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."
"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."
"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 automation workflow in CircleCI related to third-party applications is very good and allows standardization of applications."
"The most valuable features of GitLab are ease of use and highly intuitive UI and performance."
"A user friendly solution."
"It is scalable."
"The solution makes the CI/CD pipelines easy to execute."
"GitLab is a solution for source code management, container registry, pipelines, testing, and deployment."
"We have seen a couple of merge requests or pull requests raised in GitLab. I see the interface, the way it shows the difference between the two source codes, that it is easy for anyone to do the review and then accept the request; the pull request is the valuable feature."
"The tool helps to integrate CI/CD pipeline deployments. It is very easy to learn. Its security model is good."
"GitLab's best feature is Actions."
"Billing is a mess."
"The solution’s pricing could be better."
"There needs to be some improvement in the user interface of CircleCI."
"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 should be more cloud-native and have more cloud-native capabilities and features."
"We have only seen a couple of issues on Gitlab, which we use for building some of the applications."
"It would be better if there weren't any outages. There are occasions where we usually see a lot of outages using GitLab. It happens at least once a week or something like that. Whatever pipelines you're running, to check the logs, you need to have a different set of tools like Argus or something like that. If you have pipelines running on GitLab, you need a separate service deployed to view the logs, which is kind of a pain. If the logs can be used conveniently on GitLab, that would be definitely helpful. I'm not talking about the CI/CD pipelines but the back-end services and microservices deployed over GitLab. To view the logs for those microservices, you need to have separate log viewers, which is kind of a pain."
"The only thing our company is really waiting on in terms of features is the development of metrics."
"We do face issues in our company when we run out of disk space."
"The initial setup was quite challenging because it takes some time to understand how to pull out or push the code."
"The solution does not have many built-in functions or variables so scripting is required."
"The pricing model of GitLab is an issue for me."
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, Jenkins, GitHub Actions and Harness, whereas GitLab is most compared with Microsoft Azure DevOps, Bamboo, SonarQube, 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.