How we seamlessly migrated from Bitbucket to self-managed GitLab

With the constantly shifting realities in software development, having the right tools is of the essence. They are the bedrock of our productivity, collaboration, and innovation. When you’re running software development at scale, the toolchain can either be your biggest accelerator or your heaviest drag. For many regulated organizations, the drag comes in the form of sprawling, stitched-together stacks: Bitbucket, GitHub, GitLab, plus separate CI/CD, testing, and security tools, and a mess of manual processes to keep it all in sync.

It usually works “kind of”, until it doesn’t. Costs creep up, integrations break, compliance audits get harder, and bit by bit, the toolchain itself is slowing you down. That was the situation one of Eficode’s business units found itself in. Bitbucket Data Center had served us well for the longest time, but it was never going to deliver the simplicity, security, and sovereignty our customers increasingly demand. In our specific context, we needed something more integrated and future-proof by design. And that’s where self-managed GitLab came in.

Migrating from Bitbucket to GitLab mid-flight

On paper, our GitLab migration looked like a nightmare. Moving every repository, project, and build pipeline from one self-hosted platform to another while developers kept working in real time. There was no option to shut down operations. No late-night “big bang” window. The migration had to happen during the day, in full view of ongoing development. Sounds like a recipe for a stressful, overtime-laden saga, right? Wrong!

Most would call that reckless. But with the right communication, planning, team, and a sharp execution plan, our migration to GitLab was… uneventful. With no panicked developers staring at broken pipelines, the migration ran like clockwork, and the team barely noticed it was happening.

Why our move to GitLab unlocked AI, sovereignty, and clarity

Why did our business unit decide to move in the first place? It wasn’t about replacing one tool with another, but about simplifying a fragmented toolchain and setting ourselves up for the future. Instead of juggling multiple platforms and fragile integrations, GitLab gave us one place for repositories, CI/CD, and security scanning. GitHub offers a similarly integrated approach with GitHub Actions, which we also help customers adopt—but in our regulated context, the self-managed GitLab option made the most sense. Suddenly, the overhead of maintaining five tools collapsed into a single, reliable source of truth.

Even more, consolidation was only one line in a long list of benefits. Self-managed GitLab also opened the door to the ability to regulate AI features strictly, where required. Running them locally means our code and sensitive customer data stay firmly within the EU, while the team still benefits from faster suggestions and automation.

Just as important was the control we gained. With sovereignty over our own environment, we can now align security policies and compliance checks to our exact needs. The compliance center, for example, has already saved hours of audit preparation by automating evidence collection.

Finally, there’s the financial clarity. By monitoring actual usage through our latest product, Eficode Connectors, we see exactly where licenses are being used—and where they’re not. 

What the no-pain migration to GitLab means

The real story here isn’t that we switched tools. It’s that we proved migrations don’t have to be painful. With the right expertise and planning, you can move mid-flight, with zero disruption, and come out considerably stronger on the other side.

Now that we’re fully on GitLab, development feels more cohesive. Pipelines are tighter, collaboration smoother, and the platform itself feels like an accelerator instead of a bottleneck. More importantly, we’re set up for the long haul.

The bigger picture: finding the right GitLab or GitHub setup

Migrating to self-managed GitLab isn’t just a technical exercise. The same applies if you’re moving to GitHub Enterprise or rethinking your cloud setup with GitHub Actions. These transitions are a chance to redesign how you run development, compliance, and operations as a whole. Done right, they give your teams focus, your business control, and your customers' confidence. We’ve done it ourselves. We help customers do it every day: on GitLab, GitHub, and beyond.

If you’re considering the same journey, let’s talk. One of our foremost GitLab experts, Shaun Frost, can help you plan, execute, and continuously manage GitLab—so your developers keep building while we handle the complexity.