GitHub Review 2025: Is This Developer Platform Right for You Or Add Kobee For Enterprise?

GitHub has become synonymous with modern software development, serving over 100 million developers worldwide with more than 420 million repositories. As a comprehensive platform for storing, managing, and collaborating on code, it has evolved far beyond its origins as a simple Git hosting service. With Microsoft's backing since 2018 and continuous innovation including GitHub Actions for CI/CD automation, it offers an integrated ecosystem that covers most aspects of the software development lifecycle.

To create this GitHub review, I've analyzed the platform extensively. For most development teams, GitHub provides everything needed for code collaboration and basic CI/CD through GitHub Actions. However, enterprises with mainframe systems or complex legacy environments often discover they need specialized CI/CD orchestration that goes beyond what GitHub Actions can provide out of the box.

This is where Kobee becomes valuable as a complementary platform: an out-of-the-box enterprise CI/CD solution that seamlessly integrates with GitHub repositories while providing the specialized orchestration capabilities that mainframe and regulated enterprises require. While GitHub excels at code hosting and collaboration, Kobee handles the complex CI/CD workflows these organizations need, creating a powerful combined solution.

For enterprises looking to complement their GitHub repositories with specialized CI/CD orchestration, you can learn more about Kobee here.

Table of contents:

• What is GitHub?
• GitHub Pros & Cons
• GitHub Review: How it Works & Key Features
• Where GitHub Falls Short
• The Perfect Complement to GitHub: Kobee
• GitHub and Kobee: Workflow Comparison
• Final Verdict

What is GitHub?

GitHub was officially launched in April 2008 by Tom Preston-Werner, Chris Wanstrath, PJ Hyett, and Scott Chacon. The founders saw an opportunity to create a platform that would make Git more accessible and foster a community around open-source software development. Their vision of creating a "social coding" platform transformed how developers collaborate and share code.

In 2018, Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion, providing the platform with significant resources while maintaining its independent operation. This acquisition accelerated GitHub's evolution from a code hosting service into a complete developer platform. Today, GitHub is the world's largest host of source code, with over 100 million developers and more than one billion repositories, including at least 28 million public repositories.

The platform now encompasses far more than just version control. It’s key features include:

• GitHub Actions for CI/CD
• GitHub Packages for artifact hosting
• GitHub Copilot for AI-assisted coding
• Codespaces for cloud development environments
• Comprehensive project management tools

GitHub serves everyone from individual developers working on personal projects to Fortune 100 companies managing enterprise-scale software development.

GitHub Pros & Cons

GitHub Review: How it Works & Key Features

Repositories and Version Control

At its core, GitHub provides cloud-based hosting for Git repositories.

Each repository serves as a centralized storage space for a project, containing all files and the complete revision history. Repositories can be public (visible to everyone) or private (restricted access), with GitHub offering unlimited repositories for both types across all plans.

The platform's branching model allows developers to create parallel versions of the codebase for feature development or bug fixes without affecting the main branch.

Pull requests provide a formal mechanism for proposing changes, enabling code review and discussion before merging. This workflow has become widely adopted across the industry, with features like draft pull requests for work-in-progress, required reviews for quality gates, and automated status checks that run tests before allowing merges.

GitHub enhances the basic Git functionality with a web-based interface that makes repository management accessible even to those unfamiliar with command-line operations. The platform automatically tracks who made specific changes and when, maintains complete audit trails, and allows reverting to previous versions when needed.

GitHub Actions for CI/CD

GitHub Actions serves as the platform's continuous integration and continuous delivery solution.

Workflows are defined in YAML files stored within the .github/workflows directory of a repository and triggered by specific events like code pushes, pull requests, or scheduled timers. The platform provides hosted runners for Ubuntu Linux, Windows, and macOS, eliminating the need to maintain build infrastructure.

