We performed a comparison between CircleCI and GitLab based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Build Automation solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The ability to automate the build process in a seamless way and run workflows effortlessly. It supports parallel builds so it can scale well. Also, it covers the basics of any build and integration tool, including email notifications (especially when tests are fixed), project insights, etc."
"Enables us to detect exactly which build failed and why, and to push multiple builds to our production environment at a very fast rate."
"The solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery."
"It's a stable product."
"Some of the most valuable features include container-based builds, integration with Bit Bucket and being able to store artifacts."
"The automation workflow in CircleCI related to third-party applications is very good and allows standardization of applications."
"This product is always evolving, and they listen to the customers."
"Key features allow creation of well-presented Wiki that includes ideas, development, and domains."
"The important feature is the entire process of versioning source code maintenance and easy deployment. It is a necessity for the CI/CD pipeline."
"The most valuable feature of GitLab is the automatic merging of code."
"GitLab's best features are maintenance, branch integration, and development infrastructure."
"The most valuable features of GitLab are ease of use and highly intuitive UI and performance."
"The solution's service delivery model is fantastic."
"The user interface is really good so that helps with huge teams who need to collaborate."
"Integration with Microsoft Azure is one area for improvement. Azure is growing in its user base, and supports various cloud infrastructure components such as Service Fabric, App Service, etc. Some of Azure’s deployment models (like Kudu) require a steep learning curve, but if CircleCI would come up with such features (deployment to App Service) out of the box, it would be amazing."
"The solution’s pricing could be better."
"There needs to be some improvement in the user interface of CircleCI."
"Billing is a mess."
"It can be free for commercial use."
"GitLab could consider introducing a code-scanning tool. Purchasing such tools from external markets can incur charges, which might not be favorable. Integrating these features into GitLab would streamline the pipeline and make it more convenient for users."
"I've noticed an area for improvement in GitLab, particularly needing to go through many steps to push the code to the repository. Resolving that issue would make the product better. My team quickly fixed it by writing a small script, then double-clicking or enabling the script to take care of the issue. However, that quick fix was from my team and not the GitLab team, so in the next release, if an automatic deployment feature would be available in GitLab, then that would be good because, in Visual Studio, you can do that with just one click of a button."
"I believe there's room for improvement in the advanced features, particularly in enhancing the pipeline functionalities."
"Based on what I know so far, its integration with Kubernetes is not so good. We have to develop many things to make it work. We have to acquire third-party components to work with Kubernetes."
"We do face issues in our company when we run out of disk space."
"It's more related to the supporting layer of features, such as issue management and issue tracking. We tend to always use, for example, Jira next to it. That doesn't mean that GitLab should build something similar to Jira because that will always have its place, but they could grow a bit in those kinds of supporting features. I see some, for example, covering ITSM on a DevOps team level, and that's one of the things that I and my current client would find really helpful. It's understandably not going to be their main focus and their core, and whenever you are with a company that needs a bit more advanced features on that specific topic, you're probably still going to integrate with another tool like Jira Service Management, for example. However, some basic features on things like that could be really helpful."
"The tool should include a feature that helps to edit the code directly."
CircleCI is ranked 11th in Build Automation with 5 reviews while GitLab is ranked 1st in Build Automation with 70 reviews. CircleCI is rated 6.6, while GitLab is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of CircleCI writes "Unhelpful support, unclear billing, and has offers ability to track usage". On the other hand, the top reviewer of GitLab writes "Powerful, mature, and easy to set up and manage". CircleCI is most compared with TeamCity, Tekton, GitHub Actions, Jenkins and Harness, whereas GitLab is most compared with Microsoft Azure DevOps, SonarQube, Bamboo, AWS CodePipeline and Tekton. See our CircleCI vs. GitLab report.
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We monitor all Build Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
