monday.com vs GitLab: Which is a better fit?

Amber: My name is Amber. I'm an IT project manager for a healthcare company. The company size is about 5,000. Also, the product for Monday, I would rate it a five. So I was using Asana prior to monday.com and the reason why that wasn't really working, lack of features. So that product didn't allow a lot of implementations as monday.com allows. Meaning when I'm working with a team, I'm able to just go ahead and put in all of their resources. So the resource management was really great. If there were any files, like large files, it was easier to share out with the team using monday.com so everyone could have access to it. Asana, unfortunately, it just allowed me to track task, but working with a larger sized team and a bigger company, monday.com was perfect for that. I chose monday.com basically for my team and my team's size. So I was able to allow my team to get acquainted with the monday.com product. A lot of them were used to using Asana. A lot of them were used to me tagging them in their task, but I showed them that that tool for monday.com allowed me to go a deeper depth with them and dive into really what their assigned tasks were individually for the team. So they were able to keep track of that. Also, I was managing about four plus projects at the same time, so it was a lot easier for me to go ahead and create different tasks per project for team members. So I worked with the digital team, I worked with creative, I worked with the real estate team. So all of that was just easier to keep separate and just allow those teams to really go in and own their task and own their individual projects that they were doing. When getting set up with monday.com, it really didn't take very long because as a project manager, I am trained to use a lot of different resources and tools. I liked the layout of it a lot better, again, than a lot of the other project management tools that I've used in the past, like Asana and Jira. monday.com just had a very simple design and layout, so it was very easy for me to go ahead if I needed to add anything into projects. Like again, the file sizes were very large for our teams, because they were very large projects. So getting set up took about, I'd say a couple of weeks, but first off the first week was training the team members on using that tool. So they were really happy with the training that we provided for them for that week-long training. Then the second week was just going ahead and doing the trial run with the team to see how again, the team liked the product. They did find it a lot easier to work with again, because when you're managing four different projects and there's about 12 people per team, they like the simplicity of being able to own their task and be able to go in and make their own edits and share their files, sizes, however large, throughout the team. So it took about a couple of weeks, but the team definitely was appreciative of me implementing that tool. So the advice I would give to anyone interested in trying out monday.com, first off the pricing, depends again on what you're looking for. The product is great, so I recommend doing the trial run with your team. I know a lot of people from different companies might have smaller companies, and they're used to using that product like Asana. Our company was much smaller and we really didn't have the funds to try to venture out and try a bunch of different products, but monday.com was recommended to us, so we decided to give that a trial run. Based on the pricing, we were able to afford it. So if you're interested in using that product, do your research, find out what you're looking for specifically. You might not need as many resources as a larger company does, but it is nice to have that benefit for your team members so that they're able to just complete their task on time, keeping track of their own individual projects. They can own that. So yes, just definitely go ahead and do your research. It depends on what company, again, you are. I was healthcare, so for us, our healthcare team was a much larger size, and that product just fit with our team.

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.