GitLab Review 2025: Is This DevOps Platform Right for You Or Choose Kobee?

GitLab has evolved from a simple Git repository manager into one of the most comprehensive DevOps platforms available today. With over 30 million registered users and adoption by more than half of the Fortune 100 companies, it promises to be the single application for your entire software development lifecycle.

But, as organizations often discover, this breadth of functionality combined with its recent mainframe integrations through IBM partnerships can create vendor dependencies that may not suit all enterprise environments.

To create this GitLab review, I've analyzed the platform extensively. I believe it's the ideal choice if you need a unified platform covering everything from planning to monitoring, want built-in CI/CD with minimal configuration, value open-source transparency and community, and prefer managing everything in one interface.

However, GitLab might not be sufficient if you need vendor-independent mainframe modernization, require deep customization without dependency on IBM tools, want toolchain flexibility across multiple legacy systems beyond IBM z/OS, or need purpose-built CI/CD that works seamlessly with various mainframe SCM tools.

In this case, you should consider Kobee: an out-of-the-box enterprise CI/CD platform designed specifically for organizations with mainframe systems and complex regulatory requirements. While GitLab now offers enhanced mainframe support through IBM partnerships, Kobee provides vendor-independent depth and flexibility for enterprises where mainframe modernization spans multiple platforms and toolchains.

For organizations seeking specialized CI/CD for mainframe and regulated environments, you can learn more about Kobee here.

Table of contents:

• What is GitLab?
• GitLab Pros & Cons
• GitLab Review: How it Works & Key Features
• Single Application Architecture
• CI/CD Pipeline Capabilities
• Security and Compliance Features
• Collaboration and Planning Tools
• Where GitLab Falls Short
• Top GitLab Alternative for Mainframe and Regulated Enterprises: Kobee
• Phases Architecture for Enterprise Customization
• Native Mainframe and Legacy System Support
• Toolchain Orchestration for Complex Environments
• Purpose-Built for Regulated Industries
• GitLab or Kobee: Comparison Summary
• Final Verdict

What is GitLab?

GitLab was created in 2011 by Ukrainian programmers Dmitriy Zaporozhets and Valery Sizov. It began as an open-source project to provide an alternative to GitHub, which was not open-source at the time. The initial goal was to create a platform that developers could host on their own servers, giving them complete control over their code repositories.

In 2012, Dutch entrepreneur Sid Sijbrandij discovered GitLab and saw its potential. This led to the formal establishment of GitLab Inc. in 2014, transforming the project from a simple repository management tool into a comprehensive DevOps platform. The company went public in October 2021 with an IPO that valued it at $11 billion.

Today, GitLab positions itself as "The One DevOps Platform," offering a single application that covers planning, source code management, CI/CD, security, and monitoring. With over 2,300 team members working remotely across 60+ countries, GitLab serves organizations ranging from small startups to large enterprises. The platform supports a wide range of programming languages and is available in both a free Community Edition and paid Enterprise Edition.

GitLab Pros & Cons

GitLab Review: How it Works & Key Features

Single Application Architecture

GitLab's fundamental design principle is providing a single application for the entire DevOps lifecycle.

The platform organizes this through distinct stages:

1. Plan
2. Create
3. Verify
4. Package
5. Secure
6. Deploy
7. Operate
8. Monitor

Each stage includes specific tools and features that integrate seamlessly with the others.

The platform uses a three-level structure of Organizations, Projects, and Repositories.

Projects serve as the primary containers, housing Git repositories along with issues, merge requests, CI/CD pipelines, and wikis. Groups allow teams to organize multiple related projects, while subgroups enable hierarchical organization for larger enterprises.

Users interact through a unified web interface where code commits automatically trigger CI/CD pipelines, security scans integrate directly into merge requests, and deployment status appears alongside code changes. This integration eliminates context switching between different tools, though it does mean learning one comprehensive interface rather than specialized tools for each function.

CI/CD Pipeline Capabilities

GitLab's CI/CD functionality centers on the .gitlab-ci.yml file, which defines pipeline structure and behavior.

Pipelines consist of jobs (defining what to do) and stages (defining when to run). The platform supports basic pipelines where jobs in each stage run in parallel, Directed Acyclic Graph pipelines for complex job dependencies, multi-project pipelines for microservices architectures, and merge request pipelines for validating changes before merging.

GitLab Runner, an open-source application written in Go, executes pipeline jobs.

Organizations can use different types of runners in GitLab:

1. Shared runners – Maintained by GitLab and available to all projects.
2. Group runners – Available to all projects within a specific group.
3. Project-specific runners – Dedicated to individual projects.

The platform supports autoscaling runners that automatically provision virtual machines based on workload.

