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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
11th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
9th
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
8th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), Rapid Application Development Software (12th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Fortify on Demand is 4.6%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 3.0%, up from 2.6% 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

"Provides good depth of scanning and we get good results."
"It is valuable in improving our overall security posture by catching significant errors."
"Its ability to perform different types of scans, keep everything in one place, and track the triage process in Fortify SSC stands out."
"Fortify is effective in identifying such oversights, making it a really helpful tool despite its problems."
"The features that I have found most valuable include its security scan, the vulnerability finds, and the web interface to search and review the issues."
"Once we have our project created with our application pipeline connected to the test scanning, it only takes two minutes. The report explaining what needs to be modified related to security and vulnerabilities in our code is very helpful. We are able to do static and dynamic code scanning."
"We identified a lot of security vulnerability much earlier in the development and could fix this well before the product was rolled out to a huge number of clients."
"What stands out to me is the user-friendliness of each feature."
"I have found the most valuable features of GitLab are the GitClone, GitPush, GitPull, GitMatch, GitMit, GitCommit, and GitStatus."
"It streamlines our DevOps processes with automated CI/CD pipelines."
"I like GitLab's security and SAS tools."
"The merging feature makes it easy later on for the deployment."
"I recommend GitLab for DevOps engineers."
"GitLab is very well-organized and easy to use. Also, it offers most features that customers need."
"The most valuable feature of GitLab is the automatic merging of code."
"It scales well."
 

Cons

"Fortify on Demand needs to improve its pricing."
"In terms of what could be improved, we need more strategic analysis reports, not just for one specific application, but for the whole enterprise. In the next release, we need more reports and more analytic views for all the applications. There is no enterprise view in Fortify. I would like enterprise views and reports."
"Reporting could be improved."
"In terms of communication, they can integrate a few more third-party tools. It would be great if we can have more options for microservice communication. They can also improve the securability a bit more because security is one of the biggest aspects these days when you are using the cloud. Some more security features would be really helpful."
"Integration to CI/CD pipelines could be improved. The reporting format could be more user friendly so that it is easy to read."
"Not fully integrated with CIT processes."
"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."
"It's still a little bit too complex for regular developers. It takes a little bit more time than usual. I know static code scan is not the main focus of the tool, but the overall time span to scan the code, and even to set up the code scanning, is a bit overwhelming for regular developers."
"The only thing our company is really waiting on in terms of features is the development of metrics."
"Some of the scripts that we encountered in GitLab were not fully functional and threw up errors."
"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."
"We would like to generate document pages from the sources."
"GitLab can improve its user interface to make conflict resolution more user-friendly."
"We are having a few problems integrating with Jira at the moment, which is something that our IT department is investigating."
"I would like to see security increased in the future. A secure environment is very important."
"As GitLab is not perfect, what needs improvement in the solution is the Wiki feature of the groups or the repertories because currently, it's not searchable by default. You'll need an indexing service such as Elasticsearch to make it searchable, and that requires too much work, so for me, it's the main feature that should be improved in GitLab. In the next version of the solution, from the top of my head, the documentation could be improved. Besides the Wiki, it would be good if there's documentation that would be automatically generated based on the code repository. In other words, there should be some tutorials from GitLab for developers in the next release."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive and the price could be reduced."
"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."
"It is not more expensive than other solutions, but the pricing is competitive."
"Micro Focus Fortify on Demand licenses are managed by our IT team and the license model is user-based."
"We are still using the trial version at this point but I can already see from the trial version alone that it is a good product. For others, I would say that Fortify on Demand might look expensive at the beginning, but it is very powerful and so you shouldn't be put off by the price."
"I'd rate it an eight out of ten in terms of pricing."
"We make an annual purchase of the licenses we need."
"There are different costs for Micro Focus Fortify on Demand depending on the assessments you want to use. There is only a standard license needed to use the solution."
"In terms of the pricing for GitLab, on a scale of one to five, with one being expensive and five being cheap, I'm rating pricing for the solution a four. It could still be cheaper because right now, my company has a small team, and sometimes it's difficult to use a paid product for a small team. You'd hope the team will grow and scale, but currently, you're paying a high license fee for a small team. I'm referring to the GitLab license that has premium features and will give you all features. This can be a problem for management to approve the high price of the license for a team this small."
"As I work in a vast enterprise, I'm unsure about the licensing cost for GitLab. It's the management team that takes care of that."
"We are using the open-source version."
"It is very expensive. We can't bear it now, and we have to find another solution. We have a yearly subscription in which we can increase the number of licenses, but we have to pay at the end of the year."
"The solution's standard license is paid annually. They have changed the pricing model and it used to be better. There is a free version available."
"The price of GitLab could be better, it is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is acceptable."
"I'm not aware of the licensing costs because those were covered by the customer."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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: March 2025.
842,388 professionals have used our research since 2012.