24 July 2026
Progress in software development isn’t just about adding more. It’s also about knowing what to simplify. While new features, integrations, and tools expand what’s possible, they can also make systems harder to maintain over time. At smartclip, our commitment to quality products and client security means we often ask a different question: What can we remove to make our systems safer, faster, and more reliable? Recently, this philosophy led us to a significant infrastructure decision: migrating our entire version control system from GitLab to Forgejo.
The Breaking Point: Security vs. “Featuritis”
For years, GitLab served as our primary hub for collaboration. However, we noticed a concerning trend. While the platform continued to grow, that growth felt misaligned with our needs. We found ourselves facing a phenomenon often called “featuritis” — the addition of endless new tools and enterprise bells and whistles that provided little value to our daily workflow but significantly expanded the platform’s attack surface.
The cost of this complexity became clear: almost every week, new critical-severity vulnerabilities were being discovered in GitLab.
For a company that prides itself on security and integrity, inheriting constant critical vulnerabilities from our own tooling was an unacceptable risk. We realised that to protect our clients and our code, we needed a tool that prioritised security and minimalism over a bloated feature list.
Why Forgejo?
When looking for an alternative, we needed a solution that was lightweight, resource-efficient, and laser-focused on source code management. Our search for a leaner alternative began with Gitea. During the vetting process, we discovered Forgejo — a community-driven version of the project — at just the right time. It quickly became clear that its vision aligned perfectly with our own needs, leading us to choose Forgejo in the end.
Forgejo is backed by a non-profit organisation, ensuring that the project’s direction is driven by the community and the needs of users rather than the demands of paying enterprise shareholders. This alignment with open-source purity mirrors our own philosophy: building tools that are sustainable, transparent, and focused on excellence.
The technical difference was immediate. The startup time became virtually instant, and the web interface felt snappier and more intuitive, reducing the friction in our daily development cycles.
Turning the Plan into Reality
Migrating 150 repositories is never a “flip of a switch” operation. To ensure zero data loss and minimal disruption, we opted for a phased approach.
Over the course of three months, we migrated project by project. This allowed us to learn from minor hiccups — such as specific API encoding issues — and adjust our process in real-time. By the end of the transition, we had a streamlined environment that did exactly what we needed it to do, and nothing more.
Beyond Using the Tool: Giving Back
At smartclip, we don’t just use open source software; we contribute to it. Since the switch, our engineers have already submitted several pull requests with bug fixes and new features to the Forgejo project.
We found a community that is critical yet open, mirroring the collaborative spirit we foster internally. When comparing the two platforms, the difference in agility is striking: where GitLab often feels bogged down by thousands of open merge requests and broken outputs, Forgejo remains lean and responsive.
One Year Later: The Verdict
It has been a year since the migration, and the results are clear. Do we miss the enterprise bells and whistles of GitLab? Not for a second.
By choosing a tool that values security and efficiency over feature-counting, we have reduced our internal overhead and strengthened our security posture. This move was about more than just a change in software; it was a reaffirmation of our commitment to security.
By stripping away the noise, we can focus entirely on what actually matters: delivering secure, high-performance innovation via smartx for our clients.
Rene is the Chief Technical Officer at smartclip.
Rene Wagner
CTO
Lee is the Marketing Specialist Europe at smartclip and is responsible for content writing, editing, social media, and creative support across the department and company. Originally from the United States, Lee graduated from the University of Cincinnati, where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Electronic Media. Before joining smartclip, she has worked with various organisations managing social media accounts and assisting in the video and audio production processes.
Lee Richter
Marketing Specialist Europe
