Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gitlab More Than Doubles Valuation to $2.75B Ahead of Planned 2020 IPO

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 368 posts

Re: Gitlab More Than Doubles Valuation to $2.75B Ahead of Planned 2020 IPO

#41

Post by tombert »

cj wrote: post #3

Question to current Gitlab users: Why do you use Gitlab instead of Github? What are the killer features that make it worth switching to?

I'll admit that I mostly switched because of the MS buyout of Github.

The issue wasn't specifically because I have any particular issues with MS, but more due to the fact that Github can be bought. I felt like the epicenter of open-source software should be built on something open-source, especially when that open-source thing has nearly 1-to-1 feature parity.

I know Gitlab has a fair amount of proprietary stuff, but at least I can build my own Gitlab server for free on my own hardware if I decide that I really hate their free hosting.

Re: Gitlab More Than Doubles Valuation to $2.75B Ahead of Planned 2020 IPO

#42

Post by veritas3241 »

trumbitta2 wrote: post #12
cj wrote: post #3

Question to current Gitlab users: Why do you use Gitlab instead of Github? What are the killer features that make it worth switching to?

The "Create merge request" (from issue) button. It creates a new branch, with a smart name like 123-my-issue-title, and a new "pull request" for that issue and branch.

I love that you highlighted this! This is basically a mandatory part of the data team's workflow. Once the MR is open we then spin up a clone of our data warehouse tied to that git branch where all the CI jobs run. I like that it will automatically close the issue too once the MR is merged.

Re: Gitlab More Than Doubles Valuation to $2.75B Ahead of Planned 2020 IPO

#43

Post by mcv »

barkerja wrote: post #18
cj wrote: post #3

Question to current Gitlab users: Why do you use Gitlab instead of Github? What are the killer features that make it worth switching to?

I'm not currently using Gitlab anymore, but in the past, it was their CI that won me over. I was always felt left wanting more though because there wasn't a true sense of community/explore. If there's one thing I value most about Github today it's the ability to easily discover new projects and human beings; and Github helps tremendously with that whereas Gitlab I feel like you end up fighting the system to discover…

You make Github sound like a social network. A good one, I mean.

Re: Gitlab More Than Doubles Valuation to $2.75B Ahead of Planned 2020 IPO

#44

Post by ko3us »

We’ve been using Gitlab for 4 years now.

What got us initially was the free private repos before github had that.

We are now a paying customer.

Their integrated CICD is amazing. It works perfectly for all our needs and integrates really easily with AWS and GCP.

Also their customer service is really damn good. If I ever have an issue, it’s dealt with so fast and with so much detail. Honestly one of the best customer service I’ve experienced.

Their product is feature rich, priced right and is easy.

I’m amazed at how the operate. Kudos to the team

Re: Gitlab More Than Doubles Valuation to $2.75B Ahead of Planned 2020 IPO

#45

Post by aeonflux »

pm90 wrote: post #37

Kudos to the team. While my current workspace is tied to GitHub, I will most certainly switch to Gitlab given the option to. Why? Only one reason: GitHub support is fucking horrible. It’s insanely bad, even for paying enterprise customers. Open a support ticket, you will get some superficial pointers to documentation, and then be completely ignored. Their Product team is the absolute worst too. There are so many thin…

I can totally relate to that. In flood of notifications I missed information about expiring CC. Instead of somehow soft-locking the account they just downgraded it and all my integrations, hooks and god knows what just blowed. I managed to fix the CC in 5 minutes, but many months after I am still recovering from that disaster. Support replied that they did send warning so I should just FO.

Re: Gitlab More Than Doubles Valuation to $2.75B Ahead of Planned 2020 IPO

#46

Post by vorpalhex »

cj wrote: post #3

Question to current Gitlab users: Why do you use Gitlab instead of Github? What are the killer features that make it worth switching to?

Built in CI that you can run on your own servers trivially, free (private) docker image repo, great support for "teams", even free ones, which allows me to offer my CI boxes to my friends for their side projects.

I've had a few vague uptime issues whenever they get a big spike in popularity, but otherwise no complaints.

Re: Gitlab More Than Doubles Valuation to $2.75B Ahead of Planned 2020 IPO

#47

Post by dpflan »

s_dev wrote: post #34
dpflan wrote: post #6

I am curious how the Gitlab is so valuable. I've never used the service, but HN posts keep me informed superficially. Could someone explain the valuation?

Because Microsoft paid for GitHub -- since GitLab is well positioned to compete with GitHub, cash rich companies like Apple or Google could be interested purely to keep up the Jones's.

Thanks. Do you have any insight into MSFT's strategy for GitHub? I assume it helps make it seem developer friendly, data-mining, identifying projects/new ideas of value and validation, and is part of their becoming more of a cloud company strategy.

Re: Gitlab More Than Doubles Valuation to $2.75B Ahead of Planned 2020 IPO

#48

Post by aetimmes »

dpflan wrote: post #6

I am curious how the Gitlab is so valuable. I've never used the service, but HN posts keep me informed superficially. Could someone explain the valuation?

They've positioned themselves as an all-in-one package for every tool you'd need to implement a devops software development workflow - source control, continuous integration/deployment, etc. Existing enterprises pay different vendors to implement all of these things; new and growing companies (in theory) just need to buy a GitLab license.

Re: Gitlab More Than Doubles Valuation to $2.75B Ahead of Planned 2020 IPO

#49

Post by lucideer »

cj wrote: post #3

Question to current Gitlab users: Why do you use Gitlab instead of Github? What are the killer features that make it worth switching to?

Reasons for initially switching to Gitlab:

- Pricing structure made much more sense than Github's at the time. I would've been willing to pay for Github, but their pricing for private repos (now unlimited on the free plan) scaled steeply for any reasonable number.

- In addition to private repos, their free plan still offers many features that Github's free plan lacks, and their paid plans have many more features again than Github (Github focuses on polish, while Gitlab bundles the kitchen sink). While they may lack polish, some of these features are genuinely useful. Particularly around CI. Github's Actions API is an embarassingly recent addition.

- Gitlab Sites: their answer to Github Sites is an underadvertised and wickedly powerful feature. Github Sites really pales in comparison.

Reasons for staying:

- Responsive / active / communicative support team. Getting talking to Gitlab staff is incredibly easy.

- Proactively/playfully innovative culture, evident on tickets and MRs throughout their projects. I also really liked their approach to GithubLab: https://hub.gitlab.com/

- Transparent process. Finding out what's cooking in Github is frustratingly impossible, and why Github holds off supporting seemingly obvious things for eternity is just odd.

- The warm fuzzy feeling of storing my code on an open-source stack.

Reasons for wanting to leave:

- Stability and site performance have always been and continue to be abysmal. This seems to be a result of a reasonably good team being lost in a sea of complexity in a platform on which new features are prioritised over a simplified architecture. They do seem to spend a lot of time working on polish and performance, but never actually managing to achieve either of these things.

Re: Gitlab More Than Doubles Valuation to $2.75B Ahead of Planned 2020 IPO

#50

Post by psv1 »

s_dev wrote: post #34
dpflan wrote: post #6

I am curious how the Gitlab is so valuable. I've never used the service, but HN posts keep me informed superficially. Could someone explain the valuation?

Because Microsoft paid for GitHub -- since GitLab is well positioned to compete with GitHub, cash rich companies like Apple or Google could be interested purely to keep up the Jones's.

Not a dig at you because I understand that you're using Apple simply as an example of a big company, but Apple hypothetically buying GitLab sounds soo ridiculous.
Post reply on HN