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Fortify on Demand vs GitLab comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortify on Demand
Ranking in Application Security Tools
15th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
GitLab
Ranking in Application Security Tools
9th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), Rapid Application Development Software (11th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Fortify on Demand is 4.4%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 2.9%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Jonathan Steyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Source code analyzer, FPR file generation, reduction of false positives and generates compliance reports, for in-depth analysis
Not challenges with the product itself. The product is very reliable. It does have a steep learning curve. But, again, one thing that Fortify or OpenText does very well is training. There are a lot of free resources and training in the community forums, free training as well as commercial training where users can train on how to use the back-end systems and the scanning engines and how to use command-line arguments because some of the procedures or some of the tools do require a bit of a learning curve. That's the only challenge I've really seen for customers because you have to learn how to use the tool effectively. But Fortify has, in fact, improved its user interface and the way users engage the dashboards and the interfaces. It is intuitive. It's easy to understand. But in some regards, the cybersecurity specialist or AppSec would need a bit of training to engage the user interface and to understand how it functions. But from the point of the reliability index and how powerful the tool is, there's no challenge there. But it's just from a learning perspective; users might need a bit more skill to use the tool. The user interface isn't that tedious. It's not that difficult to understand. When I initially learned how to use the interfaces, I was able to master it within a week and was able to use it quite effectively. So training is required. All skills are needed to learn how to use the tool. I would like to see more enhancements in the dashboards. Dashboards are available. They do need some configuration and settings. But I would like to see more business intelligence capabilities within the tool. It's not particularly a cybersecurity function, but, for instance, business impact analysis or other features where you can actually use business intelligence capabilities within your security tool. That would be remarkable because not only do you have a cybersecurity tool, but you also have a tool that can give you business impact analysis and some other measurements. A bit more intelligence in terms of that from a cybersecurity perspective would be remarkable.
Gaurav Chandel - PeerSpot reviewer
Boosted productivity with automated pipelines and seamless collaboration
There are some challenges with repository file management as GitLab may struggle to manage larger files. Improvements could be made regarding size management and file partitioning. Also, the UI has remained the same for a couple of years and could benefit from an update with AI features and better customization.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution scans our code and provides us with a dashboard of all the vulnerabilities and the criticality of the vulnerabilities. It is very useful that they provide right then and there all the information about the vulnerability, including possible fixes, as well as some additional documentation and links to the authoritative sources of why this is an issue and what's the correct way to deal with it."
"Provides good depth of scanning and we get good results."
"One of the top features is the source code review for vulnerabilities. When we look at source code, it's hard to see where areas may be weak in terms of security, and Fortify on Demand's source code review helps with that."
"Almost all the features are good. This solution has simplified designing and architecting for our solutions. We were early adopters of microservices. Their documentation is good. You don't need to put in much effort in setting it up and learning stuff from scratch and start using it. The learning curve is not too much."
"The user interface is good."
"The most valuable features are the detailed reporting and the ability to set up deep scanning of the software, both of which are in the same place."
"The solution saves us a lot of money. We're trying to reduce exposure and costs related to remediation."
"Being able to reduce risk overall is a very valuable feature for us."
"By integrating GitLab as a DevOps platform, we have enhanced agility, improved our time to market, and different teams can work collaboratively on various projects."
"I have had no problem with the stability of the solution."
"They incorporate new features every September, and they have introduced their own code editor and AI features."
"Everything is easy to configure and easy to work with."
"We like that we can create branches and then the branches can be reviewed and you can mesh those branches back. You can independently work with your own branch, you don't need to really control the core of other people."
"In our software development lifecycle, GitLab is used as a component for code repository management. We use GitLab for several projects to handle code repositories. For other software projects, we use Bitbucket, but the use case for both is very similar."
"I like GitLab's security and SAS tools."
"GitLab is scalable and works well with multiple environments."
 

Cons

"Sometimes when we run a full scan, we have a bunch of issues in the code. We should not have any issues."
"They could provide features for artificial intelligence similar to other vendors."
"The Visual Studio plugin seems to hang when a scan is run on big projects. I would expect some improvements there."
