Best GitLab Hosting: For DevOps Security and Reliability (2021)

In the world of DevOps, GitLab offers one of the best solutions for coding operations to manage application lifecycles, track issues, and deploy projects. GitLab.com offers basic free hosting for its own platform, but that’s primarily for open-source projects with limited storage requirements. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the best GitLab hosting options to scale and secure your projects when needed.

In a hurry? Check out this roundup of the best Gitlab hosting options

What are the best GitLab hosting options to choose from?

Now that we’ve given an overview of all of GitLab’s hosting options, let’s dive deeper into what makes them a valuable hosting option for a range of development projects.

1. GitLab.com

GitLab.com provides a single application DevOps platform with an interface to manage, schedule and share development projects with top-notch security and a shared hosting system designed for end-to-end automation.

Overall, you get private repositories and the option to run instances in a SaaS (Software as a Service) or self-managed environment. Therefore, you can pay GitLab for shared and hosted instances to support everything from issue tracking to code analysis and source control to feature flags.

You can also use the GitLab Pages product to host websites for free.

⚙️ Features:

• Support for 400 to 50,000 CI/CD minutes per month.
• Hosted SaaS via Google Cloud Platform (in all pricing plans, including Community Edition) or a self-hosted method.
• Project Management Tools.
• Planning elements with issue tracking, time tracking and boards.
• Code and project building capabilities for source control, wikis, and code review.
• Verification items for performance testing and continuous integration.
• Security features to improve your code quality, run static application security scans, and verify credentials.
• Product release items for advanced deployments and labeling capabilities.
• Monitoring capabilities that combine everything from logging to tracing.
• Protection tools for container host security and scanning.

💵 Pricing:

Pricing is mainly for the DevOps platform, but you have the option to host in a shared environment:

• Free: $0 for 400 CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous delivery) minutes per month, free static websites, the DevOps platform, and your own GitLab CI runners.
• Premium: $19 per user per month for everything in the free plan, 10,000 CI/CD minutes per month, improved coding reviews, ops insights, release controls and project management.
• Ultimate: $99 per user per month for all previous features, 50,000 CI/CD minutes per month, free guest users, value stream mapping, portfolio management, compliance tools, and advanced security testing.

Other key elements of GitLab.com hosting pricing:

• Some open source, educational, and startup projects receive Ultimate licenses for free.
• Both the Premium and Ultimate plans are billed on an annual schedule.
• You have the option to host instances through GitLab (the only option in the free plan) as a SaaS hosting configuration, or you can either host through GitLab or self-host with the premium plans.

2. GitLabHost.com

GitLabHost works well with GitLab Community and Enterprise editions by offering a fast self-hosting solution with site backups, security, and updates.

The main reason for being self-hosted is that GitLab itself is not 100% GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliant. GitLabHost, on the other hand, is based in the Netherlands, where it is a legal requirement to run a 100% GDPR compliant hosting environment.

GitLabHost offers benefits like a dedicated IP address, AWS backups, and your own domain name, giving you a little more control over your instances and security for projects.

⚙️ Features:

• Support for private instances outside of customers.
• Secure, GDPR compliant hosting with option to upgrade for dedicated runners.
• Backups to Amazon Web Services S3 for some plans.
• Elasticsearch for advanced text search and analytics.
• A dedicated IP address to keep your project private.
• Your own domain name.
• Support for all OmniAuth providers such as Google, GitLab.com and BitBucket Cloud.
• Assistance with migrations.

💵 Pricing:

GitLabHost hosting plans (sold in Euros only):

• Starter: €80 (roughly $95 at the time of this writing) per month for up to 10 users, 4GB RAM, 60GB SSD, and 2 CPUs.
• Professional: €200 (≈$236) per month for up to 50 users, 8 GB RAM, 100 GB SSD and 4 CPUs.
• Business: €400 (≈$472) per month for up to 200 users, 16 GB RAM, 250 GB SSD and 6 CPUs.
• Enterprise: €800 (≈$944) per month for up to 500 users, 32 GB RAM, 500 GB SSD and 8 CPUs.
• Enterprise XL: €1500 (≈ $1770) per month for up to 1000 users, 48 ​​GB RAM, 750 GB SSD and 12 CPUs.
• Enterprise XXL: €2,000 (≈ $2,360) per month for up to 2,000 users, 64 GB RAM, 1,000 GB SSD and 16 CPUs.

Additional pricing information from GitLabHost:

• Additional block storage costs €25 per 100 GB.
• GitLab Runner prices range from €15 per month to €200 per month, or €65 per month to €690 for CPU-optimized runners.
• GitLabHost sells GitLab from €17.50 per user per month to €92.50 per user per month (slightly more expensive than buying through GitLab.com).

3. A2 hosting

A2 Hosting offers GitLab hosting at an affordable price.

