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GitLab vs Spinnaker comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

GitLab
Ranking in Release Automation
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (11th), Build Automation (1st), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (10th), Rapid Application Development Software (13th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd)
Spinnaker
Ranking in Release Automation
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of GitLab is 36.6%, up from 29.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spinnaker is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Release Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Corné den Hollander - PeerSpot reviewer
Powerful, mature, and easy to set up and manage
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. In terms of additional features, nothing comes to mind. One of the potential pitfalls is to keep adding new features and functionalities. They can just improve some of the existing features to make it high-end, top-quality. I don't have any substantial experience with agile planning. I don't know the industries GitLab is in, and I don't know why they make decisions like this, but as a customer, I would rather see them invest in improving the basic agile planning functionalities rather than adding, for example, portfolio planning features. That's because if I'm going to do portfolio planning, I probably will also need a lot of business users. I'm not sure if I want them in GitLab, I'd rather have them in Jira collaborating with me on portfolio planning. That's way better fitted for that type of work.
Anurag Bandyopadhyay - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful to create custom pipelines
Regarding areas for improvement, one significant issue is the lack of maker-checker flows to ensure that newly created pipelines are accurate and tested. We currently use an in-house abstraction over Spinnaker to verify pipeline specs, environment variables, etc. It would be beneficial if Spinnaker could offer this functionality within their product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Key features allow creation of well-presented Wiki that includes ideas, development, and domains."
"I like GitLab from the CI/CD perspective. It is much easier to set up CI/CD and then integrate with other tools."
"The user interface is really good so that helps with huge teams who need to collaborate."
"The most valuable feature of GitLab is the automatic merging of code."
"It's a great toolbox where the CI/CD pipeline is the fundamental component, but there are so many other features that you can pull from, which makes it a very powerful tool. My current client is using AWS, and they can, of course, use AWS CodePipeline, but GitLab is much more mature than that, and it also gives you the freedom to decide to go to another platform or have a multi-cloud strategy and things like that. That freedom for me is also very valuable."
"We're only using the basic features of GitLab and haven't used any advanced features. The solution works fine, so that's what we like about GitLab. We're party using GitHub and GitLab. We have a GitHub server, while we use GitLab locally or only within our team, and it works okay. We don't have any significant problems with the solution. We also found the straightforward setup, stability, and scalability of GitLab valuable."
"The most valuable feature of GitLab is its convenience. I am able to trace back most of my changes up to a far distance in time and it helps me to analyze and see the older version of the code."
"GitLab's best features are maintenance, branch integration, and development infrastructure."
"There is a good community around the product that makes troubleshooting possible."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its intuitive interface for converting existing Kubernetes specs into working pipelines. It's easy for anyone to deploy anything on any environment when they need to test or deploy for a specific merchant or use case. Instead of going into the specs and changing different variables, they can do it through the UI, which is very useful."
"The most valuable feature of Spinnaker is the rollback."
"Spinnaker is used for automating a variety of deployment tasks, infrastructure, provisioning tasks, and all kinds of things."
 

Cons

"We would like to have easier tutorials. Their tutorials are too technical for a user to understand. They should be more detailed but less technical."
"Technologies are always changing. Nowadays, new things like serverless computing and workload management have emerged. We have noticed a few gap items for faster service delivery. For example, we do user interface testing in the latest team and automate it using some tools. Recently, we integrated a tool with user interface testing, which can simulate a multi-user environment. So, we would like to see more integration with different platforms."
"I'm new to GitLab, so I would appreciate more documentation about the code and commands."
"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."
"The solution could be faster."
"I rate the support from GitLab a four out of five."
"Their RBAC is role-based access, which is fine but not very good."
"We would like to generate document pages from the sources."
"Spinnaker's configuration setup is too complicated and should be made easy."
"Regarding areas for improvement, one significant issue is the lack of maker-checker flows to ensure that newly created pipelines are accurate and tested. We currently use an in-house abstraction over Spinnaker to verify pipeline specs, environment variables, etc. It would be beneficial if Spinnaker could offer this functionality within their product."
"Log-wise, we need to understand why something has failed so that we can understand and try to fix it the moment the issue is reported. The solution could use more robust monitoring."
"Every time it goes to run a pipeline, it just generates a lot of data, and its database is not exactly tuned out of the box, meaning it is not tuned for high scalability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"The open-source version is very good and the commercial version is reasonably priced."
"I think that we pay approximately $100 USD per month."
"We are using the open-source version."
"My company uses the free version of GitLab, which is GitLab Community Edition. There is a licensed version also available for GitLab."
"GitLab is an open-source solution."
"We are using the free version of GitLab."
"GitLab is a free solution to use."
"Spinnaker is an open-source product. The tool is completely free for users."
"The solution is open-source."
"Spinnaker is a free-to-use, open-source solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
29%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
22%
Retailer
12%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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?
GitLab is mostly free, with potential costs arising from upgrade versions. There is a trial period of about six months during which it is free. Afterward, fees apply.
What needs improvement with GitLab?
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...
What do you like most about Spinnaker?
The most valuable feature of Spinnaker is the rollback.
What needs improvement with Spinnaker?
Regarding areas for improvement, one significant issue is the lack of maker-checker flows to ensure that newly created pipelines are accurate and tested. We currently use an in-house abstraction ov...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Fuzzit
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
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Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab vs. Spinnaker and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.