Bitrix24 vs GitLab: Which is a better fit?

Tembi G.: Hi, my name is Tembi and I'm the Executive Director of the Young Musicians University, and I give Bitrix24 a rating of a four. Prior to Bitrix24, we were using Trello. The reason why we switched from Trello to Bitrix24 was to have more features, and also so our team can collaborate on projects and tasks within the platform. So, we decided to go with Bitrix24 for a couple of reasons. One was it integrated other things, like it also managed our marketing, and so we could tap into what we were doing in say our social media with our Facebook comments and different things, and it would also alert it and kind of keep it all in one central location. Then the other thing is honestly just for more features. So Bitrix does a lot of things, and that's one of the things that we loved about the platform, is that we are able to use so many different entities, such as task management, scheduling, booking, all in one platform, and so that was very, very helpful. So getting started with Bitrix24, it was slightly technical I have to say, but there's a lot of good help videos out there. But the platform itself can seem intimidating if you don't necessarily have technical skills, but once we were able to get everything streamlined and flowing, everything fell in place. So getting started was a little rocky for us just because of the different entities, and we had to choose what features would actually benefit our business. The advice I would give to someone looking to get Bitrix24 up and running is to have someone on your team who's familiar with the technical aspects of setting it up. So, like I said, it's a great platform, but it was a little bit technical for our team, per se. So we ended up using it for a period of time, but looking for something that was less technical. So, I would say just make sure that you have someone who has that technicality or that technical know-how and skillset on your team so that you can maximize the features of Bitrix24.

Justin: Hi, I'm Justin, a senior DevOps engineer, and I work for a company that produces medical imaging software for hospitals and research institutes. I give GitLab four out of five stars. Before using GitLab, we used Phabricator for code review and a server from Mercurial based code storage. I chose GitLab for the company because we needed an all-in-one solution that allowed us to all work in a community platform, something that we could use for everything without having to build and maintain the plumbing between so many different services. I also like that GitLab had an open source edition while having an enterprise product. Having an open source edition means you get a lot of interesting contributions from community contributors such as myself. For testing purposes, it's easy to get a GitLab environment set up. They have an all-in-one installer for the Omnibus edition of GitLab. It's basically just a single Linux package you can install on any server or even a VM. Once you're online, getting started with GitLab is as complicated as you want it to be. GitLab can do a lot, but their documentation is generally very good at walking you through the basics of getting started. So, if you want to get started with something simple like just having a code project, maybe running some CICD tests, they have great documentation on that as well. They have a learning portal now that allows you to get access to some of their best training content and training videos all in one place. If you're thinking about using GitLab, bear in mind that GitLab's business model has changed a bit over the last couple of years. GitLab went public just recently and that has brought about a slight change in their product direction. Previously, there were a lot of GitLab ultimate features that bubbled down to GitLab premium customers like us over time. Officially, they say they can't really comment on public strategy, but I can tell you from experience, there's a lot less of that occurring. There's a lot that is getting in GitLab Ultimate and saying GitLab Ultimate. So, if you're thinking that you'll see GitLab Ultimate stuff eventually come down to GitLab premium, I wouldn't necessarily count on that. The other thing to bear in mind too is that certain GitLab teams, each product has its own different director and team lead, that sort of thing. Certain teams are very much overloaded right now. For instance, the packaging division is very overloaded. There are a lot of half-finished products they haven't been able to get through. Maybe, you're not really worried about the packaging component. I would say the core teams are still working pretty well, but there are some parts of it like packaging that you should definitely ask about with your GitLab sales rep if you're concerned that you may not be able to get features that you want included in the product.