We performed a comparison between GitLab and Sonatype Nexus Firewall based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Result: Based on the parameters we compared, Sonatype Nexus Firewall came out ahead of GitLab. Although both products have valuable features and can be estimated as high-end solutions, our reviewers found that GitLab's complexity is its main drawback, which some users find overwhelming and difficult to navigate.
"The stability is good."
"CI/CD is valuable for me."
"I like GitLab's security and SAS tools."
"GitLab's best features are maintenance, branch integration, and development infrastructure."
"As a developer, this solution is useful as a repository holder because most of the POC projects that we have are on GitLab."
"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."
"We like that we can have an all-encompassing product and don't have to implement different solutions."
"GitLab is very useful for pipelines, continuous integration, and continuous deployment. It is also stable."
"The product's network and intrusion protection features are valuable. It also has rules and compliance features for security."
"Another thing that I like about Sonatype is that if you download something today, and five days from today it becomes vulnerable, it will notify you."
"We'd like to see better integration with the Atlassian ecosystem."
"The user interface could be more user-friendly. We do most of our operations through the website interface but it could be better."
"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 would like configuration of a YML file to be done via UI rather than a code file."
"The integration and storage capabilities could be better."
"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."
"GitLab doesn't have AWS integration. It would be better to have integration with other container management environments beyond Kubernetes. It has very good integration with Kubernetes, but it doesn't have good integration with, for example, AWS, ETS, etc."
"For as long as I have used GitLab, I haven't encountered any major limitations. However, I think that perhaps the search functionality could be better."
"The tool needs to improve its file systems. The product should also include zero test feature."
"What I don't like is the lack of an option to pick up the phone and call someone for support. That is something they need to improve on. They need to have a professional services package, or they need to include that option with their services."
GitLab is ranked 6th in Application Security Tools with 70 reviews while Sonatype Repository Firewall is ranked 35th in Application Security Tools with 3 reviews. GitLab is rated 8.6, while Sonatype Repository Firewall is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of GitLab writes "Powerful, mature, and easy to set up and manage". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sonatype Repository Firewall writes "You will get clean code every time, and that's a great achievement". GitLab is most compared with Microsoft Azure DevOps, SonarQube, Bamboo, AWS CodePipeline and Tekton, whereas Sonatype Repository Firewall is most compared with JFrog Xray, Cisco Secure Firewall, Black Duck, GitHub and Snyk. See our GitLab vs. Sonatype Repository Firewall report.
See our list of best Application Security Tools vendors and best Software Composition Analysis (SCA) vendors.
We monitor all Application Security Tools 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.