GitLab repositories and CI
Source control, pipelines, registry and issue tracking in one product — and the strongest option when the code has to stay on your own servers.
DevOps platform
Chosen per project
Maintainable handover
GitLab’s distinguishing feature is completeness. Repositories, CI, a container registry, package hosting, issues and environments arrive together, so there are fewer integrations to maintain between separate products.
Its second is self-hosting. Where policy, a client contract or a regulator requires source code and build artefacts to remain on infrastructure you control, a self-managed GitLab instance is the straightforward answer.
What we build with GitLab
Organisations required to keep source code on their own infrastructure
Teams wanting repository, CI and registry from one vendor
Merge-request-driven workflow with mandatory approvals
Multi-stage pipelines with manual production gates
Where it fits — and where it does not
Good fit when
Regulated or policy-constrained environments
Teams that value one integrated toolchain
Container-based delivery needing a built-in registry
Consider something else when
Small teams, where a self-hosted instance is more to run than it is worth
Projects depending on the wider GitHub ecosystem
What runs on every merge request
Nothing here is optional, which is what makes the result trustworthy.
Build
One artefact, produced once.
Test
Unit and integration suites, with coverage reported.
Scan
Dependency and container scanning.
Deploy on approval
Staging automatically, production on a click.
How we work with GitLab
Pipelines as code
The whole build and deployment defined in a reviewed file in the repository.
Protected branches and environments
Production deployment behind a manual gate with a named approver.
Runner strategy
Shared or dedicated runners sized to the build, with caching so pipelines stay quick enough to be used.
Registry in the loop
Images built once, stored in the built-in registry and promoted between environments.
Our typical GitLab setup
| Concern | What we use |
|---|---|
| Hosting | GitLab.com or self-managed on your infrastructure |
| CI | Pipelines defined in .gitlab-ci.yml, reviewed like code |
| Runners | Shared or dedicated, with dependency caching |
| Registry | Built-in container and package registry |
| Governance | Protected branches, approval rules, environment gates |
Frequently asked questions
Only if you have a reason — a policy, a contract or a regulator. Self-hosting means you now operate the platform, including upgrades and backups, which is a real ongoing cost.
Yes; pipelines deploy to any cloud. The platform hosting your code does not constrain where the software runs.
Short enough that nobody works around it — a few minutes for the checks on a merge request. If it drifts past that, caching and parallelism are worth the effort.
Services built with GitLab
Custom Software Development
Software shaped around the way your business already works, instead of a packaged product you have to reorganise around.
Enterprise Software Development
Systems for organisations where several departments, sites and approval chains all have to work from the same data.
Cloud Solutions
Hosting designed around what your application actually needs, with the monitoring and backups that make it safe to rely on.
Software Maintenance
Keeping working systems working — including ones built by somebody else.
Tell us what you are trying to build
Describe the problem in plain language and we will tell you what it would take to solve it — the approach, the moving parts and the sensible order to build them in. No obligation either way.