GitHub's pricing tiers include different allocations of CI/CD minutes for GitHub Actions, depending on the type of repository and subscription plan:

• Free tier: 2,000 CI/CD minutes per month for private repositories
• Team plan: 3,000 CI/CD minutes per month
• Enterprise plan: 50,000 CI/CD minutes per month
• Public repositories: Unlimited free minutes on standard runners

Users can create complex workflows using various event triggers and choose from thousands of pre-built actions in the GitHub Marketplace, or write custom actions for specific needs.

A typical workflow might automatically build code when pushed to a branch, run test suites, deploy to staging environments for review, and promote to production after approval.

The tight integration with pull requests means build and test results appear directly in the code review interface, providing immediate feedback on proposed changes.

Collaboration and Project Management

GitHub Issues provides integrated task tracking within repositories, allowing teams to manage bugs, feature requests, and general tasks.

Each issue supports markdown formatting, labels for categorization, assignees for ownership, and milestones for grouping related work. Issues can be linked to pull requests, automatically closing when the associated code merges.

GitHub Projects extends this with Kanban-style boards and table views for visualizing work.

Teams can create custom fields, automate workflows with built-in rules, and generate insights with configurable charts. The platform supports multiple views of the same data, allowing different stakeholders to see information relevant to their role.

The collaboration extends beyond formal project management. Wikis provide documentation spaces within repositories, while discussions enable community forums for open-source projects. The platform's social features include following other developers, starring interesting repositories, and contributing to projects through forking.

Where GitHub Falls Short

While GitHub excels as a comprehensive developer platform, several limitations become apparent for enterprise organizations with complex requirements. These constraints reveal a platform optimized for modern, cloud-native development rather than specialized enterprise needs.

The most significant gap for many enterprises is the limited support for mainframe and legacy systems.

GitHub Actions, while powerful for modern applications, lacks native capabilities for mainframe languages and technologies. Organizations running IBM z/OS or similar platforms find themselves writing complex custom scripts or searching for community-maintained actions that may not meet enterprise standards.

The YAML-based workflow definition in GitHub Actions, though flexible, requires significant scripting expertise to handle complex enterprise CI/CD scenarios.

What starts as simple automation quickly becomes intricate YAML configurations spanning hundreds of lines, difficult to maintain and debug. This script-heavy approach contrasts sharply with the GUI-based, no-code solutions many enterprises prefer.

GitHub's generic approach to CI/CD, while suitable for standard applications, struggles with the specific requirements of regulated industries and complex enterprise environments.

Approval workflows, audit trails, and compliance reporting often require additional tooling or custom development. The platform's one-size-fits-all philosophy means enterprises must adapt their processes to GitHub rather than the other way around.

Additionally, the dependency on marketplace actions for extended functionality introduces risk and complexity. Enterprises must evaluate third-party actions for security and reliability, often finding that critical functionality relies on community-maintained components without enterprise support agreements.

The Perfect Complement to GitHub: Kobee

Kobee addresses GitHub's enterprise CI/CD limitations by providing an out-of-the-box enterprise CI/CD platform specifically designed for organizations with mainframe systems and complex legacy environments.

Founded in the early 2000s and recognized with the Excellence in Mainframe Innovation award at the 2024 IBM TechXchange Awards, Kobee brings decades of enterprise DevOps expertise to complement GitHub's code collaboration capabilities.

Enterprise CI/CD Orchestration

At the heart of Kobee is its revolutionary Phases architecture: modular, parameter-driven containers that perform specific CI/CD actions.

Unlike GitHub Actions' script-based approach requiring YAML expertise, Phases can be configured entirely through a graphical user interface. This fundamental difference means that teams can build complex CI/CD workflows without writing or maintaining monolithic scripts.

The platform provides three types of Phases to cover every need.

1. Core Phases handle basic functionalities like retrieving code from version control repositories, tagging code, and integrating with issue tracking systems.
2. Solution Phases offer certified, pre-made configurations for specific environments like IBM z/OS mainframe or Oracle ODI.
3. Custom Phases allow organizations to create their own reusable components for any specialized requirement, and just like GitHub Actions allows custom actions, Kobee lets you create custom Phases when your specific needs aren't covered by the standard catalog.

