With Auto DevOps, the software development process becomes easier to set up
as every project can have a complete workflow from build to deploy and monitoring,
with minimal to zero configuration.
as every project can have a complete workflow from verification to monitoring without needing to configure anything.
Just push your code and GitLab takes care of everything else.
This makes it easier to start new projects and brings consistency to how applications are set up throughout a company.
## Comparison to application platforms and PaaS
Auto DevOps provides functionality described by others as an application platform or as a Platform as a Service (PaaS).
It takes inpiration from the innovative work done by [Heroku](https://www.heroku.com/) and goes beyond it in a couple of ways:
1. Auto DevOps works with any Kubernetes cluster, you're not limited to running on our infrastructure (note that many features also work without Kubernetes).
1. There is no additional cost, there is no markup on the infrastructure costs, you can use self-hosted Kubernetes cluster or Containers as a Service on any public cloud (for example [Google Kubernetes Engine](https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/)).
1. Auto DevOps has more features including security testing, performance testing, and code quality testing.
1. It has offers an incremental graduation path. If you need advanced customizations you can start modifying the templates without having to start over on a completely different platform.
## Features
Comprised of a set of stages, Auto DevOps brings these best practices to your
