Drone.io vs GitLab: What are the differences?
What is Drone.io? Open source continuous integration platform built on Docker. Drone is a hosted continuous integration service. It enables you to conveniently set up projects to automatically build, test, and deploy as you make changes to your code
Drone integrates seamlessly with Github, Bitbucket and Google Code as well as third party services such as Heroku, Dotcloud, Google AppEngine and more..
What is GitLab? Open source self-hosted Git management software. GitLab offers git repository management, code reviews, issue tracking, activity feeds and wikis. Enterprises install GitLab on-premise and connect it with LDAP and Active Directory servers for secure authentication and authorization. A single GitLab server can handle more than 25,000 users but it is also possible to create a high availability setup with multiple active servers.
Drone.io can be classified as a tool in the "Continuous Integration" category, while GitLab is grouped under "Code Collaboration & Version Control".
Some of the features offered by Drone.io are:
- Free for open-source
- GitHub, BitBucket integration
- Browser testing
On the other hand, GitLab provides the following key features:
- Manage git repositories with fine grained access controls that keep your code secure
- Perform code reviews and enhance collaboration with merge requests
- Each project can also have an issue tracker and a wiki
"Open source" is the primary reason why developers consider Drone.io over the competitors, whereas "Self hosted" was stated as the key factor in picking GitLab.
GitLab is an open source tool with 20.1K GitHub stars and 5.33K GitHub forks. Here's a link to GitLab's open source repository on GitHub.
According to the StackShare community, GitLab has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1219 company stacks & 1431 developers stacks; compared to Drone.io, which is listed in 47 company stacks and 20 developer stacks.