We performed a comparison between Gitlab and Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle comes out ahead of GitLab. Although both products have valuable features and can be estimated as high-end solutions, our reviewers found that GitLab’s price is higher and has uncertain long-term support.
"The most valuable functionality of GitLab, for me, is the DevOps. Besides the normal source control based on Git, I find the Auto DevOps features most important in the solution."
"CI/CD is valuable for me."
"For us, Gitlab's most valuable feature is the integration with Cypress. We're using Cypress as an automation tool, so we're using GitLab as a tool for running in parallel."
"The code merging capability is something that we use very frequently."
"This product is always evolving, and they listen to the customers."
"I like GitLab's security and SAS tools."
"It is very useful for reviews. We are using branch merging operations and full reset operations. It is also very useful for merging our code and tracking another branch. The graph diagrams of Git are very useful. Its interface is straightforward and not too complex for us."
"GitLab offers a good interface for doing code reviews between two colleagues."
"Automating the Jenkins plugins and the build title is a big plus."
"The dashboard is usable and gives us clear visibility into what is happening. It also has a very cool feature, which allows us to see the clean version available to be downloaded. Therefore, it is very easy to go and trace which version of the component does not have any issues. The dashboard can be practical, as well. It can wave a particular version of a Java file or component. It can even grandfather certain components, because in a real world scenarios we cannot always take the time to go and update something because it's not backward compatible. Having these features make it a lot easier to use and more practical. It allows us to apply the security, without having an all or nothing approach."
"Fortify integrates with various development environments and tools, such as IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) and CI/CD pipelines."
"With the plugin for our IDE that Sonatype provides, we can check whether a library has security, quality, or licensing issues very easily. Which is nice because Googling for this stuff can be a bit cumbersome. By checking it before code is even committed, we save ourselves from getting notifications."
"We really like the Nexus Firewall. There are increasing threats from npm, rogue components, and we've been able to leverage protection there. We also really like being able to know which of our apps has known vulnerabilities."
"You can really see what's happening after you've developed something."
"Vulnerability detection accuracy is good."
"The solution is very easy to use."
"GitLab can improve the integration with third-party applications. It could be made easier. Additionally, having API control from my application could be helpful."
"I would like more Agile features in the Premium version. The Premium version should have all Agile features that exist in the Ultimate version. IBM AOM has a complete Agile implementation, but in GitLab, you only have these features if you buy the Ultimate version. It would be good if we can use these in the Premium version."
"The solution could be faster."
"GitLab's Windows version is yet not available and having this would be an improvement."
"The documentation could be improved to help newcomers better understand things like creating new branches."
"The tool should include a feature that helps to edit the code directly."
"It could have more security integrations and the ability to check the vulnerability of the code. I don't think it is a responsibility of Gitlab, but it would be nice to have more options to integrate with."
"GitLab can improve by integrating with more tools, such as servers with Docker."
"The user interface needs to be improved. It is slow for us. We use Nexus IQ mostly via APIs. We don't use the interface that much, but when we use it, certain areas are just unresponsive or very slow to load. So, performance-wise, the UI is not fast enough for us, but we don't use it that much anyway."
"We got a lot of annotations for certain libraries when it comes to Java, but my feeling, and the feeling of a colleague as well, is that we don't get as many for critical libraries when it comes to .NET, as if most of them are really fine... It would be good if Sonatype would check the status of annotations for .NET packages."
"Sometimes we face difficulties with Maven Central... if I'm using the 1.0.0 version, after one or two years, the 1.0.0 version will be gone from Maven Central but our team will still be using that 1.0.0 version to build. When they do builds, it won't build completely because that version is gone from Maven Central. There is a difference in our Sonatype Maven Central."
"It would be helpful if it had a more detailed view of what has been quarantined, for people who don't have Lifecycle licenses. Other than that, it's pretty good."
"In terms of features, the reports natively come in as PDF or JSON. They should start thinking of another way to filter their reports. The reporting tool used by most enterprises, like Splunk and Elasticsearch, do not work as well with JSON."
"If there is something which is not in Maven Central, sometimes it is difficult to get the right information because it's not found."
"The solution is not an SaaS product."
"We use Azure DevOps as our application lifecycle management tool. It doesn't integrate with that as well as it does with other tools at the moment, but I think there's work being done to address that. In terms of IDEs, it integrates well. We would like to integrate it into our Azure cloud deployment but the integration with Azure Active Directory isn't quite as slick as we would like it to be. We have to do some workarounds for that at the moment."
GitLab is ranked 6th in Software Composition Analysis (SCA) with 70 reviews while Sonatype Lifecycle is ranked 5th in Software Composition Analysis (SCA) with 43 reviews. GitLab is rated 8.6, while Sonatype Lifecycle 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 Lifecycle writes "Seamless to integrate and identify vulnerabilities and frees up staff time". GitLab is most compared with Microsoft Azure DevOps, Bamboo, SonarQube, AWS CodePipeline and Snyk, whereas Sonatype Lifecycle is most compared with SonarQube, Black Duck, Fortify Static Code Analyzer, Checkmarx One and Mend.io. See our GitLab vs. Sonatype Lifecycle report.
See our list of best Software Composition Analysis (SCA) vendors and best Application Security Tools vendors.
We monitor all Software Composition Analysis (SCA) 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.