"Primarily for a complex, advanced website, they don't really understand some of the functionalities. So for instance, they could tell us that there is a vulnerability because somebody could possibly do something, but they don't really understand the code to realize that we actually negate that vulnerability through some other mechanism in the program. In addition, the technical support is just not there. We have open tickets. They don't respond. Even if they respond, we're not seeing eye to eye. As the company got sold and bought, the support got worse."
"The UI could be better. Fortify should also suggest new packages in the product that can be upgraded. Currently, it shows that, but it's not visible enough. In future versions, I would like more insights about the types of vulnerabilities and the pages associated with the exact CVE."
"New technologies and DevOps could be improved. Fortify on Demand can be slow (slower than other vendors) to support new technologies or new software versions."
"Not fully integrated with CIT processes."
"The reporting capabilities need improvement, as there are some features that we would like to have but are not available at the moment."
"It could have more security integrations and the ability to check the vulnerability of the code. I don't think it is a responsibility of Gitlab, but it would be nice to have more options to integrate with."
"Perhaps the integration could be better."
"The price of GitLab could improve, it is high."
"There is a need to improve or adopt AI into the ecosystem like a co-pilot, which Microsoft has done with GitHub."
"The licensing model could be improved to be more accommodating in terms of user numbers and costs."
"The solution should again offer an on-premises deployment option."
"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'm new to GitLab, so I would appreciate more documentation about the code and commands."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The subscription model, on a per-scan basis, is a bit expensive. That's another reason we are not using it for all the apps."
"We make an annual purchase of the licenses we need."
"If I exceed one million lines of code, there might be an extra cost or a change in the pricing bracket."
"We used the one-time application, Security Scan Dynamic. I believe the original fee was $8,000."
"Despite being on the higher end in terms of cost, the biggest value lies in its abilities, including robust features, seamless integration, and high-quality findings."
"The licensing was good because the licenses have the heavy centralized server."
"The pricing model it's based on how many applications you wish to scan."
"Their subscriptions could use a little bit of a reworking, but I am very happy with what they're able to provide."
"I don't mind the price because I use the free version."
"This product is not very expensive but the price can be better."
"The solution is based on a licensing model that includes technical support and is paid annually."
"We are using the free version of GitLab."
"GitLab's pricing is good compared to others on the market."
"I'm not aware of the licensing costs because those were covered by the customer."
"GitLab is highly priced for smaller teams, but it's okay if considering a user base of thousands."
"GitLab is cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
22%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
It helps deploy and track changes easily as per time-to-time market upgrades.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
In comparison with other tools, they're competitive. It is not more expensive than other solutions, but their pricing is competitive. The licenses for Fortify On Demand are generally bought in unit...
What needs improvement with Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
There are frequent complaints about false positives from Fortify. One day it may pass a scan with no issues, and the next day, without any code changes, it will report vulnerabilities such as passw...
What do you like most about GitLab?
I find the features and version control history to be most valuable for our development workflow. These aspects provide us with a clear view of changes and help us manage requests efficiently.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitLab?
The pricing of GitLab is reasonable, aligning with what I consider to be average compared to competitors.
What needs improvement with GitLab?
Certain features in Jira are not available in GitLab, such as the functionality to have weights at the milestone and epic levels. Hopefully, these features will be resolved with work items in GitLa...
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus Fortify on Demand
Fuzzit
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Aaron's, British Gas, FICO, Cox Automative, Callcredit Information Group, Vital and more.
1. NASA  2. IBM  3. Sony  4. Alibaba  5. CERN  6. Siemens  7. Volkswagen  8. ING  9. Ticketmaster  10. SpaceX  11. Adobe  12. Intuit  13. Autodesk  14. Rakuten  15. Unity Technologies  16. Pandora  17. Electronic Arts  18. Nordstrom  19. Verizon  20. Comcast  21. Philips  22. Deutsche Telekom  23. Orange  24. Fujitsu  25. Ericsson  26. Nokia  27. General Electric  28. Cisco  29. Accenture  30. Deloitte  31. PwC  32. KPMG
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortify on Demand vs. GitLab and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.