When comparing Codeship vs GitLab CI, the Slant community recommends GitLab CI for most people. In the question“What are the best continuous integration tools?” GitLab CI is ranked 2nd while Codeship is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose GitLab CI is:
All build setup are stored in .gitlab-ci.yml file, which is versioned and stored in the project. Like Travis do.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro GitHub & Bitbucket integration
Support for public and private GitHub and BitBucket repositories. It also has support for multi-user teams.
Pro Keeps it simple. Doesn't allow too many "tricky" things which means builds are generally very stable once they are up and going.
Pro Headless browser support
Alongside latest Chrome and Firefox, Codeship supports the use of Selenium, PhantomJS, CasperJS as well as tools like Capybara.
Pro Build status GIF
There's a continuously updated GIF of the build status of the repository allowing you to determine whether build was successful or not.
Pro Support for multiple tools, languages and databases
Support for e-mail, HipChat, Slack, Campfire, Flowdock, Grove, Webhook, Github Status API.
Support for Ruby, Python, Node, Dart, PHP, Java, Scala, Groovy, Clojure, Go.
Support for: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, Memcached, ElasticSearch, SQLite.
Pro Supports 7 cloud providers
Support for AWS, Digital Ocean, Rackspace, Google Compute, Joyent, Softlayer, Openstack.
Pro Docker support
Pro Simple deployments with a choice of 5 deployment tools
Support for Capistrano, Fabric, Chef, Puppet, Ansible and allows for writing your own scripts to deploy and manage your infrastructure.
Pro Supports 10 hosting providers
Support for Heroku, Engine Yard, Nodejitsu, dotCloud, App Engine, AppFog, Modulus, Openshift, Cloud Foundry, Fortrabbit and you can also run your own script to deploy anywhere.
Pro FTP, SFTP, SCP, RSYNC and SSH support
You can use FTP, SFTP, SCP, RSYNC and SSH for Continuous Deployment.
Pro Code Climate & Coveralls support
Automated code review for RoR and JavaScript and test coverage history and statistics with Code Climate and Coveralls.
Pro File based configuration
All build setup are stored in .gitlab-ci.yml file, which is versioned and stored in the project. Like Travis do.
Pro Free and open source
All of GitLab CI's code is open source and under the MIT license.
Pro Parallel builds lessen test times
Tests are parallelized across multiple machines in order to reduce test times considerably.
Pro Docker intergration
Good integration with Docker.
Pro Highly scalable
The tests of GitLab CI run parallel to each other and are distributed on different machines. Developers can add as many machines as they want or need, making GitLab CI highly scalable to the development team's needs.
Pro Quick setup for projects hosted on GitLab
Since it uses the GitLab API for setting up hooks, the setup of GitLab CI for projects hosted on GitLab can be done in one click.
Pro Kubernetes integration
Easy to test and deploy on Kubernetes.
Cons
Con Doesn't support git modules
If repo contain private submodule - build will fail, no way to add your private key.
Con Any time you ask support for help on Codeship basic (which isn't free anyway), they will just try to up sell you to Pro version.
Con No Global variables that can be shared amongst all projects.
Con Environment variables are exposed. Any keys or secrets can just be copied.
No option to mask them unless you reduce permissions for those users. Developers need to be able to modify a job but probably shouldn't be able to copy a production api key. Just needs one more level of permissions here.
Con Too many permissions on Bitbucket
When registering with Bitbucket Codeship it requests way to many permissions, even "Read and write to your team's projects and move repositories between them". Before giving all these permissions you have to be sure you can trust this service.
Con Not lightweight
Not a lightweight solution, demanding and memory hungry.
Con Cost
Larger projects will need upgraded version
Con Security risks
Con Windows not supported
No Windows support, but it's possible to use a Bitnami stack.