This modular approach transforms how enterprises manage CI/CD. Instead of debugging hundreds of lines of YAML, teams work with visual workflows where each Phase is a discrete, testable component. Parameters can be adjusted through the GUI, making it accessible to team members without deep scripting knowledge.

Mainframe Modernization Focus

Kobee's standout capability is its deep mainframe expertise.

As a drop-in replacement for legacy Software Configuration Management tools, it allows organizations to maintain their mainframes while adopting modern development practices and tools. With Kobee, developers can use Git for version control, IDZ or VS Code for editing, and modern CI/CD practices, all while working with mainframe code.

The platform includes dedicated Solution Phases for IBM z/OS that handle the complexities of mainframe development out of the box. With optional support for IBM tools like DBB and Wazi Deploy, it seamlessly integrates with existing mainframe toolchains.

Kobee also comes with a separate application where you can set and customize every detail of your mainframe configuration using an easy-to-use GUI. Again, no scripting required!

This mainframe capability extends beyond basic compilation and deployment. Kobee manages the entire lifecycle from development through production, handling the unique requirements of mainframe environments like JCL generation and CICS deployments. It bridges the gap between modern DevOps practices and mainframe realities that are significantly more complex to address with GitHub Actions alone.

Seamless GitHub Integration

Kobee is designed to work hand-in-hand with GitHub repositories. It supports Git and GitHub as version control systems, automatically detecting commits and working with your existing GitHub workflow. This integration means organizations can continue using GitHub for what it does best (code hosting and collaboration) while leveraging Kobee for specialized CI/CD orchestration.

The integration goes beyond basic connectivity. Kobee can:

• Retrieve code from GitHub repositories
• Tag specific commits for traceability
• Update GitHub Issues with deployment information

It becomes a natural extension of the GitHub workflow, triggered by the same events but providing enterprise-grade orchestration that is particularly valuable for complex environments.

For organizations already invested in GitHub, adding Kobee doesn't mean replacing anything. It means enhancing their existing workflow with specialized capabilities that turn GitHub from a good solution into a complete enterprise DevOps platform.

GitHub and Kobee: Workflow Comparison

Final Verdict

GitHub and Kobee represent complementary pillars of a complete enterprise DevOps strategy. Neither platform tries to replace the other; instead, they excel in their respective domains while working together seamlessly.

GitHub remains the undisputed leader in code hosting and developer collaboration.

Its massive community, integrated features from issues to pull requests, and broad ecosystem make it essential for modern software development. GitHub Actions provides capable CI/CD for standard applications, and the platform's continuous innovation ensures it stays at the forefront of developer tools.

Explore GitHub today to join its massive community and accelerate your development workflows.

Kobee serves as the specialized CI/CD orchestration layer that enterprises with mainframe and complex legacy systems need.

Its Phases architecture eliminates the scripting complexity that plagues enterprise GitHub Actions workflows, while its mainframe expertise enables organizations to modernize without abandoning critical systems. The simple Enterprise license at €99.95/user/month (with a €25,000 annual minimum) seems expensive until you consider the mainframe context and the elimination of legacy SCM tool costs.

See how Kobee simplifies mainframe workflows and modernizes CI/CD. Request your demo today!

Together, they create a comprehensive DevOps platform: GitHub provides the collaboration and code management foundation that developers love, while Kobee adds the enterprise CI/CD orchestration that IT departments require. For organizations seeking to modernize their development practices without sacrificing the robustness their business demands, this combination delivers the best of both worlds.

About the author

Hello, my name is René De Vleeschauwer.

Throughout my career, I have been actively engaged in developing enterprise software. For the past 18 years, I have led the development of Kobee, an open CI/CD and DevOps framework that has been highly regarded in regulated enterprises.

Do you have any questions? Just ask me!