---
title: "Highlights from 2019"
author: Sara Kassabian
author_gitlab: skassabian
author_twitter: sarakassabian
categories: company
image_title: '/images/blogimages/gitlab-holiday-2019-blog-cover.png'
description: "2019 was a big year for GitLab! We look back on our achievements and growth from the past year."
tags: features, community, inside GitLab
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twitter_text: "Read up on some of the major 2019 milestones for @gitlab"
featured: yes
postType: content marketing
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merch_sidebar: merch_one
---
At GitLab, we’re going into 2020 with big energy. 🙌 Take a look at the 2019 milestones that laid a solid foundation for the company as we gear up for our IPO, planned for November 2020.
In 2019, our company more than doubled in size as we hired more talented folks, many of whom helped us move our product closer to being a true multicloud solution. But the core of GitLab is our open source community, and in 2019 our community made plenty of valuable contributions in merge requests, feature fixes, and security checks! Explore some of the 2019 highlights for the GitLab product, community, and company.
- [Product highlights](#product)
- [Community highlights](#community)
- [Company highlights](#company)
# Product
We introduced many exciting new features to help our GitLab product better serve the needs of our users.
## Multi-level child epics make project management a breeze
Before our 11.7 release, epics were limited to a two-level structure, but [in 11.7 we introduced multi-level child epics](/blog/2019/01/22/gitlab-11-7-released/#multi-level-child-epics), so you can now have an ancestor epic that contains up to five levels of child epics, as well as issues. This feature allows longer-term work strategies to be defined in ancestor epics, with strategy and deliverables being articulated in the lower tiers.
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## Auto-renew certs using Let’s Encrypt
One of our most highly-requested features was the introduction of a custom domain in GitLab pages [that automates HTTPS certificate renewals.](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss/issues/28996) We delivered in 12.1 by integrating with Let’s Encrypt to transition this process from being manual to automated.
## Totally buggin’: Track errors using Sentry
Using Sentry, our users can get more visibility into their entire stack, making it faster and easier to identify and remediate bugs in your code. [Read this blog post to dive deeper into how our integration with Sentry works](/blog/2019/01/25/sentry-integration-blog-post/) or watch the video below.
## Accelerate delivery using scoped labels
[We created the scoped labels in 11.10](/blog/2019/06/20/issue-labels-can-now-be-scoped/), making it simpler for users to customize workflows and accelerate delivery.
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Great news, friends! Issue labels can now be scoped 😍
Scoped Labels make it possible for teams to define a basic custom field that avoids confusion and cleans up issue lists ✔️https://t.co/U2T9BBIgBs
Watch the video below to see two use cases for scoped labels.
## Merge trains keep your pipeline running
Broken master is a developer’s worst enemy. We want our users to keep their pipelines moving, which is [why we created merge trains to keep your pipelines in the green](/blog/2019/09/11/how-to-avoid-broken-master-with-pipelines-for-merge-requests/).
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GitLab 12.1 released with Parallel Merge Trains, Merge Requests for Confidential Issues, Automated Let’s Encrypt certificates for GitLab Pages and much more! Enjoy! 🎉🙌🚀https://t.co/oRp7YF9mmo
## CE and EE are in a single codebase
In August, [we officially migrated GitLab CE and GitLab EE to a single codebase](/blog/2019/08/23/a-single-codebase-for-gitlab-community-and-enterprise-edition/). Keeping CE and EE in their own repositories made the development process more complex than was necessary, and by moving to a single codebase we simplified a problem that was becoming more complicated over time. A migration of this size wasn’t a simple process. [Our blog post dives into more detail about how we managed the migration](/blog/2019/08/23/a-single-codebase-for-gitlab-community-and-enterprise-edition/).