Auto DevOps deserves special mention. It provides pre-configured pipelines that automatically detect project languages and frameworks, then generate complete pipelines including build, test, code quality checks, security scanning, review apps, and deployment to Kubernetes. While powerful, this automation assumes cloud-native architectures and may not suit legacy or specialized environments.

Security and Compliance Features

GitLab Secure embeds security throughout the development process.

1. Static Application Security Testing (SAST) analyzes source code for vulnerabilities
2. Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) tests running applications

Dependency scanning identifies vulnerable libraries, container scanning checks Docker images, and secret detection prevents accidental credential commits.

The platform processes security findings directly in merge requests, showing new vulnerabilities introduced by code changes. A Security Dashboard aggregates findings across projects, helping security teams prioritize remediation. Compliance frameworks can be applied to projects, enforcing specific controls and requirements.

License compliance scanning identifies dependency licenses to ensure compatibility with project policies. Audit events track important actions for compliance reporting. However, these security features focus primarily on modern application stacks and may not address specialized compliance needs in regulated industries with legacy systems.

Collaboration and Planning Tools

GitLab includes comprehensive project management features.

Issues track tasks, bugs, and feature requests with full discussion threads, labels, and milestones. Issue Boards provide Kanban-style visualization with drag-and-drop functionality. Epics group related issues across projects, while Roadmaps display timeline views of planned work.

The built-in wiki for each project provides version-controlled documentation. Merge requests facilitate code review with inline commenting, approval rules, and automatic testing. Time tracking allows teams to estimate and log effort directly on issues and merge requests.

While these features integrate well within GitLab's ecosystem, they follow GitLab's opinionated workflow. Organizations with established project management methodologies or specialized requirements might find the built-in tools limiting compared to dedicated platforms.

Where GitLab Falls Short

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

GitLab has made significant strides in mainframe support through its partnership with IBM, introducing "GitLab Ultimate for IBM Z" with z/OS-native runners and pre-configured templates.

This integration leverages IBM Developer for z/OS Enterprise Edition (IDzEE) capabilities including Dependency Based Build (DBB) for optimized builds, ZCodeScan for automated security scanning, and Wazi Deploy for streamlined deployments.

However, this IBM-centric approach creates its own limitations.

Organizations using mainframe SCM tools beyond IBM's ecosystem (such as CA Endevor, Serena ChangeMan, or Compuware ISPW) may find GitLab's mainframe solution restrictive. The tight coupling with IDzEE means additional licensing costs and dependency on IBM's roadmap.

For enterprises with multi-vendor mainframe environments or those seeking vendor-independent modernization paths, GitLab's approach may introduce unwanted complexity and lock-in.

GitLab's template-based approach to z/OS CI/CD, while providing quick starts, still requires significant customization for complex enterprise workflows. Organizations with unique regulatory requirements or established mainframe processes often need extensive scripting within the .gitlab-ci.yml framework, even with the z/OS templates.

The platform assumes teams have both GitLab expertise and IBM tool knowledge, creating a steeper learning curve for mainframe teams accustomed to traditional SCM interfaces.

Resource consumption presents another challenge.

Self-hosted GitLab instances can be resource-intensive, requiring significant infrastructure for large-scale deployments. Performance issues emerge with many concurrent users, large repositories, or complex CI/CD pipelines.

When combined with mainframe workloads through z/OS runners, organizations must carefully balance distributed and mainframe resources, potentially increasing operational complexity.

The platform's comprehensive feature set can overwhelm teams that need focused mainframe modernization. While GitLab includes project management, security scanning, and monitoring, mainframe teams often require specialized workflows that don't fit neatly into GitLab's cloud-native paradigm. The z/OS templates help, but they still operate within GitLab's broader framework designed primarily for distributed systems.

Top GitLab Alternative for Mainframe and Regulated Enterprises: Kobee

Kobee addresses GitLab's enterprise gaps by providing an out-of-the-box CI/CD platform designed specifically for complex enterprise environments. Founded with enterprise needs in mind, Kobee has been developing its CI/CD framework since 2004, focusing on organizations where mainframe systems, regulatory compliance, and legacy tool integration are critical.

Phases Architecture for Enterprise Customization

At Kobee's core lies its unique Phases architecture. Unlike GitLab's template and script-based pipelines that require YAML expertise even with z/OS templates, Phases are modular, parameter-driven containers that perform specific CI/CD actions. These building blocks can be assembled and configured through a graphical interface without writing any scripts or understanding complex template structures.

The platform provides three types of Phases.

1. Core Phases handle basic functionalities like code retrieval, tagging, and artifact management.
2. Solution Phases offer certified, pre-made components for specific environments, particularly IBM z/OS mainframe and Oracle ODI.
3. Custom Phases allow organizations to create their own reusable components using familiar tools like Ant, Maven, or Gradle.

Parameters for each Phase can be set hierarchically: at the global level, project level, environment level, or phase level. This cascading configuration enables powerful customization without modifying underlying scripts.