You can opt for Standard or Turbo VPS plans and enhance your GitLab hosting experience with custom software, high-performance CPUs, and constant security.

⚙️ Features:

• Standard and Turbo virtual private server options. The Turbo servers feature AMD EPYC servers and NVMe drives.
• Add your own custom applications and scripts.
• Root access to files with restart and reload capabilities.
• Enhanced DDoS protection.
• Dedicated IP addresses.
• One-click software configurations for WordPress, Drupal and Node.js.
• Three Linux operating system options: CentOS, Debian and Ubuntu.

💵 Pricing:

• Runway 1: $8.99 per month for a standard VPS, 1GB RAM, 150GB SSD, 2TB transfer and 1 CPU.
• Runway 2: $14.99 per month for a standard VPS, 2GB RAM, 250GB SSD, 3TB transfer and 2 CPUs.
• Runway 4: $19.99 per month for a standard VPS, 4GB RAM, 450GB SSD, 4TB transfer and 4 CPUs.
• Supersonic 8: $59.99 per month for a Turbo VPS, 8GB RAM, 150GB NVMe, 2TB transmission and dual CPUs.
• Supersonic 16: $99.99 per month for a Turbo VPS, 16GB RAM, 250GB NVMe, 3TB transmission and 6 CPUs.
• Supersonic 32: $139.99 per month for a Turbo VPS, 32GB RAM, 450GB NVMe, 4TB transmission and 8 CPUs.

4. SkySilk

SkySilk offers a combination of basic and premium hosting with virtual machines and the ability to create repositories and manage code for GitLab. Scaling comes in handy as your project grows, while full root access and affordable pricing give you more control and ability to stay on budget.

⚙️ Features:

• Direct access to the GitLab server for DevOps lifecycle tools.
• Unlimited free backups and snapshots on some plans.
• Unlimited transfers in some plans.
• Full root access.
• DDoS and virus protection.
• Passwords or SSH keys.
• Options to increase your bandwidth.

💵 Pricing:

Basic plans include:

• Pico: $4 per month for 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM and 25 GB SSD.
• Nano: $6 per month for 1 CPU, 2 GB RAM and 40 GB SSD.
• Optima: $9 per month for 1 CPU, 2 GB RAM and 60 GB SSD.

Default Plans:

SkySilk sells 11 standard plans ranging from the Micro plan at $10 per month for 1 CPU and 4GB of RAM to the Ultimate plan at $1,250 per month with 40 CPUs and 192GB of RAM.

Premium Plans:

There are also 11 premium plans with the same prices and specs as the standard plans. However, you do get free backups, premium support, and increased bandwidth.

5. vulture

With a sleek dashboard and one-click GitLab installation, Vultr offers some of the best GitLab hosting with the option to choose your data center location.

The goal of Vultr is to keep your code private while providing the collaboration features your organization needs. It has 17+ locations worldwide, a wide range of GitLab hosting products, and top-notch security.

⚙️ Features:

• A long list of hosting and storage options to scale and use only what you need.
• A nice dashboard panel with access to the API.
• Solid state drives, 100% Intel cores and a public IPv6 network for the best performance.
• The ability to deploy any operating system.
• Full root access to files.
• Dedicated IP addresses.
• Backup codes and two-factor authentication for more security.
• Consistent backup files and snapshots.

💵 Pricing:

• Cloud Computing: $2.50 per month to $640 per month, starting at 1 CPU and 512MB RAM and going up to 24 CPUs and 96GB RAM. There are 10 plans and several other high frequency compute packages.
• Bare Metal: $120 per month to $350 per month. From 4 cores and 2 x 0.24 TB SSD. Goes up to 8 cores and 2 x 2 TB NVMe.
• Block Storage: Storage volume from $1 per month for 10 GB to $1,000 per month for 10,000 GB.
• Dedicated Cloud: Your own server from $60 per month (120 GB) to $240 per month (4 x 120 GB).

Our verdict on the best GitLab hosting

If you’re still having trouble making up your mind, use our final recommendations to guide you:

• GitLab.com: Best for open source projects and hosting in the same place as your DevOps. Also good for free static website hosting. Remember that the storage limit is 10GB per project. Those with business and security needs should self-host elsewhere and use GitLab for DevOps only.
• GitLabHost.com: By far the most expensive option. Potentially the best for security, dedicated runners, and backups. And they only focus on the GitLab hosting.
• A2 hosting: Affordable GitLab hosting for smaller operations. There are maximums for RAM, CPUs, and storage, but you can get NVMe storage.
• SkySilk: Affordable and highly flexible plans with the best support for large or scaling operations. This is where you get the most storage, CPU, RAM, and transfer potential.
• vulture: Offers the lowest entry-level price. Vultr is also great for scaling as it has numerous plans and high ranges for CPU, RAM and storage.