## Multicloud: This is the way
### Create and deploy to an EKS cluster
GitLab is designed to be cloud-agnostic and in the spirit of multicloud, [we added an EKS integration to 12.5](/blog/2019/11/22/gitlab-12-5-released/#easily-create-and-deploy-to-an-eks-cluster). Now, users can create and deploy an EKS cluster by selecting the EKS option on the GitLab clusters page rather than having to build the integration from scratch. Watch the demo below to see how it works, or [read our documentation page](/blog/2019/11/22/gitlab-12-5-released/#easily-create-and-deploy-to-an-eks-cluster).
### Deploy to any cloud with GitLab CI/CD
Learn more about how [GitLab CI/CD makes it possible to work with any cloud provider](/blog/2019/11/06/gitlab-ci-cd-is-for-multi-cloud/). Study our [Guide to the Cloud](/resources/guide-to-the-cloud/) to become an expert in this topic.
Other notable accomplishments include:
* [How our delivery team used the “boring solution” to migrate GitLab.com to CI/CD](/blog/2019/10/03/gitlab-journey-to-cicd/).
* The introduction of [instance-level Kubernetes](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/instance/clusters/).
* [DAG pipelines](/blog/2019/08/22/gitlab-12-2-released/#directed-acyclic-graphs-dag-for-gitlab-pipelines), which allow certain jobs to be completed in a non-consecutive order between stages.
# Community
In 2019, GitLab benefitted from a highly engaged and collaborative community of contributors.
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While GitLab the company is growing quickly, we also have over 2500 contributors to GitLab from the wider community.
## Code contributions soared
In 2018, we had 447 code contributors create 1,608 merge requests. [Our numbers nearly doubled in 2019](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/issues/6075#note_262597822) with an astounding 861 code contributors creating 2,437 merge requests (as of Dec. 18 2019). This marks more than 50% year-over-year growth in merged MRs for the wider community. We can’t wait to see what you folks have in store for us in 2020!
## One million merge requests
In March 2019, our community broke more records by [submitting one million merge requests to GitLab.com](/blog/2019/06/06/1-mil-merge-requests/) in a month. In fact, the number of new MRs per active user increased by 40% year-over-year (May 2019 vs. May 2018).
The majority of these contributions were part of private projects on GitLab.com, indicating there is the potential for _even more growth_ in the New Year if our contributors resolve to submit to some of our public projects too.
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## Our bug bounty program goes public
Our bug bounty program launched in 2017 but was limited to the top 10% of HackerOne contributors. But in 2019, we elected to accelerate our efforts by making the program public – and our community did not disappoint! In the first seven weeks of our program, 42% of all reporters were first-time contributors and 64% of all of the reports we received came from folks new to the GitLab program.
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"We’re proud to see the benefits and value being generated by our bug bounty program and specifically our reporter community."@GitLab shares where their team is succeeding and focusing on improvement after moving to a public program. Fantastic job!https://t.co/iZ7rYqKmmqpic.twitter.com/7WcrPWIMbQ
Thank you to all of our reporters who helped make our product and platform even more secure.
# Company
Just like any start-up, GitLab came from humble beginnings, but in 2019 we’ve had more and more organizations adopt our tool as their all-in-one DevOps solution, and our team, funding, and corporate events have grown to accommodate the demand.
## GitLab valued at $2.75 billion
Our plans for a 2020 IPO are off to a roaring start! 🚀 In less than a year, we’ve more than doubled our company’s valuation from $1.1 billion in 2018 to $2.75 billion in 2019, after raising $268 million in September 2019. The money comes from existing funders such as Goldman Sachs as well as nine investors that are brand new to GitLab.
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GitLab (YC W15) hauls in $268M Series E on 2.75B valuation. Congrats to the GitLab team! https://t.co/8tfxnfu3YN
We’ll be reinvesting all of that money into making our DevOps platform the best in its class, bolstering its monitoring, security, and planning capabilities.
## We’re (always) hiring!
Since the company launched in 2015, our headcount has more than doubled each year. At the end of January 2019, we had roughly 452 team members at GitLab but as of Jan. 9, 2020 we've grown to 1,137 team members and counting.