Unlike GitLab's approach that requires coordinating between GitLab configurations and IBM tool settings, Kobee provides a unified configuration experience. A dedicated GUI application allows detailed mainframe configuration without any scripting requirements or dependency on external tool knowledge.

Native Mainframe and Legacy System Support

Where GitLab's mainframe support relies on IBM partnerships and tools, Kobee excels with vendor-independent mainframe specialization spanning decades. The platform serves as a drop-in replacement for any traditional mainframe Software Configuration Management tool, including ChangeMan, Endevor, Panvalet, CA Librarian, and IBM SCLM, without requiring additional vendor tools or licenses.

While GitLab requires IDzEE for features like dependency-based builds and automated deployments, Kobee provides these capabilities natively. Organizations can optionally integrate with IBM tools like DBB and Wazi Deploy if they choose, but these aren't prerequisites for mainframe CI/CD. This flexibility allows enterprises to modernize at their own pace without being locked into a specific vendor ecosystem.

Developers can use Git for version control, IDZ or VS Code for editing, and modern CI/CD practices while working with mainframe code.

Kobee supports mainframe languages and technologies natively. The platform handles both release-based and package-based builds for z/OS environments.

By running CI/CD processes on distributed systems while managing mainframe deployments, Kobee reduces mainframe transaction costs. Organizations report saving over two-thirds on software maintenance costs compared to traditional mainframe SCM tools. This cost advantage becomes even more significant when compared to solutions requiring both GitLab licensing and IBM tool subscriptions.

Toolchain Orchestration for Complex Environments

Kobee acts as a central orchestration engine for diverse enterprise toolchains.

While GitLab's mainframe integration focuses primarily on IBM's ecosystem, Kobee provides true vendor-agnostic integration. It integrates out-of-the-box with version control systems including Git, Subversion, Microsoft TFVC, and CVS. Issue tracking integration covers Jira, Azure DevOps, Microsoft TFS, MicroFocus ALM, and GitHub.

The platform's toolchain orchestration goes beyond simple integration.

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It provides a single point of control for managing tools across mainframe and distributed systems. Unlike GitLab's approach that treats mainframe as an extension of its cloud-native platform through IBM integrations, Kobee was built from the ground up to treat mainframe and distributed systems as equal citizens in the CI/CD process.

Security integration includes Active Directory, LDAP, and Kerberos, ensuring compliance with enterprise authentication standards.

The platform maintains detailed audit trails of all build and deployment actions, supporting compliance frameworks like Sarbanes-Oxley, ITIL, and CMM.

Purpose-Built for Regulated Industries

Kobee's design reflects the needs of regulated industries where compliance and control are paramount.

While GitLab provides compliance features that work with its IBM mainframe integrations, Kobee offers native compliance capabilities that don't depend on external tool configurations or vendor-specific implementations.

Approval gates can be configured for any lifecycle stage, requiring sign-off before deployments proceed. Pre-approval prevents unauthorized changes, while post-approval provides verification after deployment.

Email notifications keep stakeholders informed of build status, deployment progress, and approval requests. Every action is logged with full traceability from code commit through production deployment. The platform links builds to specific issues in tracking systems, maintaining clear audit trails for compliance reporting.

Lifecycle management allows different workflows for development, maintenance, and emergency fixes. Each project stream can have its own customized lifecycle, ensuring appropriate controls for different types of changes. This granular control operates independently of any vendor tools, giving organizations complete ownership of their compliance processes.

GitLab or Kobee: Comparison Summary

Final Verdict

The choice between GitLab and Kobee ultimately depends on your organization's infrastructure and requirements.

Choose GitLab if you:

• Are building cloud-native applications
• Want everything from planning to monitoring in a single platform
• Value open-source transparency and strong community support
• Have standardized on IBM tools for mainframe development (IDzEE, DBB, Wazi)
• Are comfortable with YAML-based configuration and template customization

Try GitLab and simplify your DevOps process.

Choose Kobee if you:

• Need vendor-independent mainframe modernization across multiple SCM tools
• Operate in regulated industries with strict compliance requirements
• Require deep customization through GUI configuration without scripting
• Want to avoid dependency on specific vendor toolchains (IBM or others)
• Need a solution that treats mainframe and distributed systems equally

Unlock enterprise-grade DevOps for your mainframe and beyond with Kobee.

Both platforms have evolved to address mainframe needs, but with fundamentally different approaches. GitLab extends its cloud-native platform to mainframe through strategic partnerships, offering a comprehensive DevOps solution that now includes IBM z/OS support. Kobee provides purpose-built enterprise CI/CD with native mainframe capabilities that don't require additional vendor dependencies.

Your choice depends on whether you need a broad platform with IBM-integrated mainframe support or specialized expertise with vendor independence.

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!