ability to add two reviewers to a merge request is restricted by a paywall. This limitation is disappointing, especially for a self-hosted solution where you would expect more flexibility.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We rely on GitLab to host our version control, with our entire monorepo managed there. All of our upgrades are handled through merge requests, which streamlines our workflow. Additionally, we have an extensive network of pipelines in place to ensure that our code consistently functions as intended.
One tool to Plan, Build and Deliver faster.
What do you like best about the product?
The best thing about GitLab is that you do not need to use multiple tools. It covers git repo, ci/cd, sprint planning, tracing issues,and deployment. It comes with built in ci/cd which works out of the box. By just adding .xml file, we can set up ci/cd easily, no third party integration needed. So for any project easy to build, test and deploy. We're using GitLab frequently and it helps everyone from developers to project manager.
What do you dislike about the product?
Sprint planning is simpler compared to other tools.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
GitLab removes chaos from software development because it's all in one platform and helps teams deliver better work, faster, with more transparency.
Simple, Scalable, Secure, and Seamless DevOps Platform.
What do you like best about the product?
Scalability, Security, wonderful ui-ux. To me, it has been the best DevOps platform, easy to configure seamless CI/CD pipeline.
What do you dislike about the product?
Large repositories are problematic, besides the initial setup seems complex, and the limited integration due to Kubernetes is a challenge.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Configuring secure CI-CD pipelines with ease.
Powerful Group Structure and Seamless CI/CD Integration, but can be a bit complicated at first
What do you like best about the product?
I love the group structure and how I am able to control the granularity of organization. I also really like Gitlab's CI/CD integration, making it very easy to run it with Gitlab Runner.
What do you dislike about the product?
The group structure is sometimes a double edged sword as different organizations have different ways of structuring their group, and the learning curve may be a bit high if you are just joining, as it is different than what they might be used to.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We needed an easy way of doing CI/CD as well as managing security clearance per project, Gitlab's features made it very easy.
Unified DevSecOps with Strong CI/CD Pipelines
What do you like best about the product?
I appreciate how GitLab brings the entire DevSecOps lifecycle into a single unified platform, reducing tools sprawl and making my workflow more efficient. GitLab's built-in CI/CD pipelines are one of its strongest features. They are easy to configure using .gitlab-ci.yml, provide powerful automation, and eliminate the need for separate CI tools, making environment deployment easy. The initial setup was moderately easy, and I found GitLab's documentation very helpful in making the installation straightforward.
What do you dislike about the product?
While GitLab is a powerful and unified DevSecOps platform, there are areas where usability and performance could be improved, specifically the user interface complexity and pipeline speed and resource consumption.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use GitLab to create tasks and issues for employees, get updates from assignees, and prioritize issues. It unifies my DevSecOps processes, reduces tool sprawl, and enhances efficiency with its strong built-in CI/CD pipelines, automation, and no need for separate CI tools.
Feature-Rich Platform with a Slick UI
What do you like best about the product?
It's an all-in-one solution for hosting both the sources and the resulting artifacts, good integration to other tools
What do you dislike about the product?
I'm missing a way to orchestrate reviews/merges across multiple repos
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
collaborating over code review
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.
Gitlab Review
What do you like best about the product?
GitLab brings source control, CI pipelines, security scanning, and deployment automation into a single place, which makes daily development a lot smoother. The consistency across the platform reduces the mental overhead of switching between tools. I like that everything feels unified rather than bolted together. The integrated CI system is especially helpful because it requires almost no external setup, and merge requests tie directly into automated tests, security scans, and approvals. The platform scales well for both solo projects and enterprise work, and it stays reliable even with heavy pipeline workloads.
What do you dislike about the product?
The main drawback is that GitLab can feel slow at times, especially with large repositories or when pipeline queues are busy. Some advanced features sit behind higher-tier pricing, which makes the free tier feel limited compared to competitors. The UI can be overwhelming because there are so many features packed into the navigation, and it sometimes takes longer than expected to find the setting you want. Integration with third-party services is good but not always as smooth as GitHub.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
GitLab consolidates version control, CI/CD, security checks, and infrastructure workflows into one ecosystem, which eliminates the need to maintain separate tools for pipelines, ticketing, and code review. The platform helps enforce security policies during development instead of after deployment. Automated testing reduces production defects, and the integrated scanning tools catch vulnerable dependencies early. This improves release consistency and saves time across the entire development cycle.
Supports daily deployments with streamlined workflows and could improve pipeline startup time
What is our primary use case?
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.
How has it helped my organization?
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.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
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.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
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.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
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.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
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.
What other advice do I have?
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.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
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.
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