Dropbox vs GitLab

You can use Dropbox via website, by installing a desktop client that creates a folder that you simply drag and drop files into, or with their mobile app. Everything synchronizes across all devices used and cloud storage. And Dropbox offers easy methods of sharing whatever is within it.

Dropbox is available on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows, OS X and Linux. By having a client for so many OS's pretty much anyone is covered no matter what kind of device or OS they are using.

Using a desktop client: right click on the folder you want to share and select Dropbox > Share This Folder, then enter the e-mail addressees of people you want to share the folder with.

If a small portion of the file is changed it sends/receives only the differences (not the whole file), which is fast and bandwidth-efficient.

Whether using desktop client or web interface, simply right click on the file you want to share and select Dropbox > Share link, then send the link to the people you want to share the file with. The recipient does not require a Dropbox account.

Dropbox personal accounts start out free, with 2GB of space, but users can get extra space by recommending the site to friends, or taking part in events like "Dropquest", where users can win extra space by solving puzzles.

Dropbox offers native Linux support, integrates with Nautilus file manager.

As long as you have enough storage available, you can upload files of any size using Dropbox desktop client.

To save bandwidth and download speed you can choose to compress a folder into a zip archive for download.

To not slow down the network or save traffic you can limit the upload and download speeds of Dropbox.

There are official and third-party Dropbox add-ons that extend the functionality of the service and add ease of use of existing features.

Additionally, Dropbox can be integrated with existing applications to bring its functionality to other apps.

Dropbox keeps deleted and earlier versions of files for a month.

Your files always synced online means instant disaster recovery. When your hard drive becomes unbootable, pick up another laptop and just carry on with your life from where you last saved.

You get extra free space for you and your friend if they sign up.

GitLab is a free and open source project licensed under MIT. Source code for Enterprise Edition can be found here and Community Edition here.

Gitlab is very close to Github in use and feel, written in Ruby on Rails, open source and hosted on Github as well as on GitLab.com

GitLab is being constantly worked on and has a new release every month on the 22nd. Updating is also very easy through a single apt-get command.

Wiki and pages support out of the box.

Has pull request (AKA, merge request) support.

With the packages available here, GitLab can be installed in two minutes.

A protected master branch means that no code can be merged to master without passing a code review by an authorised developer. With GitLab this comes out of the box.

GitLab's UI is clean and intuitive. Each view is designed to not fill the screen with useless information.

It displays the activity in a feed-type way in the most prominent part of the view. On top of that, there's a toolbar with buttons which can filter this feed by pushes, merge events or comments.

On the left, there's a menu that displays all the links that take you to the different views. For example, a file directory which displays all the files in that repo, a commit view which displays all the commits in cronological order, a network and a graph view that display important information graphically etc...

All these details make GitLab's UI extremely intuitive and easy to use, no view is overflown with information and every view displays only the most useful and crucial information needed at that time.

Has issue tracking out of the box. Creating tickets, commenting on issues, closing issues etc... It's all there out of the box.

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is an application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network.

GitLab EE adds additional functionality over CE such as support for multiple LDAP servers and group sync.

GitLab CI makes it easy to set up CI and deployment for projects in GitLab. It supports parallel testing, multiple platforms, Docker containers and streaming build logs.

It has private/public repositories, roles for users (master, developer, reporter, guest). All of these can be set from the user interface. Same permissions set for the UI work for the SSH as well.

Since 7.12 you can define a minimum number of approvers for merge requests.

Snippets are similar to (well-known) GitHub "gists". They are a way to share code or have conversations about anything without needing a full git repo. The implementation here reminds more of a sort of pastebin.

A single instance can handle up to 40,000 users (requires a server with 64 core CPU and 64 GB of RAM) and it can run on multiple application servers to grow beyond that.

Integrates out of the box with services like Bugzilla, Pushbullet, Microsoft Team Notification and many more - one can also add own webhooks to integrate with own services.

Git Annex enables Git to manage large files (esp binaries) without checking them into Git.

The default docker.io registry is the docker hub but you can also login to other docker registries. And GitLab provides one for all Repos that make use of this feature.

EE is the commercial Enterprise Edition, CE is the free and OpenScource Community Edition. Features such as Cycle Analytics were first a part of the EE and are now also available in CE.

GitLab integrates with multiple third-party services to allow external issue trackers and external authentication.
GitLab can integrate with many third-party apps to allow external issue tracking and authentication. It can also be integrated with several services, such as:

• Slack
• Campfire
• Flowdock
• Hipchat
• Gemnasium
• Pivotal Tracker

GitLab exposes a REST API that allows automation possible, like PR bots.

Very useful project management feature that allows you to know how long it takes to go from the idea to production.