Nothing beats https://bitbucket.org/ when it comes to free, unlimited, private repositories. It has seen the first hosted repositories of far more startups than github ever will. Which is special achievement in itself.
GitLab's UI/UX is regressive to the point that when you visit a repo, you have to click another link just to see the damn sourcecode. It's as though they ignored every advance in source-code UX post-Sourceforge.
The stacked global and per-repo sidebars are confusing in a way that baffled me for several minutes, as well. They need a serious rethink of their UI/UX.
The main issue with GitLab right now IMO is that it's so fucking slow at times -- ike seconds per page slow...
BTW on-premises GitLab installations should be fast already